CITYLEFT /// TOWARDS TRANSDISCIPLINARY URBANISM: Exhibitions

Showing posts with label Exhibitions. Show all posts

Towards an Arctic Assemblage, the book

open access here: link

This book, funded by SUN, emerges as a disciplinary extension of the exhibition project Transforming Legacy: The Evolution of Extractive Cultures in the European Arctic, presented at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2025.

The exhibited work explores the complex layering of extractive and traditional cultures in European Arctic and sub-Arctic environments. At the core of the project lies a tension between technologically advanced systems developed for resource extraction and long-term, traditional forms of knowledge and intelligence.

In the book, we show how the current model of Arctic urban development is reshaping territorial and social structures through centralized, smart urban logics. By contrast, we investigate how traditional Arctic intelligence offers alternative, rural, and dispersed approaches to sustainability that may hold renewed relevance for contemporary forms of inhabitation.

This evolution of Arctic and extractive culture reveals how advanced digital systems and AI are transforming human relationships with land, generating both conflict and unexpected intersections. In the book, we propose to examine these transformations through the theoretical lens of assemblage: a dynamic juxtaposition of elements and systems that are often distant or seemingly incompatible—automation and ancestral knowledge, industrial infrastructures and fragile ecosystems, remote sensing and embodied traditions.

Transforming Legacy (2025, Venice Architecture Biennale)

The advancement of AI and automation is progressively displacing local and traditional knowledge. This shift is particularly noticeable in the Arctic, where technological developments in resource extraction shape the relationship to place. But what new forms of "intelligence" are emerging? What new spaces are we starting to inhabit?

The current Arctic urban development model, driven by extractivism, is significantly impacting urban structures under the guise of “smart city” initiatives, considered as the latest mantra of city makers and academic thinkers. In contrast, the vernacular's ancestral intelligence, seen in Sami’ sustainable reindeer herding practices, or in some traditional techniques of Arctic fishing communities along rivers, offer alternative, more rural, and dispersed models of sustainability that attract people to the region.

The evolution of extractives culture demonstrates how advanced digital systems alter human interactions in the territory, producing tensions but also unexpected and unexplored overlaps.

https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025/out/transforming-legacy-evolution-extractive-cultures-european-arctic

More…

Arctic hypothesis (2024, Luleå Architecture Biennale)

The exhibition aimed to promote dialogue on climate and economic transition in the Arctic from an architectural and urban planning perspective, as well as to use architecture creatively to explore future alternatives for society in the Swedish Arctic.

The Arctic is expected to be the 21st century's refuge. To quote environmental journalist Gaia Vince, "we are entering a nomadic era where Arctic cities are expected to expand, and new urban centers will emerge." The Arctic represents a small portion of the world's landmass and population. The climate change crisis opens up new opportunities for the centralization of the Nordic countries in global dynamics such as migration, natural resource management, and secure housing. The potential for climate change-induced migration to the Arctic presents a new narrative for the historically shrinking population base. This migration process can reverse historical population decline and lead to rapid expansion of existing cities and the construction of new ones. This raises a range of questions related to social and environmental justice. What aspects should architectural research prioritize to shape the environment for this possible future? How can modern technology support architecture and urban planning for innovative design processes?

Predatory Urbanism:
The Metabolism of Megaprojects in Asia
Agatino Rizzo (with Anindita Mandal)

Preview the book

Rizzo, A. (2021). Predatory Urbanism: The Metabolism of Megaprojects in Asia (with Mandal, A.). Edward Elgar. https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781800881068.xml

Book launch at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021 (videos)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMN3zrKuLAbR_-h8Tl4QXrfbD7BL6BZcp

Buy the book

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/predatory-urbanism-9781800881068.html

Book reviews

https://antipodeonline.org/2022/04/27/new-asian-capital-spectacular-developmentalist-urbanisms-in-action/

https://www.urbanstudiesonline.com/review/predatory-urbanism-the-metabolism-of-megaprojects-in-asia/

Synopsis

Resources in their various forms are at the basis of our urban economies. The extraction, alongside with the distribution, processing and disposal, of resources, being them natural, energy, or human, is a main driver for planetary urbanization. However, under a market-led economic regime, which is characterized by boom and bust cycles, the space produced by the resource-extraction economic model is from time to time discarded with huge environmental and social losses world wide.

"Predatory urbanism" is that condition by which tangible and intangible resource networks are cheaply exploited for the making of so-called competitive/attractive cities. Talking of predatory cities means studying the extended resource-urbanization nexus that underpins neoliberal city-making. Predatory urban making is not necessarily isolated, disconnected, and opportunistic but implies a relational connection, by virtue of tapping on the global production network of “cheap” resources, with other socially and environmentally troubled areas.

While recent concerns about climate change and urban resilience have emphasized resource efficiency i.e. consume less and use better each unit of resource, I think that this target alone isn't sufficient to truly transform society towards a more resilient horizon. We need to rethink the resource-urbanization nexus and the way it affects our lifestyle and cities. Therefore, smart cities and “green resilience” thinking does nothing to deal with the social and political aspects of human-nature exploitation at the planetary scale, i.e. where most of the Earth surface is affected by urban-led extraction processes of raw materials, goods, food, and human bodies for labor. Research shows that seldom smart experiments are able to transform society and their institutions

Tackling todays’ predatory "resource-urbanization nexus" means to go beyond periphery-centre or urban-rural or nature-human binaries and re-imagine society around the concept of resourcefulness. Resourceful communities are not only “ingenious, able, bright, talented, sharp, capable, creative, clever, imaginative, inventive, quick-witted” but are also communities that put the harnessing, caring, saving, and use of resources at the core of their civil statute. In my latest work I suggest resources in its various forms (natural and human) be intimately integrated with humanity and its built environment. To articulate such a vision, I am involved in a number of research projects that deal respectively with energy aesthetics and resource regions in Asia and Europe.

References to previous and ongoing work on Predatory Urbanism (complete list of publications)

Rizzo, A., Sjöholm, J., & Luciani, A. (2024). Smart (en) ing the Arctic city? The cases of Kiruna and Malmberget in Sweden. European Planning Studies, 32(1), 59-77.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2023.2217850

Rizzo, A., & Petruccioli, A. (2023). Khalifa versus Prometheus: Green ethics and the struggle for contemporary sustainable urbanism. Digest of Middle East Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/dome.12291

Rizzo, A. (2021). Rethinking Resilience: Towards Resourceful Communities. In Melis, A., Medas, B., Pievani, T. (eds.). Resilient Communities. Catalogue Italian Pavilion, Biennale di Architettura di Venezia, 96-101. ISBN: 978-8894830682 (Academia) (RG)

Rizzo, A. (2020). The limits of green resilience in urban planning: two cases from the global South. Urban Studies (special issue). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018812009

Rizzo, A., Sordi, J. (2020). Resources and Urbanization in the Global Periphery: perspectives from urban and landscape studies. Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2020.102647.

Rizzo, A., Ekelund, B., Bergström, J., Ek, K. (2020). Participatory Design as a Tool to Create Resourceful Communities in Sweden. In C. Smaniotto Costa, M. Mačiulienė, M. Menezes, B. Goličnik Marušić (Eds.), Co-Creation of Public Open Places. Practice - Reflection - Learning, Lusófona University Press, Lisbon, 95-107. DOI: 10.24140/2020-sct-vol.4-1.6.

Rizzo, A., 2019. Predatory cities: Unravelling the consequences of resource-predatory projects in the global South. Urban Geography, 40(1), pp.1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2018.1505156

Time Capsule (2023, Venice Architecture Biennale)

Architecture and design play a crucial role in the current energy transition. On one hand, a sound and aware architecture design process can greatly reduce the embodied and operational energy of our living space while, on the other hand, users’ experience and behavior must be considered to ensure their engagement and wellbeing.

We used this approach as a starting point for our submission to the Biennale. Our artifact displays the results of two combined courses in architecture and design, which were included as part of an ongoing research project (Nordic Innovative Living) at LTU funded by the Swedish Energy Agency.

The project's vision was a smart home where people live in symbiosis with the surrounding nature and use attractive solutions for a zero-climate footprint. The goal was to co-design a future model for smart homes built in Swedish Lapland, with smart solutions and services for effective and lasting behavioral changes and, through this, to spread knowledge about how people of different ages, abilities, social strata and gender can live more sustainably.

The project/course used a trans-disciplinary and co-creative design approach to explore people's behaviors with, and barriers to, smart energy technology. The students of architecture and design cooperated in creating solutions for sustainable housing and living in and through the co-creation of a smart home.

Our artifact collects a selection of proposals developed by students involved in this project/course. It takes the form of an archival storage drawer unit, where the work of the students is stored, presented, and shared with the public. A reference for this concept is the exhibition "A is for Archive" at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which exhibits the contents of Warhol’s so-called time capsules. Similarly, the artifact will embody this concept to offer the visitors an interpretation on how the future sustainable living could look like.