After Concrete: Redefining Materials and Energy in the Anthropocene Introduction + Panel 1
Channel: Columbia GSAPP
Date: 2021-05-21

https://www.arch.columbia.edu/events/2204-after-concrete-redefining-materials-and-energy-in-the-anthropocene

After Concrete: Redefining Materials and Energy in the Anthropocene

For over a hundred years, reinforced concrete has served as a paradigm of wonderous materiality: natural yet human-made, liquid yet permanent, technically specialized yet easy to use. But this myth is beginning to crack physically and conceptually.

As part of a multi-year research project, co-directed by Lucia Allais (Columbia GSAPP) and Forrest Meggers (Princeton), this event asks participants to rethink concrete historically and technically. Scholars, engineers and designers are invited to move the conversation from material dynamics to system dynamics, and from materials to energy and environment, by offering insights into sometimes obscure system processes–such as the carbonation of concrete. The goal is to situate not only concrete but all architectural materials into variously-scaled processes that are inherent in climate change, resource extraction, infrastructural development, energy policy, state planning, and ecological science and advocacy.

Introduction by organizers Associate Professor Lucia Allais, Columbia GSAPP and Forrest Meggers, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Princeton University.

Scholars of the building and natural sciences and industries presented ongoing research on how environmental, economic, and techno-scientific agents affect the relationship between materials and energy. We interrogated the architectural scale, in order to rethink the vitalist idea of “building life”, the formal concept of buildings as objects, the relation of progressivism with large-scale building, among other themes.

Nimrod BenZeev, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Polonsky Academy, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Gabriel Lee, Cassius Marcellus Clay Fellow, Department of History, Yale University
Ateya Khorakiwala, Assistant Professor, Columbia GSAPP
Sophia Roosth, Cullman Fellow, New York Public Library