Conference organised by Jose Alfredo Ramirez, Lindsay Bremner and Ed Wall, AA School of Architecture, London.

More 8,000 meters above sea level exists what climbers call the ‘death zone’. This altitude marks the limit for human habitation, above which our species cannot survive. We thrive in the ‘life zone’ – the earth’s land surfaces and oceans, its geological layers beneath, the dynamic atmosphere above – all affected by gravitational and magnetic forces beyond. This living world is constantly being transformed by our social, economic and political interactions revealing our intricate dependencies on the the earth and its systems. Terms such as ‘Anthropocene’ and ‘Capitalocene’ have drawn attention to the role of political economy in transforming these earth systems and positioned design as a major geological force shaping the planet. The ‘Design Agency within Earth Systems’ symposium invites participants to look through these planetary lenses to reflect upon the complicity of design in the destruction of the planet; to question the two dimensional, land based political technologies, by which we order our lives and our relations to the earth; to explore the material dimensions of air, ground and ocean as inter-twinings of socio-political and earth systems; and to imagine relations between socio-political and earth systems differently through design.

Jose Alfredo Ramirez is Co-Director of the AA Landscape Urbanism MArch/MSc Graduate Programme. Lindsay Bremner is Professor of Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster and Director of Architectural Research (2012-2017). Ed Wall is Academic Leader Landscape at the University of Greenwich. Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick, UK. Neil Brenner is Professor of Urban Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). His writing and teaching focus on the theoretical, conceptual, methodological and cartographic dimensions of urban questions.