Terra Infecta is a long-term research project on the architecture and ecology of infectious disease. It considers both historical and current case studies, investigating epidemics as a product of colonial and extractive geographies.
Staying at Home
“Social distancing and confinement looks simple enough in epidemiological models. But their uniform imposition onto an entire country is problematic to say the least. The Italian government imagined a frictionless territory, one where the complexity of things on the ground would not interfere with the simplicity of a model.”
read
“Social distancing and confinement looks simple enough in epidemiological models. But their uniform imposition onto an entire country is problematic to say the least. The Italian government imagined a frictionless territory, one where the complexity of things on the ground would not interfere with the simplicity of a model.”
read
essay
e-flux architecture
April 2020
more on COVID-19:
>a conversation with Ivan L. Munuera for Pin-Up Magazine (read)
>a conversation with Pelin Tan for Radio Al Alhara (listen)
e-flux architecture
April 2020
more on COVID-19:
>a conversation with Ivan L. Munuera for Pin-Up Magazine (read)
>a conversation with Pelin Tan for Radio Al Alhara (listen)
essay
published in AA Files no. 77
Summer 2020 (forthcoming)
published in AA Files no. 77
Summer 2020 (forthcoming)
We Must Disembowel Naples!
“The 1884 cholera epidemic was not just the driver of Naples’s largest urban expansion. The idea that a city needs to be ‘healed’ by carving it up proved extraordinarily successful and long lasting, and went on to become the main urban planning paradigm in Italy.”
read
“The 1884 cholera epidemic was not just the driver of Naples’s largest urban expansion. The idea that a city needs to be ‘healed’ by carving it up proved extraordinarily successful and long lasting, and went on to become the main urban planning paradigm in Italy.”
read
The Normalization of Bodies
“Beginning with the English enclosures in the seventeenth century, the bond between private landownership and state power took root all over Europe. But wetlands, where the boundary between land and water is fluid and ever changing, did not allow for clear representation on a map or on land registers.”
read
“Beginning with the English enclosures in the seventeenth century, the bond between private landownership and state power took root all over Europe. But wetlands, where the boundary between land and water is fluid and ever changing, did not allow for clear representation on a map or on land registers.”
read
essay
published in the book Archivi della Basilicata 1: La Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto
Humboldt Books
2019
published in the book Archivi della Basilicata 1: La Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto
Humboldt Books
2019
Arrivederci ad Arborea
“In spite of its isolation, Arborea is in many ways a built manifestation of what ‘nature’ came to mean in the 20th century. In the span of fifty years, a new set of relations between humans, plants and animals was not only experimented here but made into everyday reality.”
read
“In spite of its isolation, Arborea is in many ways a built manifestation of what ‘nature’ came to mean in the 20th century. In the span of fifty years, a new set of relations between humans, plants and animals was not only experimented here but made into everyday reality.”
read
Microscopic Colonialism
“The environmental history of HIV illustrates how power structures play a key role in shaping “natural” entities and processes. The early stages of HIV bear a degree of similarity to the current situation, as most epidemics that have appeared in the last two decades originate at the shifting frontier between urban and rural.”
read
“The environmental history of HIV illustrates how power structures play a key role in shaping “natural” entities and processes. The early stages of HIV bear a degree of similarity to the current situation, as most epidemics that have appeared in the last two decades originate at the shifting frontier between urban and rural.”
read
essay
published in e-flux architecture
2017
published in e-flux architecture
2017
essay
published in the online journal of the Canadian Centre for Architecture
2017
published in the online journal of the Canadian Centre for Architecture
2017
Mapping Malaria in Italy
“In its century-long quest to eliminate malaria, Italy remodeled its landscape as a technical and economic project, giving rise to a new anthropogenic nature. Public health served to establish a new territorial order of free circulation that operated beyond the scale of the city.”
read
“In its century-long quest to eliminate malaria, Italy remodeled its landscape as a technical and economic project, giving rise to a new anthropogenic nature. Public health served to establish a new territorial order of free circulation that operated beyond the scale of the city.”
read
Kivalina: The Coming Storm
Climate change is transforming the Arctic landscape in ways that are still invisible at temperate latitudes. Threatened by increasingly violent storms, the Inupiaq village of Kivalina, Alaska, is trying to relocate but without success. Governmental agencies seem unable to tackle the issue in its complexity. The project weaves together the voices of residents, engineers, and politicians, to narrate the stakes and histories involved.
Climate change is transforming the Arctic landscape in ways that are still invisible at temperate latitudes. Threatened by increasingly violent storms, the Inupiaq village of Kivalina, Alaska, is trying to relocate but without success. Governmental agencies seem unable to tackle the issue in its complexity. The project weaves together the voices of residents, engineers, and politicians, to narrate the stakes and histories involved.
video, 36 min.
with Daniel Fernandéz Pascual, Helene Kazan, Hannah Meszaros Martin, Alon Schwabe
2014
exhibitions:
Forensis, Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, 2014
Meteorological Mobilities, Apexart, 2020
watch
with Daniel Fernandéz Pascual, Helene Kazan, Hannah Meszaros Martin, Alon Schwabe
2014
exhibitions:
Forensis, Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, 2014
Meteorological Mobilities, Apexart, 2020
watch
selected talks
Lecture at Princeton University SoA, PhD seminar, run by Beatriz Colomina and Ivan L. Munuera, Oct. 2019
Conversation with Jumana Manna, part of the series “The Mediterranean as a Mindset”, organised by Delfina Foundation, Sept. 2019
Lecture with Ivan L. Munuera, Architectural Association, July 2019
watch
“Circulations” conference organized with Dele Adeyemo and Francesco Sebregondi. With Christina Sharpe, Ross Exo Adams, Claudia Aradau, Shehab Ismail, Azadeh Mashayekhi, Nida Rehman, Anita Rupprecht. Goldsmiths, May 2018.
Lecture at Manifesta 12, part of the seminar “The Heritage of Fascist Architecture”, organized by Decolonizing Architecture/KKH Stockholm, June 2018
Conversation with Giovanna Borasi and Nabil Ahmed, Het Nieuwe Instituut, March 2017
listen
Conversation with Jumana Manna, part of the series “The Mediterranean as a Mindset”, organised by Delfina Foundation, Sept. 2019
Lecture with Ivan L. Munuera, Architectural Association, July 2019
watch
“Circulations” conference organized with Dele Adeyemo and Francesco Sebregondi. With Christina Sharpe, Ross Exo Adams, Claudia Aradau, Shehab Ismail, Azadeh Mashayekhi, Nida Rehman, Anita Rupprecht. Goldsmiths, May 2018.
Lecture at Manifesta 12, part of the seminar “The Heritage of Fascist Architecture”, organized by Decolonizing Architecture/KKH Stockholm, June 2018
Conversation with Giovanna Borasi and Nabil Ahmed, Het Nieuwe Instituut, March 2017
listen
funding