The Sixth Sphere

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dc.contributor.editorUtting, Brittanyen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-09-18T18:41:23Zen_US
dc.date.available2024-09-18T18:41:23Zen_US
dc.date.issued2024-10-28en_US
dc.descriptionAuthor Note: Brittany Utting is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rice University in Houston, TX, and co-founder of the research and design collaborative HOME-OFFICE. Her work examines the relationship between architecture and planetary practices of environmental care. She is the editor of the book Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (Routledge, 2023), co-editor of Log 60: The Sixth Sphere (Winter/Summer 2024), and co-editor of the forthcoming Journal for Architectural Education 79:1: Architecture Beyond Extraction (Spring 2025). Utting has been a MacDowell Fellow in Architecture, the Willard A. Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation and the Buell Center. She holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Utting is a registered architect in New York, and prior to co-founding HOME-OFFICE she practiced at Thomas Phifer and Partners as project designer for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.en_US
dc.description.abstractEntangled within the Earth's five natural spheres-the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere-is a sixth: the technosphere. Identified by geologist Peter K. Haff as an emerging paradigm of the Anthropocene, the technosphere includes the sites, institutions, and infrastructures of industrial production and extraction. Architecture is part of the technosphere, hardening its systems and proliferating its forms. Encompassing factories and farmlands, ports and telecommunication networks, mines and landfills, highways and suburbs, the technosphere is more than just the accumulated material of the built environment. It is a planetary enmeshment of physical infrastructures, geopolitical relations, and digital networks, enabling the continuous movement of matter, energy, and information. While many aspects of everyday life depend on the technosphere—such as clean water, waste systems, and electrical grids—the technosphere's exponential growth is actively destabilizing the Earth system. Its logic of extraction and expansion produces runaway planetary effects that exceed our capacity to control or alleviate, threatening not only our species but also the possibility of all forms of life to flourish. Despite its accelerating momentum, significant rifts exist within the technosphere. A system that cannot sustain its own processes without destroying the worlds upon which it depends demonstrates an underlying fragility. When we reconceptualize the technosphere as one of several entangled and coexisting worlds-rather than a global hegemonic order-new forms of spatial and environmental agency arise. The Sixth Sphere exhibition and accompanying catalog, curated by Brittany Utting, explores how design can participate in systems of planetary interdependence and reciprocity. Gathering the contributions of eighteen practices from around the world, The Sixth Sphere positions the technosphere as a collective site to reconstruct our social, technical, and climate futures.en_US
dc.identifier.citationUtting, Brittany (Ed.). (2024). The Sixth Sphere. Rice University School of Architecture. https://doi.org/10.25611/NR4D-FK91en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.25611/NR4D-FK91en_US
dc.identifier.isbn978-0-938754-02-2en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/117875en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherRice University School of Architectureen_US
dc.relation.IsPartOfSeriesExhibitions at Riceen_US
dc.rightsExcept where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the terms of the license or beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en_US
dc.titleThe Sixth Sphereen_US
dc.typeBooken_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
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