Bartlett Supercrit

On June 6th I joined the Bartlett B-Pro Supercrit’s ‘Post-Human Environments’ session, which Livestreamed on YouTube, provided the opportunity for students to present their final projects for feedback from a line-up that included fellow visiting critics University of Westminster’s Prof. Lindsay Bremner, Vienna University of Technology’s Prof. Vera Bühlmann, UCLA Assoc. Prof. Mariana Ibanez, computer artist William Latham, and internal critics, Chair of The Bartlett and Deputy Director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre de Création Industrielle at the Centre Pompidou, Prof. Frédéric Migayrou, and Deputy Director of B-Pro Andrew Porter.

The presentations, of which the overall standard of production was exceptional, interrogated architectural and urban futures through a range of lenses, each of which was systemic in nature and enabled by data aggregated from multiple sources tracking human and/or non-human agents. Questions examined across the various presentations including how do urban animal species interact with their environment, and how can urban design help those species flourish not flounder? How do people experience urban habitats, and what interventions can be made to make their experience better? How can non-human systems, such as photosynthesis be harnessed to help mitigate urban pollution issues? What interventions and inventions can be created to help in the process of exploring environmental change and its impact on the future of urbanism? Can we better understand the future for cities in one climate region of the world, such as London, by exploring how cities in other climate regions, such as Venice, operate today? How might games that enable citizenry to become architect and urban designer help us re-imagine cities and the role of their citizens in their development? 

Our session, together with the several other Supercrit sessions across the school can be viewed on The Bartlett's YouTube channel, together with footage of the school's summer show, among other content. See select elements of select projects presented during the Post-Human Environments session above and below.