The City?s Future Natural History: Sun, Shit, Compost, and Air Event

Sandra Bartoli | Endowed Professorship for Visionary Forms of Cities

When does a human-constructed place go beyond the human, and how necessary is this transgression? To look at the built environment from the perspective of natural history allows one to explore the city as a system and construct of the natural and human together; furthermore it introduces the notion of the city (of tomorrow) as a producer of resources, and not as the machine of consumption we are used to assuming. In the logic consequence of the Anthropocene (the epoch of ecological collapse and mass extinction we currently live in), once the alleged antagonism between city and nature is dissolved, the urgency arises for models of constructed environments that conceive of human and more than-human creatures as equal and mutually dependent.

Lecture_2 | Sun, Shit, Compost, and Air
Monday, 13.11.2017, 19:00h
IKA Room AU01.1.15A / 1st floor, core N

This lecture takes as a starting point the work of the German landscape architect Leberecht Migge (1881?1935). Migge was one of the first to consider the house garden as a core element in the planning of the city as a large system of recycling. Reflecting upon Migge?s ideas, the lecture will continue by touching on different examples and thought-models that span the centuries and continue to the contemporary moment.6
In the context of Germany, the present discussion about ?sustainable? city planning is strictly focused on topics of energy provision and the reduction of its consumption, of mobility (city bikes, public transport), and of process optimization (the smart city, big data). But what is missing is a general understanding of the life cycles of the city, which also include animals, plants, and bacteria. An understanding of this would reframe the city as a construct that produces energy and resources, instead of a mere machine of consumption. Here, the ?classic? dualisms of city and countryside, human culture and nature, human history and natural history, are exchanged with the notion of the city as a living place for all species together.

This series is composed of five lectures in 2017|18:
Lecture_1: 30.10. | Tiergarten, Landscape of Transgression
Lecture_2: 13.11. | Sun, Shit, Compost, and Air
Lecture_3: 27.11. | Worlds of Animals and Humans
Lecture_4: 11.12. | The City’s Ecology: Dirt and the Garbage Tree
Lecture_5: 15.01. | The City’s Natural History

Sandra Bartoli holds the Endowed Professorship for Visionary Forms of Cities at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, funded by the City of Vienna.
The endowed professorship for Visionary Forms of Cities (?City Culture and Open Space?) financed by the City of Vienna, was installed in 2015 within the study programs of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. It has the objective to artistically, radically and poetically bring forward the debate on city and architecture. The teaching and research beholden with the endowed professorship focuses on the formulation of radical and visionary concepts regarding urban space. A further goal is to intensify the exchange of ideas and knowledge transfer between the city of Vienna and the Institute for Art and Architecture.