In To the Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century, Richard Weller, Professor Emeritus and Co-Founder of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania, has condensed a sprawling subject into a compact field guide to 120 of the most significant 21st century objects, from bulldozers to Biosphere II. Call it dystopian, call it optimistic. Just don’t call it “anthroporn.”
--
Intro/Outro: “Until the End of the World,” by U2
--
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, by Timothy Morton
Utopias (and Utopia’s Evil Twins)
Walmart
Supercenter
Machines:
Bulldozers + polymetric nodules
Fish farms
Solar arrays
Sand motor + littoral drift
Tree-planting drones
Monsters:
Geo-engineering
The World Park Project / UN Convention on Biological Diversity
Banff Wildlife Crossings Project
The Atlas for the End of the World
Listen On
Also In Season 4
-
The Architecture of Urbanity
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder and creative director of the Practice for Arc -
Glass Houses
Madeline Ashby is a freelance futurist and author of Glass Houses, a near-future -
Salty Urbanism
Salty Urbanism is a design manual to address sea level rise and climate change f -
Getting Unstuck from the Rut: Introducing IDC
Today’s uncanny AI renderings are just the tip of the iceberg. Architects are ba