Action
Exhibition
Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice
in Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis, Archizoom, EPFL
30 May - 28 July, 2023
“Almost all of (the) laws and institutions are quite capable of being turned around.”
Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power” Interview with Paul Rabinow, Skyline, March 1982, trans.
The law is the most prevalent, among the many apparatuses, that guides, constricts, and delineates construction and building use. As we face multiple crises, thriving towards an insurgent practice of architecture—one that stewards forward a decolonial, depatriarchalized, decarbonized future, critical of the damage generated by new construction and technological escalation — is critical. This endeavor is only feasible with an adequate grasp of the legal mechanisms and instruments that shape our world. riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riotriot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot
The selected precedents showcase the power and limitations of legal instruments as space regulators. Identified within each legal precedent are the various tools used to mobilize the law to structure space, making clear policy’s immense potential to rethink and reshape our built and unbuilt environment. Yet too often, these apparatuses are deployed to form protocols of injustice, exclusion, depletion, and economic subordination at the service of companies, states, and neoliberal forces. This non-exhaustive catalog argues architects and designers are to mobilize the law to tackle the destructive side of construction—an urgent task.
Featured Works:
ELAN - Loi Évolution du Logement, de l’aménagement et du numérique: RE2020 environmental regulation for new buildings
Juliette Auer
Law on the Protection of Immovable Cultural Heritage: Identify, protect, and conserve immovable cultural heritage
Louis Baldy-Moulinier
Recognition of Adat Law Community Land: 2012 Constitutional Court Decision Ruling Indigenous People’s Right to Their Traditional Forest Areas
Laure Melati Dekoninck
House Options Codes: Legal Tool to End Single-Family Housing Obligation in Olympia, Washington,
Valérie Maillard
Nature as a Legal Person: Pachamama, Rights of Nature
Esteban Lorenzo
Ley de Costas: Projection of the Costal Areas in Spain, 1988
Yann Kozel
Bottom-Up Approach to Top-Down Crisis: ALUR, loi pour l’acces au logement et un urbanisme rénové, ALUR and alternative modes of ownership in France
Catherine Juneau
Superbonus 110%: Opportunities and Criticalities
Serena Mazzetti
Te Awa Tupua: A New Legal Framework of Legal Personhood for the River
Yasmine Sefraoui
The LAT(1) Revision: Fighting Urban Sprawl
Raphael Staeubli
[1] Installation: "Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice" in Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis. Archizoom, EPFL Switzerland. 30 May- 28 July, 2023
[2] Special thanks to the Spring 2023 "Stop Building! The Case of Lausanne" Design Studio: Abigail Riand, Adam Joseph Ghadi-Delgado, Bénédict Wasserfallen, Catherine Juneau, Charline Hugues, Eddy Friedli, Esteban Lorenzo, Isabel Grohe, Julie-Anna Barès, Juliette Auer, Laure Melati Dekoninck, Louis Baldy-Moulinier, Maria-Beatrice Fenoglio, Naďège Mouine, Nathalie Marj, Nora Guigues, Patrick Grandjean, Paulina Ornella Beron, Raphael Staeubli, Romain Dubettier-Grenier, Serena Mazzetti, Tiago da Silva Teixeira, Valérie Maillard, Vanesa Santillan Messina, Yann Kozel, Yasmine Sefraoui
[3] Team: Kathlyn Kao, Nagy Makhlouf, Summer Islam; TA: Paulina Ornella Beron; with Severin Bärenbold
[4] See also: Malterre-Barthes, C. 2023. ‘Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice’, in Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis : Architectural Research in Re/Action. Edited by Jeffrey Huang, Dieter Dietz, Laura Trazic, and Korinna Zinovia Weber. Lars Müller Publishers.
Action
Exhibition
Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice
in Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis, Archizoom, EPFL
30 May - 28 July, 2023
“Almost all of (the) laws and institutions are quite capable of being turned around.”
Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power” Interview with Paul Rabinow, Skyline, March 1982, trans.
The law is the most prevalent, among the many apparatuses, that guides, constricts, and delineates construction and building use. As we face multiple crises, thriving towards an insurgent practice of architecture—one that stewards forward a decolonial, depatriarchalized, decarbonized future, critical of the damage generated by new construction and technological escalation — is critical. This endeavor is only feasible with an adequate grasp of the legal mechanisms and instruments that shape our world. riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riotriot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot riot
The selected precedents showcase the power and limitations of legal instruments as space regulators. Identified within each legal precedent are the various tools used to mobilize the law to structure space, making clear policy’s immense potential to rethink and reshape our built and unbuilt environment. Yet too often, these apparatuses are deployed to form protocols of injustice, exclusion, depletion, and economic subordination at the service of companies, states, and neoliberal forces. This non-exhaustive catalog argues architects and designers are to mobilize the law to tackle the destructive side of construction—an urgent task.
Featured Works:
ELAN - Loi Évolution du Logement, de l’aménagement et du numérique: RE2020 environmental regulation for new buildings
Juliette Auer
Law on the Protection of Immovable Cultural Heritage: Identify, protect, and conserve immovable cultural heritage
Louis Baldy-Moulinier
Recognition of Adat Law Community Land: 2012 Constitutional Court Decision Ruling Indigenous People’s Right to Their Traditional Forest Areas
Laure Melati Dekoninck
House Options Codes: Legal Tool to End Single-Family Housing Obligation in Olympia, Washington,
Valérie Maillard
Nature as a Legal Person: Pachamama, Rights of Nature
Esteban Lorenzo
Ley de Costas: Projection of the Costal Areas in Spain, 1988
Yann Kozel
Bottom-Up Approach to Top-Down Crisis: ALUR, loi pour l’acces au logement et un urbanisme rénové, ALUR and alternative modes of ownership in France
Catherine Juneau
Superbonus 110%: Opportunities and Criticalities
Serena Mazzetti
Te Awa Tupua: A New Legal Framework of Legal Personhood for the River
Yasmine Sefraoui
The LAT(1) Revision: Fighting Urban Sprawl
Raphael Staeubli
[1] Installation: "Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice" in Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis. Archizoom, EPFL Switzerland. 30 May- 28 July, 2023
[2] Special thanks to the Spring 2023 "Stop Building! The Case of Lausanne" Design Studio: Abigail Riand, Adam Joseph Ghadi-Delgado, Bénédict Wasserfallen, Catherine Juneau, Charline Hugues, Eddy Friedli, Esteban Lorenzo, Isabel Grohe, Julie-Anna Barès, Juliette Auer, Laure Melati Dekoninck, Louis Baldy-Moulinier, Maria-Beatrice Fenoglio, Naďège Mouine, Nathalie Marj, Nora Guigues, Patrick Grandjean, Paulina Ornella Beron, Raphael Staeubli, Romain Dubettier-Grenier, Serena Mazzetti, Tiago da Silva Teixeira, Valérie Maillard, Vanesa Santillan Messina, Yann Kozel, Yasmine Sefraoui
[3] Team: Kathlyn Kao, Nagy Makhlouf, Summer Islam; TA: Paulina Ornella Beron; with Severin Bärenbold
[4] See also: Malterre-Barthes, C. 2023. ‘Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice’, in Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis : Architectural Research in Re/Action. Edited by Jeffrey Huang, Dieter Dietz, Laura Trazic, and Korinna Zinovia Weber. Lars Müller Publishers.