New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial

Description

New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial explores the historical and contemporary consequence of our planetary relationship with space. It interprets this duality through the conceptual lens of "extraterrestrial," which engages an entangled zone of expanding practices in geography, landscape, and architecture, stretching Earth to space, and conversely, space to Earth. This issue questions the means through which space is forged as a condition extra to our own terra. Complicit within this imagination resides a deep political and economic logic that serves to territorialize outer space as an exception to, and extension of, Earth. These critical processes are revealed as not extra at all, but rather distinctly of terra. Through a series of written, photographic, and representational investigations, this edition of New Geographies builds on earlier studies of outer space from science, technology and society, as well as from the design disciplines, history, and critical geography. It reinforces the need for humanity's changing relationship with outer space to be recorded, critiqued, and theorized from a breadth of academic traditions and projected within design discourse. This issue brings together experts contributing to the social, political, and cultural imaginary implicit in extraterrestrial. Three primary thematic territorial devices structure these explorations: a technologically constructed space between, a material culture constructed and discharged, and a space politically and economically reflective, all revealed through historical and contemporary society. New Geographies is a journal of design, agency, and territory founded, edited, and produced by Doctor of Design candidates at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. New Geographies presents the geographic as a design paradigm that links physical, representational, and political attributes of space and articulates a synthetic scalar practice. Through critical essays and projects, the journal seeks to position design's agency amid concerns about infrastructure, technology, ecology, and globalization. With Contributions of Rachel Armstrong, Katarzyna Balug, Nicholas de Monchaux, Daniel Daou, Rajji Sanjay Desai, Edward Eigen, Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Mariano Gomez-Luque, Gretchen Heefner, Elizabeth A. Kessler, Scott Kirsch, Julie Michelle Klinger, Neil Leach, Michael Light, Lisa Messeri, Roland Miller, Alessandra Ponte, an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, David Salomon, Felicity D. Scott, Fred Scharmen, Neyran Turan, edited by Jeffrey S. Nesbit and Guy Trangos.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, and doctoral candidate at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His research focuses on processes of urbanization and the urban landscape. Currently, his dissertation explores the 20th century spaceport complex through the lens of architecture, technology, and aerospace history. Nesbit has written a number of journal articles and book chapters on infrastructural urbanization and is editor of Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations (Routledge, 2018) and editor of New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019). Guy Trangos is a doctor of design candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is a founding partner in Meshworks Architecture and Urbanism and editor of New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019). His doctoral research investigates the infrastructural, spatial, and political implications of large science projects on landscapes and society. Guy has written widely for various publications and journals and edited the book Movement Johannesburg (The City, 2015) with Zahira Asmal. Guy holds a MSc in city design and social science from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a master of architecture (professional) from the University of the Witwatersrand.