Our first event of SELF 2021 is being led by Dr Harriet Harriss, Dean of Pratt School of Architecture, New York, starting with strong provocations around definitions and applications of sustainability and intersectionality.

Harriss’ research and practice has been exploring Ecological Sustainability as a Social Justice Project and finding that only intersectionality-informed design pedagogies can produce professionals capable of caring for the planet and each other.

Her new research shows that within the last few years, dominant understandings of the term ‘post-anthropocene’ have been routinely applied and sometimes wrongly assumed to refer to a future without humans – the default assumption is that post-anthropocene architecture is nothing more than spaces devoid of people. Rather than a world in which humans are the pinnacle species, contemplate the emergence of multi-species typologies that advantage and potentially rehabilitate other, vast diminishing life forms. The research project extends and develops the question of what an inclusive architecture of the post-anthropocene could look like. Harriss brings a more diverse set of voices, positions and knowledge(s) to develop the discourse writers/practitioners critically exploring the decolonization of space, environmental racism, food security, post-materialisms and other climate-critical concerns.

Harriss offers a theoretical foundation for the contemplation of the Post Anthropocene, non-binary ecology demands that we deconstruct our hetero-normative perception of nature and environmental politics to rethink how we might reconstruct the world anew. How can queer ecology reshape our spatial experiences? And what impact will this have on how we design the environments we inhabit?

Join us: Tuesday 13th July, 2pm (BST) through registering via Eventbrite.