Climate Inheritance
Climate Inheritance is a speculative design research publication that reckons with the complexity of world and heritage in the Anthropocene. The impacts of climate change on heritage sites - from Venice flooding to extinction in the Galápagos Islands - have garnered empathetic attention in a media landscape that has otherwise failed to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis.
In a strategic subversion of the media aura of heritage, DESIGN EARTH casts ten World Heritage sites as narrative figures to visualize pervasive climate risks-rising sea levels, extinction, droughts, air pollution, melting glaciers, material vulnerability, unchecked tourism, and the massive displacement of communities and cultural artifacts-all while situating the present emergency within the wreckages of other ends of world, replete with the salvages of extractivism, racism, and settler colonialism. The possibilities of such climate inheritances are narrated in drawing triotvchs and mythologies that bequeath other worlds and values.
With Contributions of Lucia Allais, David Gissen, Rodney Harrison and Colin Sterling.
Rania Ghosn is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
El Hadi Jazairy is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan and Director of the Master of Urban Design degree program.
DESIGN EARTH is a research practice, founded by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy in 2010. Their work engages the medium of the speculative architectural project to make public the climate crisis. DESIGN EARTH are recipients of the United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Boghossian Foundation Prize, and ACSA Faculty Design Awards for outstanding work in architecture and related environmental design fields as a critical endeavor.
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