GEO–MATTERS asks how designers might respond to the earth’s matter, forces and signals. The lecture series attends to matter and material ecologies, including the unruly disturbances intensified by the climate crisis. Here, design works with earth systems, tracking material flows—greenhouse gases, heat, sediment, water, biomass, waste—across the extended territories, from quarries and farms to Arctic coastlines. Media also matters for geo-design because the globe is already an image, produced through systems that sense, record, and visualize the Earth— satellite tiles, climate-model outputs, air-quality dashboards, LiDAR point clouds, GIS layers, and more. GEO-MATTERS attends thus to geographic situatedness, material ecologies, and imaging systems through which Earth is assembled and geo–design is practiced.

This series was organized by Rania Ghosn, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Director of the SMArchS Urbanism Program.

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