Mapping "Otherwises": Alang-Sosiya's Metal Metabolism / Mapear “Outras Maneiras”: O Metabolismo do Metal de Alang-Sosiya

The epistemological shift ushered in by the contentious supra-human frame of the Anthropocene – other –cenes being reflections of this disputed character – urges us to critically question the discipline, methods and project of architecture. Indeed, since these –cenes unavoidably challenge our spatial relations, we need to develop new critical tools for architecture, away from its techno-solutionist and techno-cratic deviations. It is in this perspective that we claim that critical mapping is a project in itself. We explored critical mapping in a design studio with students of the MSc in Sustainable Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino, now in its second year. Embracing ecology as a system of relations rather than a set of values, the design studio revolves around a two-fold question: What is the architecture of a non-extractive, non-racist, non-singular life? More specifically: what architectural suspension, gesture or project allows us to imagine a planetary inhabitation that confronts the naturalized, normalized conditions of uninhabitability? By intersecting research-architecture methods with critical theory, we tackled these questions in weekly exchanges revolving around territorial mapping. Maps that unfold, overlap and dissect were conceived both as tools to comprehend the present and to imagine possible futures in which climate collapse would open up “otherwises” to extractive monolithic logics and their conditions of uninhabitability. Otherwises that look at human and nonhuman actors beyond the stale dichotomy of Man/Nature and across a diverse range of spatial and temporal scales, fostering and imagining imperfect, amphibious and companioning relationships. Otherwises where forms of life are constructed around frictions. Through the media of architecture these frictions were mapped in order to propose an infrastructure of inhabitability—a lifeline that would flip the script as it is now. In turn, this exercise in mapping radically challenged the two-dimensional, solution-oriented, and normative categories of canonical cartography. In spatialising planetary frictions through the study of situated forms (i.e. a dam or a gulf) through GIS data, stratigraphic assessments, environmental reports and ethnographic research, students were confronted with the volumetric and voluminous extent of power; the tangled complexity of human and nonhuman life and matter; and the liminality of space rather than its fixity. These frictions inevitably led to new graphic representations in the form of counter-cartographies, spatial narratives, and stratigraphic tabulations. This we believe is crucial for a praxis of critical mapping. New graphic representations, in fact, produce not a specific solution but possibilities to imagine otherwises to present conditions. Critical mapping does not linger on in inaction; it is itself a self-reflexive movement toward praxis. For this issue of J-A we intend to describe and comment five research projects out of the twenty-nine produced in the studio, which, in turn, will better articulate how critical mapping has the potential to open onto otherwises. These works focus on: the politics of affect in Quebec’s Indigenous territories; the spatial infrastructure of thirst in Palestine; the Colorado river’s geographies of law in-between Mexico and the US; the metal metabolism of shipwrecking in the Gulf of Khambat in India; and oil-exhaustion in the Persian Gulf.

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