Planet Earth today exists in the contested overlap between geological epochs, transitioning the Holocene to the Anthropocene, an epoch that is continually dated and disputed, from the Holocene’s agricultural reshaping to the so-called Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene. Wherever the boundary lies, human and humanity have caused geological tension, shifting the planetary processes and its future trajectories. Earth is a vast network shaped over 4,5 billion years, with the biosphere forming around 3.5 billion years ago—spanning roughly twenty kilometers vertically, and constitutes the ecosystems that sustain all species. The biosphere is the realm of possibility for multi-species entanglements, formed through long evolutionary processes into complex, dynamic, and multilayered patchworks of ecosystems.
In recent centuries, a dominant worldview has positioned humans as separate from the rest of the universe, instrumentalising all other entities into mere resources of extraction. The Earth and its beings have been approximated, mapped, represented, and mechanised into fixed spatio-temporal units—constructing a human-nature relation of separation and control. This worldview appears absolute but profoundly brittle: the dramatic rupture of this human spatio-temporal layer unfolds alongside with the planetary-scale climate crisis and its consequences.
Situated within this rift of magnitudes, the architecture role becomes ambiguous and calls for critical re-examination. We must ask: what if the entire system of these instrumentalised objects constitutes an inherently contradictory spatial practice? This practice is trapped in a self-referential cycle—designing systems that design other systems—grounded on a tabula rasa that conceives the Earth as a blank canvas, echoing the colonial ideology of terra nullius.
For decades, Architecture Sans Frontières-Indonesia (ASF-ID) has positioned itself through voluntarism, aiming to alternate the mainstream spatial practices through architectural interventions —deliberating its process via participatory approaches that treat context as an active, generative agent. Within its framework, context is a prerequisite, and will is the driving force. Yet paradoxically, ‘Architecture’ itself sets the limitation: as part of a larger system, it remains confined by institutional norms and market imperatives, isolating alternative possibilities within the narrow realms of ‘pro-bono practices’, ‘community services’, or ‘humanitarian architecture’.
A critical alternation that is wider and more relevant in the context of planetary crisis is necessary—one capable of operating across all scales. This urgency is manifested in interconnected crises: massive deforestation from Papua to Honduras; the disappearance of coastline along the North Coast of Java and across the Pacific Islands; socio-ecological crises under the pretext of energy transition in Morowali and the Congo; the police violence in Indonesia’s Kanjuruhan Stadium Tragedy and Chile through lethal clouds; peatland fires from Pematang Gadung in Indonesia to the Amazon; and the weaponisation of built environment in occupied Palestine. These are not isolated incidents, but symptoms of ruptured planetary conditions.
This discussion begins with a question: How can we traverse architectural spatial practice, from the creation of instrumentalised objects toward a process of world-making? How might spatial practice become a mode and medium that is dynamically open-ended, and intertwined with the realities of Earth’s entanglements?
This event aims to gather critical reflections on ASF-ID’s approaches and similar others, which can be used as national strategic guidelines in the future. It begins with rethinking the participatory approaches as a process of collective imagining that is grounded on structural issues on realities: how these approaches can contribute to the discourse of critical spatial practice in Indonesia, especially on issues of climate crisis and spatial justice?
This discussion invites the public to explore a range of imaginative, critical and creative spatial practices drawn from the relevant study cases—highlighting localised spatial practices that are not only tactical, strategic, and responsive, but also have broader impacts and can be expanded into wider-scale potentialities.
Event Schedule
Moderator
Khusnul Hanifati
8th November, 10.00 – 13.00 (GMT+7)
Hendro Sangkoyo
Gabriella Demczuk
Faten Kikano
15th November, 12.00 – 14.00 (GMT+7)
Wiryono Raharjo
Sri Suryani
For more information, check event term of reference at this link; English, Indonesia
Event Closed
