Abstract

Starting from a mainly philosophical bias about the so-called ecological crisis, characterized by the dramatic and unprecedented changes in the biogeochemical processes of the Earth, this dissertation investigates the repercussions of this new context in the ontology of Architecture. The new geological era in which we are today, the Anthropocene, calls into question the validity of the Western epistemological division, which for more than five centuries has distinguished culture from nature, as it also requires approaches that integrate the history of the planet with the history of globalization. How to theorize a fundamentally anthropocentric architecture, as well as its history, when such problems appear? Despite the temporal rupture that the new era establishes, the “carbon modernity” still persists when considering not only how we build cities, but also how we produce and consume things. In practice, architecture, while it participates in this chain of extraction of planetary resources and feeds commercial exchanges across the globe, reiterates a political character that goes beyond its disciplinary limit. Architecture legitimizes the current modes of production and consumption, and if the Anthropocene requires ways of life other than those dominated by the “carbon form”, it will be necessary to recognize the problem in order to conjecture an alternative logic.

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Keywords

Architecture; planet; Anthropocene; ecological disorder; nature-culture.