A History of Bad Decisions

Veranstaltung

Sooner or later, the world as we know it has to come to an end. Consumption and the exploitation of resources are inflicting irrecoverable damage, and an extensive amount of multilateral decisions prevents action from being taken. To explore the spectrum ways forward, the consequences of essential threats to the current condition of the earth must be identified.

This seminar is part of a project speculating possible futures in different time-scopes, to interrogate the mid- and long-term consequences of decisions and actions taken today. Subject of discussion is the apocalypse, in all its prospects.

The apocalypse is bilateral, depending on its formulation as naked, describing downfall scenarios, or in its potential as disclosure, an incisive moment with the ability to radically transform. Therefore, the physical catastrophes are to be analyzed to anticipate inevitable societal consequences, change standards and avoid aforesaid disasters. This civic apocalypse is the revelation of a new normal. It is the collective of a multitude of changes necessary to ensure persistence.

Students are to investigate certain strings of history, and extrapolate them into the future, speculating a diverse range of outcomes that depend on decision-making processes.

Site of speculation will be the city of Hanover, whose civic and environmental dataset provides the scope for the pursuit and development of trends. These are to be extrapolated towards creating inhabitable conditions, to serve as a foundation for the mediation of scenarios architecturally reacting to changing, precarious conditions. The speculations themselves will reach from realistic to dystopian and eutopian, as far as the exaggeration can take them in the given timeframe.

The target is to make the causes of catastrophes comprehensible, breaking them down to single-person perspectives and options. This shall shed light on the responsibility of everyone as well as the powerlessness in collective failures beyond singular control.

The apocalypse is not putting an end to the world, but examined in its full potential, it has the very chance of preventing us from it.