Elisa Iturbe & Alican Taylan
"Confronting Carbon Forms"
Lecture: Wednesday, January 31, 2024 | 6:00PM | ARCH 132 DF Pray Lecture Theatre
Confronting Carbon Form interrogates how the adoption of fossil fuels transformed the way humans think about space. The show has two goals. The most immediate is to define the spatial order that emerged with the adoption of a carbon-based energy paradigm: carbon form. The work identifies specific urban archetypes, spatial concepts, and historical narratives that are characteristic of the carbon age. This leads to the broader goal of the work: to offer a different lens for theorizing the relationship between energy and form that is not just about building efficiency. The work in the exhibition also experiments with representation. The objects are almost all original works by Stanley Cho, Elisa Iturbe, and Alican Taylan. They consist of models, paintings, drawings, projections, and an interactive library. Through this variety of mixed media, the work presents the groundwork for a new theory of form, where architecture and the city are read alongside the political, economic, and ecological configurations that shape contemporary life.
Elisa Iturbe is Assistant Professor at The Cooper Union. Her research and writing are currently focused on configurations of urban and architectural form that are specific to the carbon age. She guest-edited Log 47, titled “Overcoming Carbon Form,” and co-wrote a book with Peter Eisenman titled Lateness. She is co-founder of Outside Development, a design and research practice.
Alican Taylan is an architect, engineer, and researcher, currently doing doctoral research in architecture history at Cornell University, where he works on XIXth century environmental history.
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