Critical Care | Architecture and Urbanism for a broken Planet

Anlässlich der Ausstellung „Critical Care. Architektur für einen Planeten in der Krise“ erscheint bei MIT Press das Buch „Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet“, herausgegeben von Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny und Architekturzentrum Wien in englischer Sprache.
Das Buch enthält alle 21 Case Studies sowie 12 Essays von internationalen Autor*innen zu den Themen Arbeit, Ökonomie und Ökologie in der Architektur.

ISBN 978-0-262-53683-7
300 Seiten

Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.

Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again.