Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

“Scientific facts never existed!” Bruno Latour’s controversial claim was not meant to discredit science. His point was twofold. First, scientific certitude or facts are the product of the scientific community’s consensus-building processes. Facts are the products of highly institutionalized processes within scientific communities. Second, the public does not simply accept or believe in facts. The public reception of scientific knowledge requires a complex and far-reaching mechanism of persuasion and opinion-building. That is why, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence on the human-induced climatic crises, many remain skeptical, if not outright climate-change deniers. Can architecture participate in the process of consensus-building or serve as a medium for public awareness? The Museum of the Anthropocene is a design proposal that offers immersive experiences of the key episodes of the human role in ecological processes. The aim of the Museum is to raise public awareness of the entangled histories of humans and geologists. This research paper draws on the work of Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, and Mohamed Amer Meziane to examine the relationship between the politics of secularization, extractive capitalism, and ecological crises. Building upon this theoretical nexus, the paper examines both the representational and “phenomenological” capacities of immersive technologies to highlight the ways in which human activities and life choices, including architectural practices, have altered the conditions of habitability on planet Earth. By influencing public opinion, architecture contributes to building a new type of class struggle oriented towards ecology.