The Builtsphere: A Broken Geological Paradigm

Abstract

This essay discusses the role that architecture plays as a new geological paradigm. Similar to the way geologist Peter K. Haff conceived the technosphere as “the proliferation of technology across the globe,” this essay defines the builtsphere as the proliferation of everything built across the planet and proposes both—the technosphere and the builtsphere—as subsystems of the anthroposphere. This essay illustrates this way of thinking architecture with a pedagogical experiment developed as a design studio that takes issue with the various ways in which the builtsphere has caused the breakdown of the Earth cycles.