The Architectural Review is joined in this episode of the AR Ecologies by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, as we follow the research of CCA's ‘How to: do no harm’ residency, curated by Lev Bratishenko and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes.
AR host Ellen Peirson looks at the harm that architects do to land, cities, materials and workers. Stories from Sahar Shah, Guujaaw, Sename Koffi Agbodjinou and Jess Myers weave together an honest argument about how harmful it is to exist in this ecological age. Once we acknowledge that we can’t create without extracting, we can start transforming our ways of working to make them regenerative. From the oil pipelines snaking through Canada, the search for an architectural identity in the globalising cities in Togo, the labour organising happening in classrooms and workplaces and the unceded lands of the Haida Nation in British Columbia, these truths hurt. Architects want to find new ways to practise architecture on this scarred planet. To do no harm. But is this possible?
AR Ecologies, a podcast by the Architectural Review, explores the tension between architecture and ecology through critical positions which launch each chapter. Instead of standalone interviews, each episode weaves curious and critical voices together to meet, discuss and give space to perspectives outside an architectural orbit. This episode is an audio counterpart to our October 2022 issue on Energy, while the first season revolved around trees, an audio counterpart to our October 2021 issue on Trees. The publication that was produced during the ‘How to do no harm residency’ in September can be found here, and the transcript for this podcast can be found here.