The Six Sphere

Closely interwoven with Earth's five natural spheres—atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere—exists a sixth: the technosphere. Identified by geologist Peter K. Haff as an emerging paradigm of the Anthropocene, the technosphere encompasses the infrastructures of industrial production and extraction. Architecture is part of this technosphere, reinforcing its systems and multiplying its forms. It encompasses factories and farmland, ports and telecommunications networks, mines and landfills, highways and suburbs—more than simply accumulated building materials. It is a global web of physical infrastructures, geopolitical relationships, and digital networks that enables the constant flow of matter, energy, and information. The exhibition The Sixth Sphere, featuring projects by eighteen international architectural firms and artists – including Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN, Olalekan Jeyifous, and Dogma – explores design approaches that consider global ecological, societal, and technological interdependencies, harnessing the cumulative potential of the technosphere to create more sustainable futures and address climate change.

While many aspects of daily life, such as clean water, waste management, and power grids, rely on the technosphere, its exponential growth is increasingly destabilizing the Earth system. Its logic of exploitation and expansion is generating uncontrollable planetary impacts that exceed our capacity to regulate and threaten not only our species but the flourishing of all life.

Despite its accelerating dynamics, cracks are appearing in the technosphere: a system that cannot sustain itself without destroying the foundations of its existence reveals its fragility. If the technosphere is no longer understood as a hegemonic world order, but as one of several intertwined and coexisting worlds, new spaces for spatial and ecological action open up.

The exhibition "The Sixth Sphere," curated by Brittany Utting, and the accompanying publication explore how design can function as part of global interdependence and responsibility. Using two-dimensional graphics such as digital renderings, drawings, photographs, maps, and collages, as well as the projection of an animation of eighteen international contributions, the exhibition positions the technosphere as a collective site for reconstructing possible social, technological, and ecological futures. The works are divided into three sections—Molecular, Machinic, and Metabolic—that represent different scales. These structures "are nested within each other and point to the trans-scalar capacities of creative action. Thus, the mechanical conversion of matter into energy alters a metabolic process through molecular transformations; each design is simultaneously geophysical, sociotechnical, and territorial," explains curator Brittany Utting.

Opening: 23.5.2025, 6:30 pm
Speakers: 
Hans-Jürgen Commerell, Aedes, Berlin
Brittany Utting, Curator, Assistant Professor, Rice School of Architecture, Houston
Igor Marjanović, William Ward Watkin Dean, Rice School of Architecture, Houston