The built environment is an embodiment of conquest and extraction, and a primary engine of the climate crisis. Imperialist and extractivist world systems are so deeply embedded within it—ontologically, epistemologically, and materially—that their politics often hide in plain sight. The discipline of architecture is deeply entangled with these systems, both as their agent and as their ultimate expression. Yet architecture is also uniquely positioned to lead a strategic reorientation of these systems through its definitive and synthetic understandings of space, technology, and society, which together yield the capacity to reimagine and reshape these systems.
My practice is rooted in the concept of the Terrestrial—a term introduced by Bruno Latour—and reexamines how we interact with each other, other living beings, and the Earth.[1] I leverage architectural design, media, and education to explore new ways of conceiving and, therefore, inhabiting the world. My work challenges the fossil capitalist project and its historically constructed divisions between society and nature, as well as the foundational racial and environmental subordination that underlies it. I use spatial tools to interrogate and analyze the dependencies of bodies, buildings, and cities on extractivist systems. This critical perspective offers pathways for exploring spatial tactics of mutualism, leading toward architectures that first understand, then dismantle, and ultimately reshape worlds.
Architecture must bridge between a dominant, but deteriorating, fossil capitalist world and an emergent Terrestrial world—one beyond extraction, exploitation, and the imperialist and carceral spatial systems that sustain them. This emergent world necessitates spatial practices rooted in the material and political realities of place, culture, and justice. Architecture must be at the forefront of unmaking the fossil capitalist project it has helped build, aestheticize, and valorize, while imagining and constructing alternative, post-carbon futures and driving a necessary shift from extractivist to regenerative world systems.
[1] Latour, B. (2018). Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press. (pp. 40-41).
My studio—a design-research practice based in Ottawa—engages critically with architecture, urbanism, and landscape, with a portfolio of both constructed and speculative projects that interrogate the spatial conditions of the built environment and their socio-cultural and environmental implications. In addition, I utilize the critical essay as a vital tool for advancing architectural discourse, examining the broader implications of architecture within its material and political contexts. Through this dual approach—design and discourse—I aim to contribute to the necessary reorientation of architectural practice towards regenerative systems. This approach has garnered recognition through awards from the Ontario Association of Architects, the American Institute of Architects, and international design competitions.
I am an architect and associate professor of architecture at Carleton University, where I have served as associate director of graduate programs. I have also held faculty appointments at Columbia University, The New School, and the University of Arizona. I am licensed to practice architecture in Canada and the United States, specifically in Ontario, New York, and Arizona.
My research explores the transscalar and hegemonic intersections of architecture with capital, water, and energy through mapping, modeling, and photographic media. My specific interests include constructed perceptions of nature, post-humanism, climate futures, the interrogation of the “grid”—a foundational socio-spatial instrument for distributing justice and life—and the study of architecture’s entanglements with infrastructural systems of imperialism, extractivism, and power.
My work has been supported by multiple grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and published in professional and scholarly journals, including the Journal of Architectural Education, AD, Pidgin, Art Forum, Architect, Canadian Architect, and Architectural Record. Additionally, my work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Center for Architecture (NYC), the Queens Museum (NYC), the Canadian Urban Institute (Toronto), the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam), and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago de Chile).
I hold degrees from Columbia University and the University of Colorado. After working with Bernard Tschumi, Mabel Wilson, and Leslie Gill in New York City, I established an independent architectural practice.
info@zacharycolbert.com