Spring 2025 UnWorlding Energy Lecture Series
As part of the launch of the LCAU's new research theme, Energy Intersections, the LCAU partnered with the SMarchS Urbanism Program to curate a spring lecture series called UNWORLDING ENERGY.
UNWORLDING ENERGY seeks to ask how might the sense of urgency regarding the climate crisis contribute to a radical reform, not only of petro energy systems but also of the long histories of socio-environmental violence that have sustained them? Put another way, we are interested in the unmaking of inherited energy-worlds toward more just ways of world making. The issue of “energy transition” begs then the question of which theories of change are called upon in rethinking energy and repairing worlds. This urgency parallels broader calls to dismantle entrenched structures and systems, embracing collapse, entropy, and acts of undoing rather than repair, which is often complicit with the very systems it seeks to fix. These conditions ,and the voices and practices that are presenting in this lecture series, provide an initial context for a critical and speculative examination of the relations between climate, crisis, energy, transition, growth, and sufficiency. Such material accounts of energy systems invite a systemic consideration that is always situated in specific places, grounded in real peoples’ lives and labors. This process of unmaking is not an end but an opening, revealing new possibilities coiled in the ruins of what has been, pushing us toward a reimagining of worlds built on justice and sufficiency.
Speakers for the lecture series were:
Cara Daggett | Associate Professor, Political Science, Virginia Tech
Marina Ortero Verzier | Architect, Researcher, Lecturer @ Harvard GSD, Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor @ GSAPP
RVTR | Kathy Velikov & Geoffrey Thün | Faculty @ University of Michigan Taubman College
Nicholas Pevzner | Urban Designer, Landscape Architect, Educator, University of Pennsylvania's Stuart Weitzman School of Design
Abby Spinak | PhD, Lecturer @ Harvard GSD
Kabage Karanja | Architect & Co-Founding Director, Cave_bureau | Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor of Architectural Design @ Yale School of Architecture
Thank you to all of our speakers! Most importantly, a special thank you to Rania Ghosen, Taariq Alasa, and Gaby Carucci--all of which this series would not be possible without.