Igneous Tectonics

Quando il vincitore del premio Nobel Paul Crutzen espresse l’idea secondo cui gli esseri umani sono diventati una forza geologica, si riferiva al crollo del divario tra natura ed essere umano. Ma forse, cosa ancora più importante, stava anche proponendo un nuovo punto di vista sul ruolo degli esseri umani nel plasmare i sistemi naturali. CarbonRock_Patagonia evidenzia le possibilità offerte dalla materialità di queste terre vulcaniche. Essa crea uno spazio per i ricercatori dotati di mezzi minimi per reinterpretare le forze geologiche e i sistemi vernacolari indigeni, inoltre porta l’attenzione sulla roccia basaltica come soluzione possibile, sostenibile ed efficace per il cambiamento climatico, attraverso il suo potenziale per la cattura del carbonio, creando una piccola infrastruttura pilota per l’assorbimento di CO₂.
Carbon to Rock _Venice è un’installazione architettonica immersiva. È uno spazio vulcanico e abitabile che rievoca Carbon to Rock_Patagonia sensibilizzando sul problema del riscaldamento globale. Carbon to Rock è un progetto su piccola scala con impatto su scala globale che immagina nuovi modi in cui l’architettura può integrare spazio, materiale, tettonica e tecnologie all’avanguardia nell’assorbimento di CO₂ usando le rocce vulcaniche come nuove strategie materiali per il design nell’era del cambiamento climatico.

Image 1 – How will we live together?
In the context of this project, living together means understanding our role among other species and ecosystems in the larger carbon cycle of our planet. We propose a new tectonics of CO2, sequestered and embedded into resilient, sustainable, renewable rock constructive systems.

Carbon to Rock is strategic when environmental tactics are essential. Carbon to Rock incarnates a reversal, remedial, reformative mobilization of resources, technologies and human will to right a wrong, to turn our polluting excesses into second-chance resiliency.

We create tectonics of igneous nature, new tectonics of emergence and subduction, of untamed yet synthesized magnitudes. Molten, hardened, extrusive, compressed, sharp, polished, porous, smooth, darkened, reflective, massive, light.

Vestigial evidence of the rise and decay of civilizations, traces of our past and still thriving history can be found extant in rocks. We can re-learn from our past, lost material wisdom and constructive proficiency, now that our modes have driven us to the ledge. We can activate our ingenuity by repurposing and reorienting our methods and our goals, to work with our environment, not despite of it.

Image 2 – Sneak peek of the project
Carbon to Rock proposes a new relationship between humans and the planet; one that expands our perceptual time frame enabling us to tap into tectonic timescales that work with the Earth Cycles. Carbon to Rock moves beyond recycling our consumerist waste, aiming instead to capture decades of atmospheric poisoning that will be repurposed to cultivate the most stable and abundant form of carbon of our planet: igneous rocks.

The remineralization of air-released-carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, may not only reduce current emissions but also contribute to the removal of the current CO2 excess in the atmosphere as a way to mitigate climate change. Turning carbon back into rock, back where it belongs, is the most stable way of storing it for millennia, while transforming volcanic rock into a new resilient material, ready to be harvested by new paradigmatic architectures.

Carbon to Rock is the confluence of ancient material knowledge with current technologies of fabrication. Every rock block used in this project represents CO2 removed and trapped; it represents a flattening of the curve; it presents a new opportunity for architecture to shift away from the anthropocentric perspective, requiring from us more agency, not less; more deliberate design, not less. Carbon to Rock speaks for an architecture where humans, who have become a geological force, are both accountable for the decline caused by technological achievements but now also capable of stopping and reversing climate change.

Carbon to Rock is a position, a stance on discipline and practice to be able to continue living together.

MIT International Science and Technology Initiative _MISTI
Center for the Art Science and Technology at MIT_CAST
Council for the Arts at MIT_CAMIT
Cuellar Stone Company
Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio_ Gobierno de Chile Filantropía Cortés Solari Fundación Meri
Spanish Government – Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda
Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)

Progetto: Cristina Parreño Alonso & Sergio Araya Goldberg
Costruzione: Cristina Parreño Alonso & Sergio Araya Goldberg con Cuellar Stone Company
Concept dell’installazione e progetto: Cristina Parreño Alonso & Sergio Araya Goldberg
Video e campioni sul sequestro di CO2 di basalto: Pěc Lab e Carb Fix

Video CarbonToRock sneak peek
Ideazione: Cristina Parreño Alonso e Sergio Araya Goldberg
Assistente al montaggio: Ruth Blair Moyers

Modelli e disegni sul ciclo del basalto e ciclo del carbonio
Ideazione: Cristina Parreño Alonso e Sergio Araya Goldberg
Collaboratori dalla classe “Igneous Tectonics: CarbonToRock” di Sergio e Cristina (primavera 2020): Tayloe Boes, Daniel Griffin, Melika Konjicanin, Florence Ma, Ana McIntosh, Jitske Swagemakers, Carolyn Tam e Lynced Torres.