Closely interwoven with the earth's five natural spheres - atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere - there is a sixth: the technosphere. Identified by geologist Peter K. Haff as the 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 includes factories and farmland, ports and telecommunication networks, mines and landfills, highways and suburbs - more than just accumulated building material. It is a global web of physical infrastructures, geopolitical relationships and digital networks that enable the constant flow of matter, energy and information. The exhibition The Sixth Sphere, featuring projects by eighteen international architecture firms and artists - including Andrés Jaque / Offpolinn, Olalekan Jeyifous and Dogma - explores design approaches that take into account global ecological, social and technological interdependencies and uses the cumulative potential of the technosphere to create more sustainable future scenarios and address climate change.

While many aspects of daily life such as clean water, waste systems, power grids rely on the technosphere, its exponential growth is increasingly destabilizing the Earth system. Its logic of exploitation and expansion is creating uncontrollable planetary impacts that exceed our ability to regulate and threaten not only our species but the flourishing of all life. Despite its accelerated dynamics, cracks are appearing in the technosphere: a system that cannot sustain itself without destroying the foundations of its existence is revealing its fragility. If the technosphere is no longer understood as a hegemonic world order, but as one of several interwoven and coexisting worlds, new spaces for spatial and ecological action open up.

Curated by Brittany Utting, the exhibition "The Sixth Sphere" and the accompanying publication explore how design can act as part of global interdependencies and responsibilities. With 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 the reconstruction of possible social, technical and ecological futures. The works are divided into three sections - Molecular, Machinic and Metabolic - which depict different scales. These structures "are nested within one another and refer to the trans-scalar capabilities of creative action. For example, the machinic conversion of matter into energy alters a metabolic process through molecular transformations; each design is simultaneously geophysical, socio-technical and territorial," explains curator Brittany Utting.

www.aedes-arc.de