Science has developed as an antagonist of authority, and as a central part of the reason of the state. This double condition enables scientific enterprises to be located in spaces considered extraterritorial and sui generis. Vast compounds to host complex and costly equipments, special access protocols, and conspicuous bureaucratic exchanges connote contemporary scientific laboratories and experimental grounds. Fundamental sciences operate at the threshold of technological sensitivity, either because ideas are not yet met by technological capacity to experimentally control them, or because instruments’ sensitivity does not yet match the required needs of measurements. They shape an architecture dedicated to sensing the world, and engaged in measuring it.
Quantum Sensing Infrastructures. Deep Underground Architectures for spectral matter
Blanca Pujals
Architect, spatial researcher and doctor in Philosophy, Visual and Material Cultures. Her practice addresses the political and material dimensions of contemporary techno-scientific infrastructures and the geopolitics of materials. Architect from ETSABarcelona (UPC); MA in Critical Theory and Museum Studies from the Independent Studies Programme of MACBA Museum; MA from the Centre for Research Architecture (Visual Cultures Department) at Goldsmiths, University of London; PhD, awarded with no corrections, with the project 'Sensing Infrastructures: A spatial examination of soft power, the neutrino particle and underground fundamental physics laboratories'. Her work, publications and lectures have been presented internationally.