How Heavy is a City?
It is a simple question, that hides a complex set of transformations of both the city and its backdrop, revealing a new figure in the making with a magnitude of planetary dimensions. To sort out these transformations, a re-assembly of architecture and what it means to build a collective environment is required.
The simple question opens up a space where new notions of architecture start to emerge. It is a space where projects, new ideas of collaboration with material structures and dynamic environments, with different life-forms, with information, energy and material fluxes are newly formed. It is a space where architecture guides the material characterizations of the millenary shifts marking life on our planet.
Territorial Agency
Established by architects Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino, Territorial Agency combines contemporary architecture, science, art, advocacy and action to promote comprehensive territorial transformations in the Anthropocene. Their work focuses on the integration of science, architecture and art in the challenges posed by climate change. The work of Territorial Agency is grounded in extensive spatial and territorial analysis through remote sensing technologies. Its focus is on complex representations of the transformations of the physical structures of contemporary inhabited territories.
Territorial Agency is a leader in the development of architecture’s relation to the Anthropocene, with projects including How heavy is a city?, Oceans in Transformation, Sensible Zone, Plan the Planet, Museum of Oil and Anthropocene Observatory. Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino and are Unit Masters at the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.
Territorial Agency is the recipient of the STARTS PRIZE 2021 – Grand prize of the European Commission honouring innovation in technology, industry and society stimulated by the arts for Oceans in Transformation.They are the chief curators of the Lisbon Triennale 2025, and members of the high-profile interdisciplinary Anthropocene Working Group.