Seventh Lisbon Architecture Triennale

Evolution of the biosphere is not a smooth and continuous process: it involved major re-organizations of the Earth System, each bringing higher energy utilization, and a higher degree of organization. Where next?

Timothy Lenton is Director of the Global Systems Institute and Chair of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter. He inherited from James Lovelock the strong intuition that Gaia is at the same time real and at odds with current scientific and philosophical worldviews. His research focuses on understanding the behaviour of the Earth as a whole system, especially through the development and use of Earth System models. He is particularly interested in how life has reshaped the planet in the past, and what lessons we can draw from this as we proceed to reshape the planet now—as described in his books Revolutions That Made the Earth (2011) with Andrew Watson and Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction (2016). Lenton's work on identifying climate tipping points won the Times Higher Education Award for Research Project of the Year 2008. He was also awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2004; the European Geosciences Union Outstanding Young Scientist Award 2006; the Geological Society of London William Smith Fund 2008; and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award 2013.