Entangled within the Earth’s five natural spheres—the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere—is a sixth: the technosphere. Identified by geologist Peter K. Haff as an emerging paradigm of the Anthropocene, the technosphere includes the infrastructures of industrial production and extraction. Architecture is part of the technosphere, hardening its systems and multiplying its forms. Encompassing factories and farmlands, ports and telecommunication networks, mines and landfills, highways and suburbs, the technosphere is more than just the accumulated material of the built environment. It is a global enmeshment of physical infrastructures, geopolitical relations, and digital networks, enabling the continuous movement of matter, energy, and information. Featuring architectural projects from eighteen international practices, including Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN, Olalekan Jeyifous, and Dogma, The Sixth Sphere exhibition explores planetary forms of design thinking, leveraging the cumulative power of the technosphere to imagine more viable climate futures.
Territories of Devolution, 2023 © aldayjover architecture and landscape
While many aspects of everyday life depend on the technosphere—such as clean water, waste systems, and electrical grids—the technosphere’s exponential growth is actively destabilizing the earth system. Its logic of extraction and expansion produces runaway planetary effects that exceed our capacity to control or alleviate, threatening not only our species but also the possibility of all forms of life to flourish.
Despite its accelerating momentum, significant rifts exist within the technosphere. A system that cannot sustain its own processes without destroying the worlds upon which it depends demonstrates an underlying fragility. When we reconceptualize the technosphere as one of several entangled and coexisting worlds—rather than a global hegemonic order—new forms of spatial and environmental agency arise.
Rambla Climate-House, Molina de Segura (Murcia), 2021 © Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN + Miguel Mesa del Castillo | Grand and Flushing: Farm + Freshwater Corridor, 2021 © Olalekan Jeyifous
Exhibition
The Sixth Sphere exhibition, curated by Brittany Utting, and accompanying publication explore how design can participate in systems of planetary interdependence and reciprocity. Gathering digital renderings, drawings, photographs, maps, collages and an animation from eighteen international practices, The Sixth Sphere positions the technosphere as a collective site to reconstruct our social, technical, and climate futures. The works are structured in three sections and scales—Molecular, Machinic, and Metabolic. These frameworks “are nested within each other, pointing to the transscalar capacities of creative action. For example, the machinic conversion of matter into energy alters a metabolic process through molecular transformations; each act of design is at once geophysical, sociotechnical, and territorial,” explains curator Brittany Utting.
Summer Bedroom, 2022 © TAKK
Selected participants and projects in the exhibition:
(AB)NORMAL: Paraphernalia Script I, 2024; Paraphernalia Script II, 2024
aldayjover architecture and landscape: Territories of Extraction, 2023; Territories of Devolution, 2023
Alexandra Arènes, studio SOC + atelier shaa: Map of the Strengbach Critical Zone Obsevatory in the Vosges Forest, France, 2023
Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN + Miguel Mesa del Castillo: Rambla Climate-House, Molina de Segura (Murcia), 2021
Debbie Chen: Intermediary Softness, 2024
Common Accounts: Planet Fitness at Intermediae, Matadero Madrid, 2024; Protein Clickbait for the 14%: Protocols for Processing, 2023
Curtis Roth: Single Smalls, 2023
DESIGN EARTH: The Planet After Geoengineering, 2021
Dogma: Stop City, 2007
GRANDEZA STUDIO: Pilbara Interregnum: Seven Political Allegories, 2023
HOME-OFFICE: OPEN-GROUND, 2024
Olalekan Jeyifous: Grand and Flushing: Farm + Freshwater Corridor, 2021; TFN Deli AD Window, 2021
Studio Muoto: Like a Barricade, 2024
NEMESTUDIO: Eaarthly Ever After, 2021
Present Future: Small Forms: Sha Tin Hong Kong New Town, 2015
TAKK: Summer Bedroom, 2022
Territorial Agency: Museum of Oil – Excerpt from The American Rooms, Gulf of Mexico, 2019
Z4A Architects: POLYPROPYLAIR, 2024
Protein Clickbait for the 14%: Protocols for Processing, 2023 © Common Accounts | Like a Barricade, 2024 © Studio Muoto
Brittany Utting
Brittany Utting is an Assistant Professor at Rice School of Architecture in Houston, TX, and co-founder of the research and design collaborative HOME-OFFICE. Her work examines the relationship between architecture and planetary practices of environmental care. She is the editor of the book Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (Routledge, 2023), co-editor of Log 60: The Sixth Sphere (Winter/Summer 2024), and curator of the exhibition The Sixth Sphere. She has been a MacDowell Fellow, the Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan, and her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation and the Buell Center. Utting is a registered architect and holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University.
Rice School of Architecture: Exhibitions at Rice
As the curatorial programme of the Rice School of Architecture, Exhibitions at Rice uses the lens of design research to look at the world differently. Mobilizing a full spectrum of architectural representation– including drawing, imaging, making, and prototyping–this programme weaves together scholarly inquiry, visual experimentation, and public engagement. Across all scales, from objects to buildings, cities, and the planet, Exhibitions at Rice engages the discipline of architecture as a cultural practice with a civic mandate, creating new discourses for both local and global audience.
Rice School of Architecture: https://arch.rice.edu/
The exhibition The Sixth Sphere was on show at the newly opened exhibition space William T. Cannady Hall, Rice School of Architecture, Rice University, Houston, TX, from 28 October 2024 to 1 February 2025 and has its second show at Aedes in Berlin.
Project Sponsors
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Rice University Office of Research
