Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urban designer, and Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) where she leads the laboratory RIOT (Research and Intervention on Territory).
Before that she was Assistant Professor of Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she launched the initiative A Moratorium on New Construction, which is the main conversation topic of this interview. It is also the title of her forthcoming book.
This provocative and investigative proposal to stop building calls for a deep reform of planning disciplines and explores how it can spur new forms of architecture and spatial practice. The interview also touches upon the harm involved in architectural practice, and the transformation of curricula in architecture schools.
Links to references in the conversation
A Moratorium on New Construction
Donna Harraway - Staying With the Trouble (Duke press, 2016)
Keller Easterling - Subtraction (Sternberg Press, 2014)
Kathryn Yusoff - A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (University of Minnesota Press, 2019)