Legally Urgent
Space Regulators Towards Climate Justice

“Almost all of (the) laws and institutions are quite capable of being turned around.”

Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power” Interview with Paul Rabinow, Skyline, March 1982, trans.

The law is the most prevalent, among the many apparatuses, that guides, constricts, and delineates construction and building use. As we face multiple crises, thriving towards an insurgent practice of architecture As we face multiple crises, thriving towards an insurgent practice of architecture an insurgent practice of architecture — one that stewards forward a decolonial, depatriarchalized, decarbonized future, critical of the damage generated by new construction and technological escalation – is critical. This endeavor is only feasible with an adequate grasp of the legal mechanisms and instruments that shape our world.

The selected precedents showcase the power and limitations of legal instruments as space regulators. Identified within each legal precedent are the various tools used to mobilize the law to structure space, making clear policy’s immense potential to rethink and reshape our built and unbuilt environment. Yet too often, these apparatuses are deployed to form protocols of injustice, exclusion, depletion, and economic subordination at the service of companies, states, and neoliberal forces. This non-exhaustive catalog argues architects are to mobilize the law to tackle the destructive side of construction — an urgent task.

Legally Urgent: The Law as a Spatial Tool for Designing Climate Justice. (2023) [Positions: Transcalar Prospects in Climate Crisis] Archizoom, Lausanne, Switzerland. 30 May - 28 July, 2023.

Featured Legal Instruments:

|1| Te Awa Tupua Act, 2017, New Zealand
|2| Loi ELAN, 2018, France
|3| Loi 451.14, 2021, Switzerland
|4| Ley De Costas, 1988, Spain
|5| Nomor 35/PUU-X, 2012, Indonesia
|6| Superbonus 110%, 2019, Italy
|7| Rights of Nature, 2008, Ecadour
|8| ALUR, 2014, France

Credits: Abigail Riand, Adam Joseph Ghadi-Delgado, Benedict Wasserfallen, Catherine Juneau*, Charline Hugues, Eddy Friedli, Esteban Lorenzo*, Isabel Grohe Julie-Anna Barès Juliette Auer*, Laure Melati Dekoninck, Louis Baldy-Moulinier*, Maria-Beatrice Fenoglio, Nadège Mouine, Nathalie Marj, Nora Guigues, Patrick Grandjean, Paulina Ornella, Beron Raphael Staeubli*, Romain Dubettier-Grenier, Serena Mazzetti*, Tiago da Silva Teixeira, Valérie Maillard*, Vanesa Santillan, Messina Yann Kozel*, Yasmine Sefraoui*.
*Printed and/or animated student work featured in installation

Team: Kathlyn Kao, Paulina Ornella Beron (TA) with Severin Bärenbold of Motor Productions