School Notes: School of Architecture
September/October 2015

Seeing the world as one city

A new exhibition at the School of Architecture (YSoA) considers the impact of population growth and resource consumption by examining the entire world as a single urban entity. 

In 2011, the world population reached seven billion people. It is expected to increase by another two billion by 2050. The demands of this population growth have created a completely interconnected and urbanized world, note exhibit organizers Joyce Hsiang ’99, ’03MArch, principal of Plan B Architecture and Urbanism and critic at YSoA, and Bimal Mendis ’98, ’02MArch, YSoA’s assistant dean and director of undergraduate studies. “The show brings together abstract information from across scientific, engineering, and architectural communities, and makes it accessible,” said Hsiang. “It makes the invisible visible, so it can be understood.”

The exhibition features original models and drawings, including a 14-foot spherical
model of the material infrastructures that physically shape and connect the world; a 52-foot-long city topography model that analyzes the implications of population growth over time; a 255-foot-long panorama that explores the edges of urbanization across air, land, and water; and 14 sectional core samples of the world that examine the depths of human activity. In addition to these models, a series of drawings, animations, and curated historical content will illuminate the spatial implications of these global processes. On view through November 14, City of 7 Billion: A Constructed World is free and open to the public at the YSoA Gallery.

Symposium addresses global effects of population growth

In conjunction with the City of 7 Billion exhibition, an interdisciplinary symposium at the school October 1–3 will attract experts from architecture, anthropology, economics, geography, and philosophy to address the increasingly decisive role that humankind plays in shaping the world. Speakers will include Peter Sloterdijk, professor of philosophy and media theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design; Kathryn Sullivan, administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the first American woman to walk in space; and William Nordhaus ’63, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.