UC Berkeley's graduate architectural journal
Speculative Ecologies Lab
The Speculative Ecologies Lab (SEL) at Room One Thousand is a unique framework and platform for discussion that situates diverse expertise in the formation of new bodies of spatial knowledge. The editors appoint fellows annually that guide an exploration of problematics in the built environment with selected CED and MDes students in a week-long series of panel discussions, site-visits and studios each spring, culminating in an exhibition, digital interface, performance, installation, short film or other creative project that is archived.
In Formation: Futurefarmers:fiorella_et_elena, 2024
Fellows 2024/25
Amy Franceschini/Futurefarmers, San Francisco/USA, Gent/BE
Amy Franceschini is an artist and founder of Futurefarmers, an international working group born in San Francisco in 1995. Futurefarmers are artists, architects, computer programmers, farmers, writers and anthropologists who form situated working groups informed by the contexts in which they work. They find themselves entangled in overlapping lines of inquiry in the commons, hi/low tech horizons and a critical view on the tools we create. Based in enmeshed acts of wandering and material processes, Futurefarmers interweave their practices to cultivate public life in place. Through time and the practiced presence of Futurefarmers, the meeting place of people and materials transform from provisional arrangements into durable forms and functions of their works.
Futurefarmers have been the lead artists of Flatbread Society (2010-2018), a permanent public farm and community baking house in Oslo, they have been artist/researchers in residence at the University of California in Santa Cruz (2018-2020) and the lead artists on the sea-faring Seed Journey (2016- 2018+).
Amy received her M.F.A. from Stanford University (2002) and her Bachelor in Fine Art in Photography from San Francisco State University (1992). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010), a Herb Alpert Award (2017) and a Rome Prize Fellow in Design (2019). She has taught in the MA/Design program at Stanford University, San Francisco Art Institute and is currently visiting faculty in the Master of Eco-Social Design at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy.
Collectively, Futurefarmers have published A Variation on Powers of Ten, Sternberg Press, 2012, For Want of a Nail, MIT Press, 2018. Exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim, 2010 (solo), New York Museum of Modern Art 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, Biennial 2000, Sharjah Biennale 2017 and the Taipei Biennale 2018.
Andrew Merritt/Something & Son, London/UK
Andrew Merritt is one half of the artist duo Something & Son, his work explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. Through permanent installations, functional sculptures and public performance that provide a framework or foundation for communities and ecologies to build upon. Works mimic the everyday to act as familiar starting points and then take the subject into new realms.
Something & Son have exhibited at Tate Britain; Tate Modern; V&A Museum; Manchester International Festival; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Deon Foundation, Netherlands; Vienna Biennale/MAK; Artangel; Milan Design Week; FACT, Liverpool; Cultural Olympia; Somerset House; Folkestone Art Triennial; Design Museum; Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; the Wellcome Collection; and Istanbul Design Biennial.
Andrew’s current and upcoming projects include our largest sculpture to date Future Fossil which will fossilise a suburban house; Intertidal Allotment on the Isle of Sheppey with Cementfields; a project with Somerset House Studios and Kings College London about Human Wildlife Conflict and situated in India and Kenya; Future Amazonia with Museu Emilio Goeldi in Brazil looking at the 64 types of produce that grow in an intact Amazon; a residency at the Delfina Foundation’s Politics of Food programme and a commission with the South London Gallery.
Andy has taught at UAL, London Metropolitan University and Royal College of Art.