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 UC Berkeley 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.
March 31, 2025 - April 4, 2025 CED & The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley
Events Open to the Public
3/31/2025 Amy Franceschini & Andrew Merritt in Conversation 10-11AM CED Lobby
4/4/2025 Exhibition & Reception 6-8PM CED Lobby & Courtyard
Image Courtesy Andrew Merritt/Something & Son
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; South London Gallery; Design Museum; Royal Botanical Gardens Kew; the Wellcome Collection; and Istanbul Design Biennial.
Something & Son’s long term projects include FARM:shop 2010-2019 the worlds first farm in an inner city building and Makerversity (2013-) provides the workshops and space for over 300 innovators at Somerset House, London. Future Fossil is an upcoming project which will fossilize a suburban house; whilst Andrew is also developing two long term projects Intertidal Allotment on the Isle of Sheppey with Cementfields; and working with various partners on the project Field Hospital set in the UK, Mexico and South Africa.
Andrew was resident on the Delfina Foundation’s Politics of Food programme and has taught and talked various international cultural institutions and universities.