A Moratorium on New Construction
World of Books
The feel-good place to buy books
A Moratorium on New Construction by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
A massive value shift for existing buildings, infrastructure, materials, unbuilt land, earth, and the labor that holds our world together.To build is to destroy, writes Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. From steel bolts to concrete blocks to wood flooring to polyester insulation panels, every single component of the built environment is the product of extractive processes. Driven by greedy economies, the global enterprise of space production expands, impacting climate, earth, water, humans, and non-humans everywhere. However housing is both a human right and the mandate of design disciplines- How to navigate the need for housing versus the destructive practice of construction?
To pause new construction-even if momentarily, creates a radical thinking framework for alternatives to the current regime of space production and its suspect growth imperative. Engaging with unsettling questions, A Moratorium on New Construction envisions a massive value shift for our existing stock. From housing redistribution to reinviting value generation, from anti-extractive measures to profound structural changes, from curricula reforms to purging the exploitative culture of the office, an entire rewiring of design processes and construction lays ahead. Somewhere between a thought experiment and a call for action, A Moratorium on New Construction is a leap of faith to envision a less extractive future, made of what we have- Not demolishing, not building new, but building less, building with what exists, inhabiting it differently, and caring for it.
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is a French architect and urban designer who graduated from ENSA-Marseille and TU Vienna. She is currently Director of Studies of the MAS in Urban Design at the ETH Zurich, where she now lives. Zosia Dzierżawska is a Polish illustrator and comic author. Architecture and living/urban space have always been important in her work as in her short story Waiting Rooms. This is her first book to be published in the U.S. She lives in Zurich.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781915609007 |
| ISBN 10 | 1915609003 |
| Title | A Moratorium on New Construction |
| Author | Charlotte Malterre-Barthes |
| Series | Sternberg Press Critical Spatial Practice |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Sternberg Press |
| Year published | 2025-03-01 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |