Like the production of many materials and products, the energy carrier and fuel industry is organized within global and trans-local networks. Connected through complex infrastructural assemblages, dispersed sites, and areas of resource procurement, energy production, and consumption blend into the circulation of material and immaterial commodities from the urban to the planetary scale. This has massive impacts on urbanization processes and the urban form, creating splintered landscapes, still fostering beaten colonial pathways of socio-spatial inequality. Today, mainly based on a mineral economy of extraction, energy resources are so valuable and essential to the globalized society that attempts to change historical dependencies and production pipelines are contested on many sides. Getting an overview of them will be vital in understanding our current state of affairs and difficulties in the road ahead.

The exercise will request each group to explore and trace material flows of selected energy carriers into Berlin/Brandenburg through given case studies. Through this, you will be able to render operating modes and organization of commodity circuits and their (trans-)local interplay with urban developments and territories. Zoom-ins will enable investigation and representation of the spaces, territories, infrastructures, and architecture. Groups are provided with A3-templates representing (A) carrier description & production network, (B) infrastructure network, (C) three pages for three example sites along the supply chain.

The midterm review will be held on the 17.12.21 with our guests
Prof. Hannah Le Roux (Wits University Johannesburg), Prof. Daniel Irurah (Wits University Johannesburg) & Dr. Kim Förster (School of Architecture, Manchester).

Uranium

Lignite