The Terraforming is a three-year design research initiative and think-tank of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design directed by Benjamin H. Bratton. Each program cycle runs for five months with a group of 30 Russian and international researchers. The Terraforming explores the geotechnical, geourban, and geopolitical conditions by which a viable planetarity can be conceived, modeled, and articulated.

The first year of the program emphasized the remaking of the planet itself (and remaking ourselves thereby), while the second year will emphasize remaking ourselves (and remaking the planet thereby). In 2021 we will be adding a new chapter of motivating themes: Populations, Zoning Earth, Anthropoforming, and Modes of Planetarity.

Populations will consider the question “Where will the people go?” During the pandemic, many resorted back to their country of passport, but this “great filtering” only highlighted how artificial that logic is, and how much alternatives are both needed and possible. Zoning Earth will examine the myriad of ways that the planet is formally subsectioned, both spatially and temporally. Once more we are interested in alternatives to the present arrangements, and also how the urban planning logic of functional zoning might be applied at planetary scale. Anthropoforming is the process by which humans remake themselves and by which they are continuously remade by their environments. We are interested in the ways that planetarity is composed at biological, epidemiological, and prosthetic scales. Modes of Planetarity expands our work on “the planetary” by explicitly staging a confrontation between two modes of “planetarity”—the philosophical and the astronomic—so as to consider how each could, and should, correspond with and reinforce the other.

In 2021 the think-tank will host contributions from many new visiting faculty, including Nandita Sharma, Thomas Moynihan, Anya Bernstein, Nicholas DeMonchaux, Chen Qiufan, Reza Negarestani, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, and many others.

The Terraforming 2021 invites applications from young professionals with various backgrounds and work experience in the fields of architecture, urbanism, design, filmmaking, journalism, digital media, philosophy, political science, social studies, and other fields.

The program is tuition-free and researchers receive a monthly stipend.