FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI/KOOZJohn and Ann-Sofi, thank you so much for joining me. The theme of this year's edition of the forthcoming Lisbon Triennale — ‘How Heavy is the city?’ — was first discussed at the 2023 Venice Biennale, when you convened architects, curators and anthropologists to explore the intricacies of the topic. The world has changed quite dramatically since then. How has the project evolved since that last encounter and first presentation?

TERRITORIAL AGENCYIt’s in everyone’s face: the world is in a state of both violence and denial of violence, and this is probably the most evident aspect of connection to the city that we have experienced, since those days when we launched the Triennale. We have really witnessed the intensification of the fighting in the cities of Ukraine, the extreme violence that followed in the October 7 attacks, the complete annihilation of Gaza and the ongoing violence in Sudan, in Thailand… we could go on and on and on. The world probably has never seen so much violence since WW2, and at the same time, so much denial of violence. For us this is a key aspect that we are trying to examine.

To ask ‘how heavy is a city’ is also to ask what are the conditions of refuge, solidarity and hospitality that the city entails. There's a troubling thought that we have tried to develop during the last years: the city has become the major driver of the violent transformation of our planet, with the unprecedented The city, in our mind and in this project, is considered to be coextensive with the technosphere, the new emerging component of the Earth System made of all material, energy and information fluxes that sustain humanity, yet it is the very structure at the same time that inhibits action, that inhibits the structures of collective operation. For us, this is probably one of the elements that we've been exploring the most in our conversations. We continued having meetings with scientists, architects, artists, thinkers and practitioners coming from different fields of knowledge, and the discussions were steered, more and more, towards this complex condition of simultaneously creating a planetary shift and comfort. More precisely, that [design of] architecture creates anesthesia. We become comfortable and complacent towards the very violent structures that we are creating.

The question driving the Triennale is for us aimed at initiating a debate on how to understand the planetary and self-organizing system of the technosphere as a political transformation of space, as a transformation of the city. Thinking of the contemporary city as co-extensive with the technosphere allows one to think agency in a different way.

At Venice — where this is so visible — we spoke in 2023 about the sea level rising, the level of water and its projections. It’s not just political happenings, but in the time since those discussions, we haven't understood that much more about rising sea levels either. That's quite shocking; we need to have the space to think forward. This is an important aspect: the possibility of thinking forward, of projecting, of thinking architecture as the transformation of the conditions of cohabitation, not only among humans, but also with non-human living beings and technological entities like computation.

KOOZYou talk about the city as a driver, as well as this idea of violence and denial of violence. If one is looking at Ukraine or Gaza, of course, the whole territory is being harmed in terms of the soil and nature itself. But the city, as much as it is a driver, is also the site that is most often attacked. In 2019 the UN Secretary General António Guterres stated that the battle against climate change will be won or lost in our cities. Could one think of rephrasing that sentence and expanding it beyond climate change, to include human infrastructures? What does it mean to revisit that strong statement in 2025 as cities become fulcrums of devastation and violence?

TATo ask how heavy a city really is, for us, is a way to intercept the new magnitude of human space. In thinking that the contemporary city is the technosphere, in the sense proposed by the geoscientist Peter Haff, we can address the new magnitude of action. The technosphere is made up of everything that keeps humans alive: everything that we eat, domesticated animals and plants, the entire systems organised in the afflux of food to humans and the institutions that regulate those fluxes, the material fluxes of energy and information…

The difficulty is that the image of the contemporary city is still largely enmeshed with that of the 19th century European city. The image of the city emerging from a communal dimension of proximity — one with the other — is on the contrary not useful to understand how human spaces have mutated. European cities in particular are still entrenched in that idea of a human space, different from another surrounding space. The possibility of viewing the technosphere as the contemporary city is our way to think through the new intensification. The energy systems, the grains, the fisheries, the pollutants, the military, the state, the supply systems, information fluxes all are the city. Today, the city is, at the same time, everywhere and nowhere.

It's a figure that is difficult to grasp and discern; it demands a cognitive shift. And this is where we think that recalling the very strong statement of Guterres is very poignant. Traditionally, the city is the privileged site of human action, it's the site of solidarity, the site of political innovation. In 2025, we very well know that the two main forms of the metropolis, namely the state and the city, have now almost disappeared. We are at the end of the city. The city as the political space of innovation, is now subsumed. The city belongs to the state, and states are indicating their lag in keeping the technosphere in control.

Now, by repositioning the city as belonging to the technosphere rather than to the state, we are trying to create a possibility of articulation of politics in the sense of the transformation of the city. Sovereignty is undergoing a torque, it no longer signifies what is within our control, rather it reveals an inversion of agency. To think that the city operates at a different level of spatial conditions than the state, enables us to think that the technologies, the techniques of association, the possibility of creating the apparatuses of politics, of action, of commonality need to be done within the technosphere. And we think that, in order to be part of the technosphere, it is necessary to become acquainted with and sensitive to a completely dynamic Earth — a living Earth. This means rethinking the very infrastructures of politics and the spaces where politics are carried out; the very ground where the political structures are organised.

KOOZReframing this notion of city, you've defined three specific themes for the exhibition: Fluxes, Spectres and Lighter. Could you expand on those? You also propose that the definition of city should extend beyond the metropolis. If the city becomes so heavily intertwined with the technosphere and with this idea of planetarity, is there a new word that we need to develop? For example, when one talks about Earth or Gaia, there are two very distinct ideas invoked about a singular entity or ecosystem.

TALet's start with the second part of your question, before addressing the three exhibitions. We like this little four-letter word: city. City is really a beautiful little word. There is simultaneously an archaic dimension to it, and it recalls the possibility of change. Of course, the city has also been abandoned as a word. When one talks about cities today, in reality we talk about municipalities or structures of local governance, while the city has a much stronger dimension in politics — to be a citizen is the key and foundational aspect of politics.

To think about the city in relationship to the technosphere has to do with the possibility of abandoning an idea of a world made of different scales or levels, operating as if they are layers of an onion: you have a local dimension, then there's something larger, maybe regional, then there's a state, and then there's international space, and maybe the global. We think that dimension is maybe the worst inheritance from the international organisations — of course, Guterres is the Secretary General of an international organisation, the United Nations. This is a truly modern approach, relying on a clear differentiation between a micro-level and a macro-level. In that approach, one is trapped in either considering bottom-up or top down solutions.

Today, to ask ‘what is a city’ is also to ask which territories different entities we rely upon — this is where we think that there's a different condition. Territories weigh in on each other, they overlap and cut through different structures. The territories that we live in — to follow Pierre Charbonnier — and the territories that we live from, are very different conditions. The question of somehow expanding the notion of the city to the technosphere is also a possibility of being completely proximate; that is to say, in proximity to the different conditions of territories and territorialities that various entities rely upon to survive. In order to do this, to redefine the territorialities of the contemporary technosphere, we think that one needs to act in three lines, and these are the three lines of the curatorial project of the Triennale. We need to understand and characterise more clearly the fluxes that shape our territories, we can address how imaginal technologies shape and constrain action, and we can make a choice towards a lighter technosphere: one with high-energy stemming from renewable resources and high-recycling of its materials.

To offer another image besides that of the onion. There is this beautiful visual that Bruno Latour would share, and it's the planetary one. We always think about the full globe or sphere, but actually what keeps us alive is the thin, thin layer on top of the crust of the sphere. We are on earth. And when one realises that this thin, thin layer is where we inhabit the atmosphere, a little bit part of geology; we just go some kilometers down into the crust. And from there, this little space, we put all our pollution and carbon in the atmosphere, which creates this kind of impossibility for us to live. But I think that the sectional image, or thin layer, the Critical Zone is a much better representation of technosphere and the fluxes… It's the first spatial turn; this is really what Latour called the critical zone.

Fluxes provide a way for us to intercept both logistical capitalism, that is the way of thinking that is confronting our lives today. It used to be that you could measure what goes in and comes out of a factory; today, the processes of improving and making more efficient what goes in and out of a factory is related with what is in the factory and what is at home. Today this has expanded completely; technology has cut across the entire notions of what we used to call intra muros, the very basic condition of architecture. Today, fluxes traverse the spaces we live in and connect to the spaces we live from with a constant drive of amelioration. Technology is always there to make things smoother. At the same time, fluxes are interrupting all other living forms, all other living spaces. So the ultra-rapid rise of the technosphere in the second part of the 20th century, which marked the beginning of the Anthropocene, is a transformative dimension that cuts across existing territories. Both professors of Paleontology, Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz — in their contribution to the book of the Triennale (and the online series that accompanies it — describe completely new developments of both their science and of Anthropocene territories.

This is the second line of research — the second part of the exhibition, called ‘Spectres’. This is where we look at the entire spectrum of the radio-magnetic vision that we inhabit, from the near-infrared all the way to X-rays and gamma rays, and the possibility of intercepting high-energy frequencies. We address the possibilities of thinking through their wider impacts, in order to understand the disruption of ecological structures, and how they guide and constrain human action. This is a second spatial turn of understanding the city as the new magnitude of the technosphere. We need to inhabit the very technologies that enable this disruption, and there is no outside. There we encounter, of course, not only the multi-spectral images of orbiting sensors on satellites, the wide array of environmental monitoring, but also the specters of modernity, the specters of Empire. To ask how heavy is a city implies in this sense revisiting the ‘arrow of time’ of modernity, and being confronted with the fact that rapid growth indicated once the acquisition of the goods of progress: together they seem to flip into being the bads, the “dark side” of development.

The third section is called ‘Lighter’, demonstrating how people and different organisations are already living in a very light way. Not only light as opposed to heavy, but rather light in terms of more light, more photosynthesis, more interaction with photons. This is the third line of work, which indicates that if we are to confront the city as the technosphere, it requires us to understand that we have engendered a system — the technosphere itself — that is the only component of the Earth system that does not recycle. The key is in the cycles: Gaia recycles all materials multiple times across its complex loops and trophic chains: nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, phosphorus and so on. We love this comparison with a forest: a forest does not drown in its own leaves. The technosphere, propelled by fossil fuels, is expelling so much debris — in the form of concrete, new minerals, and carbon emissions — that we are drowning in our material output.

In order for any system to continue operating — as anybody who followed their secondary school physics lesson will know — we need to add energy, not take it away. In order to add energy, we need to have resources that are renewable — not the fossil fuels that will continue creating the emissions in which we are drowning. So we need more light. We need more solar energy, and we have an abundance of that. Tim Lenton — the brilliant inheritor of Jim Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia research project at Exeter — has contributed to this idea of thinking through ‘recycling the technosphere’, through Gaia devices. So those are the three ways in which the recalibration of the city might need to come into consideration.

KOOZWhat kind of propositions are offered? I was thinking about how this resonates with Lisbon, for example, as a super port and hub for global commerce. At the same time, your thesis is vast, engaging the work of anthropologists and philosophers, with much wider implications. How are the three research agendas — Flux, Spectre and Lighter — grounded in tangible experiences, through the projects and propositions presented?

TABesides the three larger exhibitions, there are a number of Independent Projects, plus a series of events in the city. One of the projects is a parade or procession that goes from the harbour all the way across the city, acknowledging the colonial past of Portugal by bringing Macau back to Lisbon, making visible the postcolonial structures of both cities.

Each of the three main exhibitions is in a different location, inhabiting a completely different imaginary of the city. ‘Spectres’ is at the newly renovated Museum of Design — MUDE, which is in Baixa, the historical center that was reconstructed following the Great Earthquake of 1755 — the museum was formerly the headquarters of the central bank for the colonies of Portugal. As one thinks about the specters of modernity, we are in a museum that houses the very specters of a complex history that predates the revolution in Portugal fifty years ago. There are frescoes and graffiti that relate directly to that. The ‘Lighter’ exhibition at the Architecture Centre MAC/CCB addresses the future rise of sea levels, within the design system developed by the fantastic designer Fernando Brizio. The exhibition ‘Fluxes’ is hosted within MAAT — the largest Anthropocene machine in Lisbon, the former power station Central Tejo — a machine that burned coal in order to produce electricity. We have a project by Kelly Doran and his office Ha/f Climate Design, that directly indicates how much the buildings of these venues, the buildings around the visitors weigh. There's a very diverse way of experiencing Lisbon through the Triennale, it brings you in close proximity to its buildings, to its pasts, to its futures, to its material structures, but also to the immaterial dimensions of the city.

Another aspect that we would like to note is the large series of contributions by students in universities. We have a couple of university groups participating in the competitions connected to the Triennale, specifically researching the technosphere of Lisbon and developing projects about how to make it lighter. That is one way in which Lisbon becomes present. Of course for us, the question of Lisbon starts exactly 255 years before the Triennale — the night before the first of November 1755 when everything was calm… But the morning after the entire city turned upside down and tumbled on itself because of the earthquake. That triggered probably one of the most powerful intellectual debates in European history: a debate about agency, about providence, a debate about what is evil, what is good, what is the role of reason, what is the possibility of knowledge? Do we live in the best possible world? It involved the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, Leibniz — the entire European intellectual world that started a significant debate on secularisation of the city. Today we have an inversion: it is technology that emerges from secularisation, which is the upheaval of the Anthropocene. This is the inversion of agency that marks the Triennale.

One could also say that it's this big knowledge event of the Anthropocene that we are in. And maybe just to reflect back on how the exhibitions operate: we think it is time to view the city from the architect's point of view — not in that direct solution-seeking mode as what we did in Modernity, but rather, at this moment or rather in this new knowledge-event, so we can look for what we need to know as architects. What are these knowledges: within ‘Fluxes’, that's what we want to put forward. A way to see the city is what we've put forward in ‘Spectres’, with a lot of remote sensing images. In ‘Lighter’, it’s simply about how we can think together about more light or lightness. In this way, with every participant, we have also sought to show the process of thinking in their projects, rather than just the final product. That's also why we chose the format of screens or video for all three exhibitions — because we think that it's easier to show processes through the moving image, rather than architectural drawings or models. In a sense, there's a lot of documentary elements in the project; documenting the making of the coalitions, thinking together.

KOOZI’m really interested in this idea of other knowledges with which we need to imbue architecture, and therefore who might the participants be. What knowledge systems do you believe architecture and spatial practice needs to embrace?

TAThat's the interesting thing: the moment that you think that you need an interdisciplinary group, you're showing that you are modernist, starting by dividing and only after that reconnecting… We really think we have to be aware of that. It is so pervasive of the condition in which we work. We are in a condition that requires alliances. We don't find any given knowledge that has a method to address the condition in which we live; there's no one line of thought that can bring things together. This resonates very much with the work of our dear friend, Irit Rogoff. What we are dealing with is not a condition where we have a discipline studying a subject, and then one subject or method needs to be transposed to another. We have a shared sense or urgencies and controversies, a condition that we all partake in, and we become research — in the sense that research is not what comes before our action.Rather, we become the way in which we encounter other modes of knowing; we become a-centred, at the same time as all knowledge systems are in rapid oscillation.

There is, for instance, a beautiful work where architects collaborate with climatologists to bridge the complex divide between a global circulation model — a climate change model based on the complex non-linear equations — with the preoccupations and controversies for planning at a municipal level. Architects are already doing a lot of the work in multidisciplinary ways, not because we centralise all the knowledge in the figure of the master builder, but simply because we are constantly collaborating. This is where the difference of knowledge is, that we try to somehow sustain and nourish; in the end, we hope it will proliferate even more.

There's one other element that we would like to say about Lisbon and its particular urbanism. Lisbon is going through an incredible, international revival. Many new people are arriving in Lisbon, but there's controversy between the new arrivals and the old city, the older citizens of Lisbon — not only in terms of age, but those who have lineage here. It has to do, again, with the possibility of hospitality and the operations of technology. There's a lot of people coming to Lisbon and working remotely, which creates enormous pressure on the housing system. At the same time, this technology is the one flag alerting us to the increased energy [flux] that is evident in the fires that burn the territories of Lisbon. Here, the notion of hospitality and hostility are in close proximity.

There's always a difficulty in understanding exactly what is the urbanism of today. We tend to think of urbanism as the organisation of houses and streets and squares and transport system, but today, it also has to do with the fact that it's becoming hotter and drier. There's less water in the ground; there's less space for the biosphere. This is the set of preoccupations that we wish to make sure are centre-stage. There is an emphasis on the technosphere and the techno-colossus — but they are not centre stage. It is in the background, it's somehow off-stage. What is at the centre of the exhibitions is always a contemporary preoccupation for the biosphere, for what it means to live together. And we think that the best word to describe how to live together is city.

KOOZThis need for alliances and cooperation aligns with the way these three research strands have been hosted at various different sites within the city, with an ambition of weaving them together. So I'm curious to hear more about bringing together or creating a network, nurturing these alliances as a design project, and how that continues beyond the Triennale.

TAAbsolutely; this is really what we have tried to emphasise throughout. We’ve also been thinking about the Triennale over the last three years, if not more, as a research project involving what we call ‘messy studios’. A dynamic encounter between practices, where what is held together is made by the encounter itself, not pre-defined. Venice in 2023 was one moment to discuss and give direction to this project, really stemming from a need to to bring together a coalition of participants. We like to emphasise this coalition of thinking and knowledges that feel urgent among the participants themselves.

In the way in which you describe it, cultural institutions have a renovated role, a renewed role in transforming the way we live together. It’s really so important to acknowledge the reason why there is a Triennale: it’s really to create a series of whispers, of people talking to each other in a way that doesn't need to be in major tone, but can connect up to other whispers, to other discourses. I think this is where the Lisbon Triennale has a unique position in the panorama of these events. It demands attention, because it has always been an event that is very deep, full of details; in terms of past editions, you really need to dedicate time and effort to visit the beautiful Lisbon Triennale.

At the same time, because of its geopolitical location at the edge of the continent and the ocean, it's always possible to intercept spaces beyond Lisbon. This is another dimension: we think that the possibility of a coalition is interesting because it indicates another way of dealing with culture, not so much through trade or conquest, but rather as a mode of establishing lines of discourse between the different participants, audiences and groups. The fact that we've largely conducted the preparation of the Triennale in public has already engendered some of these structures.

The Triennale is very much a thought experiment, along the lines of Peter Weibel and the Gedankenaustellung; it is a way in which the audience can start thinking — for themselves — what it means for them to encounter such a simple question: how heavy is a city? There's no hierarchy in the way in which the different participants are presenting their work. There's no predefined line through which you can go through the exhibitions; rather, there's a sort of a landscape of knowledge, that is experienced and constructed at the same time as one is constructing one's own ethical dimension. Visitors will make their own choices across the dimensions of the Triennale.

This is a kind of coalition in constructing one's own citizenship, as well. So it's not a procession of presentation of what is already known; it's really an instigation to think together.

KOOZLastly, I'm thinking about permeability. You've talked about using the format of video as one of the main media you've decided to operate with across the three exhibitions. You've also discussed a publication and a series of open-access texts. How permeable is your curation of the Triennale; how much has it been designed to be able to actually expand beyond Lisbon — as you were saying, as a series of whispers that spread through other geographies?

TAIt's always a hope; one never knows, when you start to play with sand, whether it becomes a landslide or whether it just trickles away. For us, the possibility of permeability — it’s a really complicated question, particularly in spatial terms. In urban studies, the Mediterranean city is always brought up as an example of space that is like a sponge, with full permeability. We can somehow imagine the space of the Mediterranean as being the location of multiple exchanges, and the long duration of these exchanges as well. Today, on the contrary, something completely different is happening. The Mediterranean is becoming a place of divisions, of compartimentalizations. It’s what one of us called the Solid Sea. A space of fixity of identities and pre-determined trajectories, that only reveal themselves when they collide with other trajectories. We need to be alert to these conditions, in order not to disenfranchise the serious difficulties of connecting to one another, that we all face when we come close to interconnections. Many of these encounters today are violent. The contemporary Mediterranean as a ‘Solid Sea’ has become a way in which we can understand contemporary space being shaped by multiple borders and devices of control and separation.

Even when we talk about the coalition, one is very close to the very complex logistical technologies of contemporary financialisation of culture. When we try to create communities that detach from those fluxes and create a more local condition, we are also very much brought into the thrust of depoliticising, of disconnecting, of individualising, of making everything compartmentalised. That is the structure of the contemporary technosphere. So we think that one has to be alert, in trying to become sensitive to exactly these conditions, one discovers the territorial dimensions of the technosphere, and its multiple forces impinging one on the other. The systems of being alert are what we are really eager to put forward and to see multiplying. How can we be more alert to what keeps us alive, so that we can hold on, strengthen and nurture these aspects further? At the moment, we have a technosphere that compartmentalises, that divides and separates; it's for the few, not for the majority of the citizens. And the spatial turn of the intrusion of Gaia — the fact that the planet is pushing back on our action — is where we should start.

This is a project that started well before the last three years. It is a continuous project that began with discussions on the Anthropocene with the Anthropocene Working Group, over fifteen years ago. It's a long body of research, and we think the challenge to make it available to a different cultural audience — taken on by the Triennale, under the guidance of José Mateus and Manuel Henriques — is really remarkable. It's really important what they're doing, and we are really grateful to them. We really think this as a line of flight, a way of becoming.

KOOZThis was an extremely inspirational conversation. We’re very much looking forward to visiting the Lisbon Triennale when it opens in October this year.

TAThank you, Federica, and we wish you all the best.

About

'How heavy is a city?' is the 7th edition of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. This question instigates a three-year research project, carried out by an ever-growing coalition, into the complex set of transformations of the city, revealing a planetary new figure in the making. From October 02 to December 08 2025, the Lisbon Triennale 2025 includes three exhibitions — Fluxes, Spectres and Lighter —, a three-day conference series, a selection of Independent Projects, and a publication. It acts as a convener, engaging a broad team of experts from science to philosophy or the arts. This year's edition is curated by Territorial Agency (Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino).

Bio

Territorial Agency — established by architects John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog — combines contemporary architecture, science, art, advocacy and action to promote comprehensive territorial transformations in the Anthropocene epoch. They are Unit Masters at the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, where they conduct sustained multi-year work on the transformations of the Coast of Europe; the emergent technosphere planetary paradigm and a project on Climate Peace. They are the chief curators of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in 2025.

Recent projects include Sensible Zone; Oceans in Transformation, commissioned by TBA21–Academy; Museum of Oil with Greenpeace, ZKM Karlsruhe and Bruno Latous; Anthropocene Observatory with Armin Linke and Anselm Franke at HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. Territorial Agency is the recipient of the STARTS PRIZE 2021 – Grand Prize of the European Commission honouring innovation in technology, industry and society stimulated by the arts for Oceans in Transformation. They are members of the high-profile multidisciplinary Anthropocene Working Group.