Deserta: On the mode of existence of eco-technical objects

By taking the Atacama Desert as a testing ground, this lecture will deal with what we have come to term eco-technical objects, which are, for example, regenerative biogenic facades, water purification systems, solar panels, evaporative cooling devices, and waste separation methods, as well as fog catchers, biomass conversion systems, dry toilets, rainwater harvesting systems, etc. These are but a few examples of a series of objects and technological systems not dependant on fossil fuels that have been conceived as elements that can be applied to the built environment, and to architecture, with renewed importance in the context of the current environmental crisis and its effects on ecosystems. Echoing Gilbert Simondon's seminar book on the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, the study of the eco-technical requires recognizing their physical features and their potential distribution and grouping, as well as their inevitable belonging to specific historical, technical and economic cultures.

Pedro Ignacio Alonso holds a PhD in architecture from the Architectural Association in the UK and heads the PhD program in Architecture and Urban Studies at PUC Chile. He was a Princeton-Mellon Fellow at Princeton University (2015–16), and a resident architect at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in 2019. With Hugo Palmarola, he received the 2014 Silver Lion for the Chilean Pavilion Monolith Controversies at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Alonso and Palmarola also curated the exhibition Flying Panels: How Concrete Panels Changed the World at ArkDes in Sweden (2019–20); and published a book under the same title (Dom, 2019). He is also the editor, with Pamela Prado, of the book Cycles. The Architects Who Never Threw Anything Away (Lisbon: Circo de Ideias, 2022) and with Paulina Bitrán, is the author of the forthcoming publication: The Additional Element in Architecture: On Kazimir Malevich Arkhitektons and Planits (MIT Press, 2025).