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Projective Territories Symposium

College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University

April 3-4, 2025

Projective Territories takes up the often ambiguous place of territory in architecture. At its simplest, territory is land altered by human inhabitation: the ground where institutions impose rights of access and property, and where communities form habits in relation to institutions of power. Because territory is shaped by forces of value and exchange, largely driven by capital, its alteration has produced deep social and ecological disparities. Infrastructural failures, agricultural runoff, and resource extraction concentrate harm in “sacrifice zones” that bear lasting scars. Yet these same derelict sites and spontaneous ecosystems also reveal how land adapts, repairs itself, and sustains life in anthropogenic conditions. Understanding these processes calls for a return to territory as an architectural question, one that figures such as Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Vittorio Gregotti, and Ludwig Hilberseimer pursued when they raised architectural form to the status of geographic form. If a survivable future requires rethinking social organization, economy, and subsistence, how might architecture, as a way of thinking and rethinking the world, help shape these new realities?

Contributors
Lydia Kallipoliti, Elisa Iturbe, Neeraj Bhatia, Albert Pope.

If a survivable future requires rethinking social organization, economy, and subsistence, how might architecture, as a way of thinking and rethinking the world, help shape these new realities?









Acknowledgements


Contributors
Lydia Kallipoliti, Elisa Iturbe, Neeraj Bhatia, Albert Pope

Guidance
Dean Mistur, Director Sung Ho Kim, Jon Yoder, Jean Jaminet

Critical Insight
Laure Nolte, Walker MacMurdo, Taraneh Meshkani, Alex Colucci, Brendan Ho, Kristen Mimms-Scavnicky, Reid Coffman

Coverage
Walker MacMurdo for The Architect’s Newspaper.

Photography
Andy Eichler

AV and IT
Kevin McQueen, Mark Warzinski, Mike Kapronica, Bryan Molnar, Richard Roach

CAED Staff
Beth Noga, Stephanie Sotomayor, Janene Jones, Kristy Antrobius