Reciprocal Optimism: Projecting Terrestrial Analogues

Abstract

Human intervention is going extraterrestrial, and landscape architecture is going with it. This thesis positions landscape architecture as essential to taking measure of places yet to be touched in the Anthropocene, now only experienced remotely. As a provocation, this thesis speculates on outer space as a subject for how to design for a future with optimism. The design project is an Interplanetary Expo, promoting cooperation between nations through transparency and participation in decision-making for interplanetary interventions. Instead of abstract policy, this project offers a sublime confrontation with the analog landscape of potential intervention. The goals of this event are not just to demonstrate a novel future, but to make visible extractive processes and outcomes, and to convene a new public tasked with one of the most pressing queries of our time: the future bounds of human intervention. By engaging in the Exposition as a typology deeply embedded in the field’s past, this project strives to look towards the future and inspire hope.