Existentially clumsy architectures amid exhausted geographies: Two case studies of (un)becoming architectures

Abstract

Purpose This article examines how architectural pedagogy can respond to exhausted geographies produced by capitalist spatial practices and the dualities reinforced by the Anthropocene. It argues for unlearning carbon form of architecture through feminist methods and critical spatial practices, positioning architectural imagination as an agency within troubled times. Design/methodology/approach The research employs design-based pedagogical inquiry grounded in feminist research methods, including situated knowledge, speculative fabulation (SFs), worlding and close reading–drawing–model-making practices. The study is informed by critical spatial theory and implemented through an undergraduate architecture studio that deliberately disrupts conventional briefs, sites and programmatic expectations. Findings The study finds that exhausted geographies challenge architecture’s normative assumptions about site, user and solution-oriented design. Feminist methods enable students to engage these sites without replicating extractive or technopositivist logics, allowing (un)becoming architectures that are improper, minor and existentially clumsy to emerge as critical spatial responses. Research limitations/implications The research extends discussions on architectural pedagogy, feminist spatial theory and the Anthropocene by foregrounding exhausted geographies as epistemic sites and by articulating feminist resilience as a pedagogical strategy. Practical implications The study offers actionable methods for structuring architecture studios that address environmental crisis without defaulting to carbon form or progress-oriented, problem-solving design, emphasising critical imagination against institutional constraints. Originality/value The article contributes a pedagogical framework that reframes architectural education as a site of unlearning rather than problem-solving, positioning the thick present as a spatial and temporal condition for architectural practice.