The Sea Wall and the Kampung

A Debate on Architectural Cosmotechnics

Authors

  • Roi Salgueiro Barrio MIT School of Architeceture and Planning
  • Sasha McKinlay MIT School of Architecture and Planning

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.18.2.7079

Abstract

We propose that architectural responses to planetary environmental challenges are a crucial domain for cosmotechnical action. We explore the possibilities of cosmotechnical design by analysing two contrasting responses to the effects of anthropogenic climate change in Jakarta: defensive sea-wall construction and adaptive community action. Jakarta is an essential case for exploring cosmotechnics: a world city at the forefront of planetary environmental challenges, and a capital with a conflicted urban history, deeply shaped by colonisation and by its immersion in global circuits of capital and trade.

Author Biographies

Roi Salgueiro Barrio, MIT School of Architeceture and Planning

Roi Salgueiro Barrio is a lecturer in architecture and urbanism at the MIT Department of Architecture, and the curatorial director of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. He is the author, with Hashim Sarkis and Gabriel Kozlowski, of The World as an Architectural Project (MIT Press: 2020), and the founder of architecture studio RSAU.

Sasha McKinlay, MIT School of Architecture and Planning

Sasha McKinlay is an English-Indonesian architectural designer whose work investigates the intersection between traditional practice and modern technological systems. She holds a Master of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Architecture (Hons) from the University of Bath. Sasha is currently a researcher at the Self Assembly Lab at MIT.

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Published

2025-02-10

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2024): Issue # 35 | Engaging Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism: Cosmologies, Technologies, Worlds

Section

Article

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Copyright (c) 2025 Roi Salgueiro Barrio, Sasha McKinlay

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