LABORATORY
OF
PLANETARY
DIPLOMACY
A Journal of Planetary Diplomacies

An operative platform of environmental journalist-advocates for territorial research and geopolitical crisis.
About us / AGENDA
Following McHale’s 'planetary housekeeping' (referring to the planet as an indoor space), the platform seeks new forms of correlations between social landscapes, ecosystem services, and post-industrial geographies, creating a global atlas of conflict zones and environmental constraints. It looks into digital network governance, services eco infrastructures, and responsive grounds by analyzing patterns from post-industrial geographies, diverse forms of ecologies, and cultural narratives, moving from the Planetary to the Molecular dimension.

The platform is fed by an active network of researchers, students and organisations on ground worldwide, operating remotely and decentralized. The research-projects develops digital collaborative cartographies and living maps, while denouncing agents of disturbance and the exhaustion of exceptional ecological resources and vulnerable lands and communities.
The research is controversial insofar as it addresses socially, culturally, and environmentally sensitive issues of governance and jurisdictions, and human labour. Looking into post-nation theoretical scenarios it unfolds new ways of digital citizenship and state sovereignty speculating concrete forms of territorial autarky and occupancy.

The meta territories and self-governing zones hypothesize on self-providing performative infrastructures: planetary ecosystem services for the future, able to reorient the life-existence within the established geopolitical territorial control.

THE COLLABORATIVE NORDIC-ARCTIC ATLAS (SMALL VISIONARY PROJECT GRANT 2023-2024)

The research tackles climate change through art, science, and education by revisiting the ecosystem values and violations of the boundaries of human and nature's rights, envisioning post-industrial Edens of high natural and cultural capital.


With a strong pedagogical orientation, the territorial research projects open up for subjective experiences in distance learning methodologies, proposing the hybridization of immersive environments and open source technologies. The active network operates worldwide, remotely, and decentralized, creating cooperative cartographies and collaborative, living maps, while denouncing agents of disturbance and the exhaustion of exceptional ecological resources and vulnerable lands and communities.

The result is an agency/laboratory of advocacy and diplomacy research projects, performing complex social and environmental re-engineering of the past, present, and future.


The Laboratory develops an atlas of advocacy and diplomacy research projects focused on social and environmental re-engineering, by analysing pattern from post-industrial geographies, diverse forms of ecologies, and cultural narratives.


Geopolitical, social, and environmental concerns are analysed from molecular to planetary scale, proposing and testing infrastructure for engagement, able to host the life of humans and non-human species. By mapping the patterns of industries, the landscape as a productive surface, human and infrastructural geographies.

The aim is to apply a variety of such frameworks to investigate specific sites of exceptional natural resources damaged drastically by disruptive industrial infrastructures. The mapping visualizations also assess their potential social and cultural values as part of these ecosystem services hypothesis for a nearly future. The main objective is to develop a global inventory based on territorial research on environmental issues.

The research tackles climate change through art, science, and education by revisiting the ecosystem values and violations of the boundaries of human and nature's rights, envisioning post-industrial edens of high natural and cultural capital.

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Research
PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT
THE COLLABORATIVE ARCTIC-NORDIC ATLAS
GRANTED UMARTS SVP GRANT 2023-2024
Umeå School of Architecture
Research Group led by Alejandro Haiek
in collaboration with Luis Pimentel and Tomas Mena, Raquel Colacios.

The Collaborative Arctic-Nordic Atlas: An intersectional and multiscale cartography aims to collect and visualize data related to social and environmental injustice from a spatial perspective.

The goal of the Collaborative Arctic-Nordic Atlas is two-fold: on one hand it aims to embed social and environmental justice in future design strategies of climate change adaptation; and on the other hand, it aims to empower and give voice to traditionally unheard communities affected by processes of injustice.
Academia
PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT
Studio 12: Manmade Geographies
From Planetary to Molecular
2018-2023
Umeå School of Architecture
Led and coordinated by Alejandro Haiek

Geopolitical, social, and environmental concerns is the context of the Studio12 explorations. We test infrastructures for engagement, able to host life of humans and non-human species. The studio operate as a support for advocacy projects focusing on social and environmental reengineering.


(Image: Stora Sandskär/ Timber Reservoir. Student: Linna Liljeström)
Mapping Changing Ecosystems: Understanding Our Impact on the Natural Environment
Free Standing Course / Final Exhibition 2022
Umeå School of Architecture - Umeå University
Course responsible: Alejandro Haiek
Tutors: Raquel Colacios, Alejandra Diaz, Luis Pimentel, Tomas Mena, Aditya Mandlik

The 2022 Free Standing Course analysed and mapped the services offered by ecosystems and the human activity and production chains which affect them. The course introduced students to theory on the subject of ecology, such as frameworks which translate ecosystem services into monetary value, to assess the negative impact of human activities and how we can control it. With the aim to make data, subjective experiences and other findings into visually gripping and explicit maps.
Designing for migration
The frontier, the journey, the arrival: investigating the shadows
Summer Course 2020
Umeå School of Architecture / Umeå University

Led by Alejandro Haiek and Xenia Adjoubei
In collaboration with Tomas Mena & Luis Pimentel

Supported by The Global Free Unit
in partnership with Universidad de la Costa and Santo Tomas University, Colombia

This research project develops approaches to be deployed for the support and development of civil society and for democratisation in contexts of economic and political change. The focus of our current investigation is the Venezuelan migration crisis in Colombia.
A Journey up the Orinoco River
Mapping shadow policies to shadow ecologies
Summer Course 2021
Umeå School of Architecture / Umeå University

Led by Alejandro Haiek and Xenia Adjoubei
In collaboration with Tomas Mena & Luis Pimentel

Supported by Global Free Unit
In Partnership with Fundación Espacio & Department of Design + Architecture, Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela

The Sol y Sombra project lab prototyped an interactive tool for the analysis and 3D visualisation of territories such as the Orinoco River in the Venezuelan Amazon, revealing its geographical, political, and economic complexity, by geolocating and overlaying interests, conflicts and possibilities.
Meet our team
  • Alejandro Haiek
    Head of research
    alejandro.haiek@umu.se
  • Luis Pimentel
    Researcher
    luispimentelm@gmail.com
  • Tomas Mena
    Researcher
  • Raquel Colacios
    raquelcolacios@gmail.com
  • Rebecca Rudolph
    Researcher
    hellorebeccarudolph@gmail.com
  • Aram Badr
    Researcher
    arambadrarch@gmail.com
  • Hana Osman
    Researcher
    hanaaosman92@gmail.com
  • Cesar Velando
    Researcher
    cesarvelando@gmail.com
  • Sevan Mohamadpour
    Researcher
    mohamadpoursewan@gmail.com
  • Atakan Colak
    Researcher
    atakan.colak@students.iaac.net
CONTACT
Alejandro Haiek Coll

MSc Architect // PhD
MA Studio12 founder and leader at Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå University
Founder of Lab.Pro.Fab
Umeå, Sweden

Phone: +46 73 380 39 26
Email: alejandro.haiek@umu.se

www.labprofab.org
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