Alexandra Arènes is a landscape architect, researcher, and co-founder of SOC (Société d'Objets Cartographiques) in Paris. Her work sits at the intersection of architecture, earth science, and the history of cartography, driven by a single question: how do we map a world that is no longer stable?
Her answer is Gaïa-graphy: a cartographic method that replaces the planetary view from above with a situated, volumetric view from within the Critical Zone, the thin reactive layer of the Earth where life and geology interact.
Each model creates a new focal point through which territory is redrawn. They are not representations of places but instruments for seeing differently.
We sought to emphasize the limits of conventional representations of the globe, to go beyond them, to begin exploring new images. In this case, art does not seek to anticipate, but to fill a lack of representation.
— Frédérique Aït-Touati on Terra Forma, PCA-STREAM interviewArènes's work rests on a precise philosophical operation: the shift from an anthropocentric view (territory as surface to be constructed) to a cosmopolitical view (territory as living volume inhabited by multiple agents). This is not a metaphor. It is a cartographic programme with mathematical equations.
Direct mentor and collaborator. Latour's argument that politics must "land" on the Earth rather than escape into the Global provided the philosophical urgency. His concept of the Terrestrial as a new political attractor shaped Arènes's cartographic ambition: maps that make you land, not fly away.
Geochemist at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Co-author of the Gaïa-graphy paper. Provided the scientific rigour: residence times, geochemical cycles, OZCAR observatory data. Without his science, the maps would be speculative fiction. With it, they become speculative instruments.
CNRS Research Fellow, theatre director, co-creator of the "Inside" lecture-performance, and co-author of Terra Forma. Brings the history of cosmological representation: how each era invents its images of the world. The seventeenth-century cosmological upheaval as parallel to today's ecological crisis.
The foundational claim that the Earth produces its own conditions of habitability through the interaction of living and non-living systems. Arènes does not merely cite Gaïa; she gives it visual form through the spiral notation system in her Gaïa-graphic method.
PhD supervisor at Manchester. Expert in Actor-Network Theory applied to architecture. Provided the methodological bridge between Latour's social theory and Arènes's spatial practice. How to study design as it happens, not after the fact.
Isabelle Stengers: "Intrusion of Gaïa" — the philosophical frame for why conventional representation fails.
Donna Haraway: Staying with the Trouble — kin-making across species.
Emanuele Coccia: Plant philosophy — the world as atmosphere.
Baptiste Morizot: Tracking — attention as ecological practice.
Peter Sloterdijk: Spherology — envelopes and atmospheric politics.
Tap to explore. The map shows institutions, collaborators, projects, and intellectual lineages as a living network.
Arènes's workshop format is consistent: participants receive field data from a specific territory and apply Terra Forma map models to produce speculative cartographies. Drawing is central. The process moves from observation to notation to conceptual model. She runs intensive workshops (typically 10–20 hours) across architecture schools internationally.
Intensive week: "Lowcase Architecture." Conference + 10h workshop with 15 participants.
Swiss Federal Institute. Conference followed by student workshop on speculative mapping of Critical Zones.
Intensive week with first-year students. Terra Forma models as design tools.
"Habiter parmi les vivants" workshop. With Aït-Touati and Grégoire. Invited by Michel Lussault.
Landscape seminar series: "Terra Forma, Investigating Critical Zones."
"Learning from Critical Zones." Architecture department.
Current teaching position. Architecture school, Paris.
Speculative Mapping Masterclass + Opening Keynote. 5–7 March. Floor 3, Crit Space.
Points of structural alignment for your conversation with Arènes at AIARG.
Both use it as the operating framework. She maps it cartographically. You map it pedagogically through 8 territorial cuts.
Your field site. Her French context (SOC, OZCAR, CNRS). The city is a shared territory for both projects.
Her "always under construction" maps = your Living Knowledge Commons. Both reject finished, static artefacts.
Her scale ladder (planetary → organism). Your explore.curricula.dev does the same digitally.
She insists on "accompanying the problem" with a collective. You insist on Participatory Action Research where students are co-researchers. Same principle, different medium: her maps are drawn collectively in workshops. Your commons is built collectively on GitHub.
Terra Forma is a book. The ZKM exhibition is a physical space. Both are analogue. Your three platforms are the digital infrastructure she doesn't have. You offer what SOC has never built: a persistent, version-controlled, web-native commons where speculative maps can accumulate across time and cohorts.