Peripheries – Peripherocene
︎︎︎The Urban Peripheries in the Era of the Anthropocene
Peripheries – Peripherocene is a collaborative research initiative led by Cameron McEwan (Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne) and Andreas Lechner (TU Graz), which investigates the dynamic intersections between Anthropocenic conditions and the spatial, social, and conceptual production of urban peripheries. Launched with a symposium in Newcastle in 2023 and further explored in the thematic session “Peripheries” at the AHRA 2023 Conference: Situated Ecologies of Care (University of Portsmouth), the project is currently preparing a Special Issue of The Journal of Architecture (RIBA), to be published in 2026.
︎︎︎The Urban Peripheries in the Era of the Anthropocene
Photo: © Andreas Lechner – Aldo Rossi’s extension of the Cemetery Ponte Sesto in Rozzano with G. Da Pozzo and F.S. Fera (1989–1995), Southern Periphery of Milan, 2023.
Core Group 2023
- Cameron McEwan (Northumbria University + AE Foundation)
- Andreas Lechner (TU Graz + Studio Andreas Lechner)
- Elisa Iturbe (Harvard GSD + Outside Development)
- Joe Wojewoda (Northumbria University)
- Lee Ann McIlroy (Northumbria University + University of Dundee)
- Lorens Holm (University of Dundee)
- Neil Gillespie (Reiach & Hall + Scott Sutherland School of Architecture)
- Sandra Bartoli (Büros für Konstruktivismus + Munich University of Applied Sciences)
- Silvan Linden (Büros für Konstruktivismus)
- Yamina Saheb (OpenExp)
Context and Conceptual Framework
In The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi proposed the city as a locus of collective memory, with urban artifacts, typologies, and structures expressing an “urban imaginary” (Rossi, 1982). While his analysis emphasized the historical city centre, the twenty-first century presents a different urban paradigm. The rigid dichotomies of centre and periphery have dissolved into sprawling, discontinuous, and hybridized landscapes shaped by processes of extended urbanisation (Brenner & Schmid, 2015).
The periphery, long seen as residual or secondary, increasingly defines the dominant condition of contemporary urban life. Georges Perec’s attention to the everyday, the banal, and the habitual (Perec, 1997) compels us to reconsider peripheral territories as primary expressions of collective life, containing their own monuments, memories, and spatial logics.
From Centre to Periphery: A Reframing
Today’s peripheries are plural and planetary: encompassing suburbs, exurbs, favelas, informal settlements, logistics zones, old villages, and new towns. They form what Ignasi de Solà-Morales called terrain vague—ambiguous spaces full of latent potential (Solà-Morales, 1995). These geographies are shaped by contradictory forces of capital, migration, ecology, infrastructure, and state control. As such, the periphery is not a homogeneous condition but a multifaceted and dynamic terrain. Processes of peripherization—defined by uneven development, environmental degradation, and spatial marginalization—are exacerbated by crises of capitalism, climate, and care (Kühn, 2014). These processes increasingly shape rural and remote territories far beyond metropolitan cores, creating hybrid zones of agriculture, extractivism, and speculative development.
Key Research Questions
Our research poses urgent and generative questions:
1. What is the Peripheral Imaginary?
If Rossi employed categories such as type, locus, permanence, and monument to understand the city, what interpretive tools can help us theorize the periphery? What are the typologies, symbols, and spatial figures that shape peripheral imaginaries?
2. What Constitutes Peripheral Memory and Identity?
Peripheries, too, are carriers of memory and history. How do built forms and urban patterns reflect the lived experience of peripheral life? Who remembers the periphery, and how?
3. How Are Peripheries Reconfigured in the Anthropocene?
The Anthropocene—a term marking the deep entanglement of natural and human systems (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Haraway, 2016)—challenges traditional urban categories. How are peripheries transformed by infrastructural intensification, resource extraction, environmental displacement, and new forms of political governance?
Theoretical Contributions and Methods
We seek to build a spatial, representational, and theoretical lexicon on peripheries that integrates insights from architecture, urban theory, political ecology, and environmental humanities. Key contributions will explore:
Emerging Themes and Calls for Contribution
Voices from the Periphery
The Anthropocenic Periphery
In The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi proposed the city as a locus of collective memory, with urban artifacts, typologies, and structures expressing an “urban imaginary” (Rossi, 1982). While his analysis emphasized the historical city centre, the twenty-first century presents a different urban paradigm. The rigid dichotomies of centre and periphery have dissolved into sprawling, discontinuous, and hybridized landscapes shaped by processes of extended urbanisation (Brenner & Schmid, 2015).
The periphery, long seen as residual or secondary, increasingly defines the dominant condition of contemporary urban life. Georges Perec’s attention to the everyday, the banal, and the habitual (Perec, 1997) compels us to reconsider peripheral territories as primary expressions of collective life, containing their own monuments, memories, and spatial logics.
From Centre to Periphery: A Reframing
Today’s peripheries are plural and planetary: encompassing suburbs, exurbs, favelas, informal settlements, logistics zones, old villages, and new towns. They form what Ignasi de Solà-Morales called terrain vague—ambiguous spaces full of latent potential (Solà-Morales, 1995). These geographies are shaped by contradictory forces of capital, migration, ecology, infrastructure, and state control. As such, the periphery is not a homogeneous condition but a multifaceted and dynamic terrain. Processes of peripherization—defined by uneven development, environmental degradation, and spatial marginalization—are exacerbated by crises of capitalism, climate, and care (Kühn, 2014). These processes increasingly shape rural and remote territories far beyond metropolitan cores, creating hybrid zones of agriculture, extractivism, and speculative development.
Key Research Questions
Our research poses urgent and generative questions:
1. What is the Peripheral Imaginary?
If Rossi employed categories such as type, locus, permanence, and monument to understand the city, what interpretive tools can help us theorize the periphery? What are the typologies, symbols, and spatial figures that shape peripheral imaginaries?
2. What Constitutes Peripheral Memory and Identity?
Peripheries, too, are carriers of memory and history. How do built forms and urban patterns reflect the lived experience of peripheral life? Who remembers the periphery, and how?
3. How Are Peripheries Reconfigured in the Anthropocene?
The Anthropocene—a term marking the deep entanglement of natural and human systems (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Haraway, 2016)—challenges traditional urban categories. How are peripheries transformed by infrastructural intensification, resource extraction, environmental displacement, and new forms of political governance?
Theoretical Contributions and Methods
We seek to build a spatial, representational, and theoretical lexicon on peripheries that integrates insights from architecture, urban theory, political ecology, and environmental humanities. Key contributions will explore:
- Extended Urbanisation: Following Brenner and Schmid (2015), we conceptualize the periphery as integral to global urban restructuring, including hinterlands, supply chains, and sites of dispossession.
- Planetary Urbanism: Urbanization is no longer confined to cities; it is a planetary process (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020).
- Peripheral Monuments: New typologies and icons emerge not from central institutions but from infrastructural, vernacular, or marginal architectures (Lechner, 2021).
- Critical Representation: From cartography to photography, we explore visual and conceptual strategies to render the invisible geographies of the periphery visible and legible (Corner, 1999).
Emerging Themes and Calls for Contribution
Voices from the Periphery
- Who inhabits, governs, and narrates the periphery?
- How do political and economic systems create peripheral conditions?
- What affective registers—love, loathing, longing—emerge in the lived experiences of peripheral life?
- What are the visual, formal, and typological manifestations of the periphery?
- How can peripheries be drawn, photographed, mapped, or modelled to capture their complexity?
- What are the representational tools required for a “critical cartography” of peripheral space?
The Anthropocenic Periphery
- How do infrastructures, ecologies, and institutions produce peripheries under Anthropocenic pressures?
- What new models of settlement, adaptation, and resistance emerge in these zones?
- How do notions of care, resilience, and spatial justice inform our understanding of peripheries?
References
- Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2020). Why does everyone think cities can save the planet? Urban Studies, 57(11), 2201–2221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020919081
- Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a new epistemology of the urban? City, 19(2–3), 151–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
- Corner, J. (1999). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings(pp. 213–252). Reaktion Books.
- Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The “Anthropocene”. IGBP Newsletter, 41, 17–18.
- Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
- Kühn, M. (2014). Peripheralization: Theoretical Concepts Explaining Socio-Spatial Inequalities. European Planning Studies, 23(2), 367–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2013.862518
- Lechner, A. (2021). Thinking Design: Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology. Park Books.
- Perec, G. (1997). Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Penguin Books.
- Pope, A. (2024). Inverse Utopia: Urbanism and the Great Acceleration, Birkhäuser.
- Rossi, A. (1982). The Architecture of the City. MIT Press.
- Solà-Morales, I. de (1995). Terrain vague. In C. Davidson (Ed.), Anyplace (pp. 118–123). MIT Press.
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Unless otherwise stated, all materials on this website and the ideas incorporated herein, as an instrument of professional service, are protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights belonging to Andreas Lechner, its affiliates or its licensors and all such rights are hereby asserted and reserved. No part of this website may be copied, reproduced, republished, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for commercial purposes. Any modification or use of the information contained on this website for any purpose not explicitly permitted without prior written consent is a violation of the author’s intellectual property rights and is strictly prohibited.
︎︎︎Site Map, Imprint & DSGVO