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The dark side of the city

The AA School in London opens an exhibition to trace down the alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and the wildernesses of contemporary cities.

The AA School of Architecture presents “The dark side of the city”, an exhibition organized by Unknown Fields, a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions in the contemporary city to trace the alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wildernesses that its technology and culture set in motion.

The exhibition takes us on a road trip through a reimagined city that stretches across the ends of the earth. It is a portrait of a place that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of fragments; of drone footage and hidden camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects, reimagined landscapes and distributed matter from distant sites. These distributed landscapes are embedded in global systems that connect them in surprising and complicated ways to our everyday lives.

Toxic tailing lake beside Batou RareEarth mineral refinery, Inner Mongolia

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. China, Baotou toxic lake

View of container port from the deck of the Maersk Gunhilde, China

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Chinese port

Baotou Steel Refinery, Inner Mongolia

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. China, Baotou steel mill

ILAKAKA, MADAGASCAR – AUGUST 5 2013

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Madagascar, gemstone pit

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Chile, Rockwood lithium pools

Drone camera flight over evaporative pools, Llipi lithium brine pilot plant, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Bolivia, lithium pool drone

Rockwood Lithium mine set within the Atacama Desert, Chile

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Chile, lithium pools

A worker checks the spools of cotton yarn the factory is producing, India

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. India, cotton factory

until 16 December 2016
Unknown Fields. The dark side of the city
AA School of Architecture
36 Bedford Square, London