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.

Top: Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Bolivia, line of evaporative pools. Above: Alaska, Barrow Radar Array

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.

Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. China, Baotou toxic lake
Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Chinese port
Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. China, Baotou steel mill
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
Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Bolivia, lithium pool drone
Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. Chile, lithium pools
Unknown Fields, “The dark side of the city”, AA School of Architecture, 2016. India, cotton factory