It is already too late to escape the worst consequences of global warming.

To avoid widespread societal collapse, our relationship with the natural world must be rethought from first principles. A deep adaptation must occur and this process demands a reflection on new forms of life and coexistence, new material cultures, forms of degrowth and, ultimately, new ways of thinking about habitat and architecture.

Today’s development industry, housing markets, economic models and systems of resource management will not survive the coming decades. A new deal must be struck between humanity and our planet; a negotiation between the poles of desperate techno-optimism and an impossible return to primitivism. For architects, this means rapidly developing radical alternatives: new categories of design, ownership, construction, economics, planning and infrastructure.

Of late, there has been a great public awakening to humanity’s impact on the environment. This sudden shift has led to a rising popularity of ‘sustainable’ design among architects. But sustainability is entirely the wrong term.

Sustainability aims to avoid resource depletion and achieve ecological balance. However, by focusing on maintenance, sustainability is not able to move beyond the status quo in meaningful ways. All sustainability can hope for is mitigation and management. Instead, we argue for the concept of ‘deep adaptation’.

But what does it mean to adapt? Adaptation is a responsive change in state. It is often rapid, necessary and urgent. Adaptation is the violent undercurrent to macro evolution. Adaptation has no preconditions and makes no assumptions. It is purely pragmatic and focused on survival.

Deep adaptation is not about a speculative future, but the extreme present. DIP6 will focus on preparing architects for radically different conditions. Our aim is to understand how the social figure of the architect might react and how deep adaptation will impact domestic space and contemporary forms of life.