‘There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit colour which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living colour; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.’ – John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1843

Museums have an urgent role to play in educating us about the ecological crisis, guiding us towards a new cultural paradigm and interrogating the ethical, social and political implications of this break with the status quo. It’s time for the art world to evolve from privileging short-term, blockbuster shows to cultivating collective conversations and long-term thinking about our future. EX13 foregrounds the educational capacity of a museum to design museums that catalyse us into action in this climate emergency.

We will substantially rethink the nature of a museum, so that it not only minimises its environmental impact – challenging Part L – but so that it also embeds ecological thinking into architectural projects, cultural discourse and exhibition display. Working across a series of scales, starting with the exhibition space of a single object and concluding with resolved spaces of display and education in the city, each student will develop a unique architectural language that is conceptual, graphic, formal and performative. We will find sites across London, unravel museum typologies, learn from archives and AI, and disrupt the city with ecological tools that infiltrate both the local community and natural context. How should we design museums of extinction, of synthetic aesthetics, of erotic atmospheres, of cyborg-microbes, of intelligent plants and more? Each project will interrogate the content, curation, materiality, formal configuration, location, technologies, operational models and programming of future museums.

Throughout the year, we will engage with the General Ecology project at the Serpentine Gallery curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and the Soane Museum, an architectural laboratory of education and atmospheres. Architecture and art will work hand in hand to take on the challenge set by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion. For museums to remain relevant, they must provide speculative visions that reframe our relationship to our new, steamy world.