How to Design a Post-Fossil World with the Sun?⁠ ⁠ Polluting energy systems based on finite fossil resources are destroying our planet and threatening its inhabitants. We all know that by now. And at the same time, there is this infinite (at least in human terms) energy of the sun pouring down on us. ⁠ ⁠ This book is about what we know about solar energy, what we can already do and what we hope to be able to do in the near future. And so it is divided into exactly these three parts: the first explains how we have designed with the sun in the past, providing a visual timeline of the historical development of solar power. The second part looks at the present: Where are we now and what is solar design? It provides examples of innovative solar design in architecture, fashion, mobility and product design. Finally, the last part looks to the future and asks how we can ensure that solar energy does not become the asbestos of the 21st century.⁠ Buy

There's been a lot of talk lately about space exploration. But Pauline Julier goes one step further. At a time when billionaires and governments are setting out to control space while our planet is still suffering the consequences of centuries of exploitation, Julier points out that efforts to find new worlds are nothing more than a new form of colonialism. Her visual exploration took her to the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the training grounds for NASA's rovers are located next to one of the largest lithium mines in the world. A place where the destructive capitalisation of our planet is most palpable, right next to the attempt to find new habitable worlds or at least some mineable resources. What ever the cost. Buy

"There is food within 3 metres of your front door," this book claims. Well, if you live in Berlin, you might think of a juicy falafel rather than wild herbs when you hear that sentence. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic guide for anyone who is fed up with the ever-same supermarket zucchini and aubergines. Eat Weeds will help you forage for wild foods and discover new tastes. From the forest to the sea, from the riverbank to your own garden.⁠ Buy

This wonderfully shiny book teaches us how mushrooms can feed us, heal us, free us and save our world! Wait, what?!⁠ ⁠ Think about it, the kingdom of fungi has survived all five major extinction events! They are the so-called architects of the natural world, integral to all life. They sustain critical ecosystems, recycling nutrients and connecting plants across vast areas, and help to produce many staples of modern life, such as wine, chocolate, bread, detergent and penicillin. So let's take a moment and study what these little spores can teach us. Today, in the face of urgent ecological and societal crises, fungi are being engineered to grow meat alternatives, create new sources of medicine, produce sustainable biomaterials, remediate the environment and even expand our collective consciousness.⁠ ⁠ The Future is Fungi is a complete introduction to this hidden kingdom. Exploring their past, present and potential future impact in four key areas – food, medicine, psychedelics and mental health, and environmental remediation – this book not only reveals how fungi have formed the foundations of modern life but how they might help shape our future. Rich with informative texts, 3D digital art and tips on how to immerse yourself in the world of fungi, this is a manifesto for the future, an invitation into a deeper awareness of our relationship with the natural world, each other, and ourselves. Buy

What makes a good listener? Is it a skill that can be easily learned, or rather a personality trait or talent? And why do some people seem to be so much better at it than others? Uneasy Listening, written by a psychoanalyst and a violin maker, is a dialogue between two very different kinds of professional listeners: one works with speech, the other with musical instruments. Anouchka Grose and Robert Brewer Young, complete strangers at first, embark on an engaging, entertaining and intricate meditation on communication that makes wide-ranging references to psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, contemporary politics and culture. As they discuss the differences, similarities and resonances between their practices, they encounter some of the illuminating difficulties of dialogue itself. Buy

Matter is a constant. It has been there from the beginning and it will remain in the future. ⁠ Derived from the Latin word mater, meaning mother, it refers to the substance of which all things are made. In English, the word can also refer to urgency or importance, something to be taken care of. Aleix Plademunt's photographic project Matter explores matter, which although itself inert, immobile and unable to reproduce, is the basis of all life. This book is about our origins, existence and the Big Bang. And about the organism at the end of which is death - but matter remains.⁠ Buy

In recent political debates, the concept of expert has undergone a shift in values from exaltation to disdain. In contexts as diverse as Brexit, climate change or vaccination, one encounters a palpable distrust of experts and an increasing tendency to throw their advice to the wind. Are we really witnessing the "death of the expert", or are the complaints about the "assault on science" just a hysterical reaction by elites who see their status threatened?⁠ Buy

Do you know the work of Forensic Architecture? If not, then be prepared to get your mind blown! Connecting real cases of human rights and environmental violations with the tools used in architecture and design, this studio creates a Wolpertinger of art and real evidence which is then used in some of the biggest court cases and tribunals of recent years. ⁠ ⁠ Forensic Architecture is often challenged by voices declaring in an exhibition “This is evidence, not art!” or in a trial “This is art, not evidence!”. Truth is, that exhibiting their work in art exhibitions draws international attention to cases that States or big corporations would only too gladly keep unnoticed. It helps victims be heard and get access to a public stage. It also sheds light on injustices, corruption and failures of our political systems. ⁠ ⁠ This is the first installation of Forensic Architecture Reports, a series of books each dedicated to a single Forensic Architecture investigation:⁠ ⁠ On the evening of 4 August 2011, Mark Duggan was shot and killed by the police in the north London neighbourhood of Tottenham after the minicab in which he was traveling was pulled over by a team of undercover officers. The team had begun following Duggan shortly after receiving intelligence that he was in possession of a gun, and the officer who shot him testified that he had seen, for a ‘split second’, Duggan aiming the gun at him after he had exited the minicab. However, the gun was not found next to Duggan’s body on the pavement. According to the police, they discovered it in a patch of grass some seven meters away. The Duggan family’s legal team commissioned Forensic Architecture to conduct an investigation into the critical question at the heart of the case: How did the gun end up in the grass? With no video footage of the shooting itself, Forensic Architecture had to rely primarily on the written and oral testimony of the officers involved to develop a spatial investigation designed to test the plausibility of the police’s narrative and to examine whether the officers themselves could have planted the gun.⁠ Buy

The Greek natural philosophers, the alchemists, believed that the transformation of substances in nature was possible. They believed that nature strives for perfection and that therefore all earthly metals would one day turn into gold. And so they searched for a "philosopher's stone" that would transform simple base metals into precious gold.⁠ Remarkably, after the discovery of radioactivity in 1925, gold was actually produced from base metals for the first time. Such transmutation is possible in particle accelerators or nuclear reactors, but the production costs currently exceed the market price of gold many times over.⁠ Jana Hartmann's work is a photographic research on the scientific exploration and conquest of nature from the beginnings of alchemy to the present day. In her photographic works, she takes up various themes that have aroused the curiosity of researchers throughout history, such as the concept of matter. With the aesthetic verve of her motifs - including references to alchemical symbolism, scientific experiments, natural history exhibits and self-built studio models - she entices curiosity about the scientific context.⁠ The photo book Mastering the Elements juxtaposes her photographic references with the results of her extensive research of alchemical writings, accounts by contemporary scientists and articles on the ethics of science, initiating a fascinating dialogue between different narrative perspectives - the visual artistic, the allegorical alchemical, the philosophical and the scientific.⁠ For the artist, the message we can take from the alchemists is a holistic view of the world in which man and nature, spirit and matter are closely interwoven. Buy

About ten years ago, Mathias de Lattre's interest in psychedelics led him to start researching psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic substance produced by about 180 species of mushrooms. He had an intuition that these fungi could provide an alternative to the psychiatric treatment of his mother, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His search took him from prehistoric cave paintings in France to traditional medicinal practices in the Peruvian jungle to psilocybin researchers in London and Zurich. Through text and images, Mother's Therapy brings together science and humanity.⁠ Buy

60 years ago, world leaders agreed to leave Antarctica free of war, weapons and nuclear waste. They declared that the uninhabited continent with no indigenous population, twice the size of Australia and 98% ice, should not belong to any country and instead be dedicated to community science. Additional rules to prevent companies from mining minerals and drilling for oil made Antarctica the largest protected area in the world. Now climate change is eroding that success story. ⁠ But higher temperatures aren't the only threat to the pristine natural environment; in recent years, the continent has become a contested territory, concealing resources that could prove irresistible in a world with an ever-growing population.⁠ ⁠ On the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, Antarctic Resolution offers a high-resolution image of this hyper-surveilled yet neglected continent. In contrast to the fragmented view offered by Big Data companies, the book is a holistic study of the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. A transnational network of multidisciplinary polar experts – represented in the form of authored texts, photographic essays, and data-based visual portfolios – reveals the intricate web of growing economic and strategic interests, tensions, and international rivalries, which are normally enveloped in darkness, as is the continent for six months of the year. Buy

For a long time, sustainable products had the reputation of being unsexy, aesthetically somewhere between a tie-dyed T-shirt and a haystack. But these times are fortunately over. Sustainability, longevity and circularity are not only in demand as properties, but also their visibility within the material.⁠ At ECAL students of product design, established materials specialists, manufacturers and researchers came together with the aim of exploring and defining the aesthetic potential of a new generation of sustainable materials. The result of this research-through-design project is a series of fourteen case studies involving the development of materials made from textile waste, recycled paper, rubber granulate or vegetable fibers such as algae, rice husks, hemp, flax and wood. The resulting new materials can be shaped, pressed, woven or welded and offer future designers a range of practical tools and applied knowledge about the methods of analyzing and processing seminal materials, utilizing their advantageous qualities and developing functional, yet aesthetically intriguing objects.⁠ Buy