Joshua Guiness


Being human in the 21st century means being relational. A new type of relational politics, economy, and society are in the process of forming. Through my work, I explore the agency of spatial thought in shaping these emerging modes of life.

As a form of embodied and embedded politics, I see architecture’s potential within our planetary era in creating the conditions for alternative life practices to emerge. I aim to realize this radical definition of spatial design: one that is apt to create more entangled, adaptable, and desirable environments by confronting the dead-ends of contemporary politics. Striving to enable more equitable and adaptive eco-social modes, I form a part of multiple endeavors across design, education, and research.


I am a member of Architecture Land Initiative, a collective acting to re-calibrate spatial planning processes through the lens of territory. We often work through self-initiation, independent of a pre-defined brief. Our trans-scalar projects bridge the architectural and the territorial by integrating economic, legal and ecological dimensions of land into urban transformation processes.
I am a research and teaching assistant at VOLUPTAS, a Master’s studio in architectural design at ETH Zurich using speculation as a means of projecting alternative, more desirable life-forms. Critically engaging with contemporary problematics across society and culture, each design project forms a world unto itself, a testing field for challenging the most “natural” of norms, conventions, and ways of being.I run E-FX, a research capsule for spatial strategy aimed at re-programming the planetary through the concept of protocols. Offering spatial intelligence for milieus in transition, its focus is on repeatable and adaptable infrastructures for systems, places, and processes—from governance structures to ecosystems and platforms. E-FX applies spatial thought outside traditional architectural practice.

My thought and action is situated between these modes of practice and a deep engagement with contemporary theory and philosophy. My writing has appeared in trans, Situation Mag, and Scroope, among others, and I am a member of the New Centre for Research and Practice.