Joshua Guiness
SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION


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, spatial transformation has the potential to radically redefine our planetary era. Actively designing transformation in space means 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 space head-on.

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 project at the New Centre for Research and Practice on 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.

My thought and action is situated between these modes of practice and a deep engagement with contemporary theory and philosophy. I am a researcher at the New Centre for Research and Practice, and my writing has appeared in trans, Situation Mag, and Scroope among others.  My work in design and research is informed by a rigorous use of word and image, and its many combinations.