Rights of Future Generations: Conditions

The present state of environmental crisis is not an accident of history, but rather the result of a war waged along social, techni-cal, and mental linesa war against future generations. Climate change is the symptom of the eradication of alternative perspectives on what it means to live and to coexist.It is the consequence of a single, pathological mode of existence dominating all others. Which ecologies sup-port this state of things, and which ecologies can resist it? Which conditions produce non-exploitative relationships between hu-mans and other beings, between those who are here, those who have gone, and those yet to come? The intergenerational per-spective is at the heart of all such questions.

The inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial, titled Rights of Fu-ture Generations, includes commissioned works by architects, artists, activists, choreographers, and scientists examining sites of resistance, struggle, emancipation, and experimentation. The twenty-seven essays featured in Conditionsthe first of two volumes published in conjunction with the Triennialchronicle some of these sites. From spiritual geographies of trade in the Indian Ocean, to the unwritten transmission of land title in the Ganges Delta, this is a book about architectures fundamental role in imagining other forms of coexistence.