Rights of Future Generations

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 lines-a 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 Conditions-the first of two volumes published in conjunction with the Triennial-chronicle 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 architecture's fundamental role in imagining other forms of coexistence.