Today I’m serving as guest critic at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for Robert Gerard Pietrusko’s “Conspiracy as Method” final review. Past work from this popular Landscape Architecture course has been experimental, fun, and insightful—“serious play” as it were.

Meeting in the Weitzman School of Design, we’ll review each group’s short film; the culmination of their semester’s efforts. Each film is composed of three chapters: An investigation of a chosen “natural” disaster, a resultant conspiracy theory (either existing or fabricated for the purposes of this course), and a speculative design proposal for a future institution arising from the group’s constructed context.

Our 2008 collaboration, Exit, has been included in MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli's article on data visualization in the English / Italian design and architecture journal Domus (issue 946). Page 114 features our “Carbon Emissions Responsibility” map. For a description of, and videos from the Exit project see http://stewd.io/work/exit. Update: The article has now been posted online. You can read it at http://domusweb.it/en/design/states-of-design-01-visualization

Tonight, Exit (also known as "Terre Natale") opens at the AlhondigaBilbao in Spain. If you're in Bilbao don't miss this opportunity to experience the immersive 360-degree data projection. Exit (Terre Natale) is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data divided into six narratives. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller. See the Exit (Terre Natale) projection description and links to videos at http://stewd.io/w/exit. Today also marks 30 years since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis hung himself.