What might architects do with or learn from the resources our planet creates? Can critical architecture recover a more equitable relationship to the mineral world? Or are we destined to continue to exploit the planet's lithosphere as a resource for our consumption?

In his important new book, The Matter of Architecture (Reaktion, 2026), Paul Dobraszczyk approaches geology as the architecture of our planet, arguing that what we build has always been dependent on what Earth has already made. Yet, what we produce now will also become the geology of the future: billions of tonnes of concrete, plastic, brick, metals and other fabricated materials that are quickly piling up to eventually become new geological strata.

From caves and crystals to volcanoes and earthquakes, The Matter of Architecture mines geology to find a more sympathetic way of building.

Paul Dobraszczyk is an architectural writer, photographer and artist based in Manchester, UK, and a lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He was an ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2016 for the project Dead Cities: Urban Ruins and the Imagination of Disaster.

Paul will be joined by Nishat Awan, Professor of Architecture and Visual Culture at the UCL Urban Laboratory, whose research focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration and border regimes; and Adam Walls, Lecturer of History & Theory of Architecture at UCL, a historian of fire, light and atmosphere working at the intersection of queer theory, critical whiteness studies and new materialisms.

A Q&A will follow, moderated by Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Coordinator.