Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds Book Launch

How do we get to know air? As heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed much of the US Northeast last week, our relationship with air was made especially visceral for many. Anticipating clearer skies on Friday, June 16, join us at the entrance of Avery Hall to collectively reflect on the real, embodied, disproportionate vulnerabilities and consequences of toxicity and pollution––and to mark the release of Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds by Nerea Calvillo, the latest book from Columbia Books on Architecture and the City (CBAC).

Aeropolis follows air across its many forms—through smog and dust, bodies and breath, pollen, and weeds––laying out an unruly and relational way of designing-thinking-making across human and non-human matter, geopolitical ecologies, and aerial regimes. The book insists that we acknowledge the diversity of air and its relations, both physically and affectively; that we become sensible to it by living, breathing, seeing, holding, touching, queering airs.

Nerea will be joined by Dean Andrés Jaque, Xiaoxi Chen, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Ivan L. Munuera, and Mabel O. Wilson, along with Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt and Joanna Joseph, to expand on the shared stakes of these actions.


This event is organized by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City. Please bring a blanket to sit on during the event, which will be held on the lawn outside of Avery Hall’s main entrance.