“All the carbon in planet earth, dissolved into the atmosphere, into oceans and in living creatures derives from rocks and will – eventually – end up in rocks, the largest carbon reservoir on Earth”.

Taking issue with global warming as a planetary ecological consequence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, “Carbon To Rock” investigates the role of igneous rocks in the planetary cycle of carbon dioxide and the consequences of the anthropogenic hand entering this cycle.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius would have serious consequences for our planet and we are approaching that point rapidly. Also, according to the IPCC, it is not possible to meet the temperature goals unless radical steps are taken to not only decarbonize the infrastructures of human civilization but, also, to actively remove thousands of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by year 2030.

When Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen proposed that humans have become a geological force, he was collapsing the human/nature divide. And, perhaps more importantly, he was proposing a new point of view that does not only follow the narrative of decline caused by technological achievements of human civilization, but that also points out their potential in enabling the sustainable use of natural resources, the human potential to stop and reverse climate change. In light of Paul Crutzen’s view of the role of humans in shaping natural systems, the once unacceptable geoengineering technologies—those large-scale manipulations of environmental processes that attempt to counteract the effects of global warming—may, now, be not only acceptable but perhaps the only way out.

“Carbon To Rock” starts with the premise that: it’s time for humans to move off center, out of our intuitive framework. But, also, the premise that, as Benjamin Bratton puts it, creating a shift away from anthropocentric perspective requires from us more agency and not less, more deliberate design and not less.

“Carbon To Rock” accepts the human condition of “geological material event”. Entering the material process of CO2 calcification, we embrace the human agency in the planetary carbon cycle. “Carbon To Rock” looks at the emergence of new geoengineering technologies of CO2 mineralization, studying the key role that volcanic basalt plays at a molecular level in the process of turning Carbon into Calcite. Gas into Rock.

In 2016 CarbFix (the first pilot in the world that has successfully tested this industrial process that was believed by scientists would take centuries) injected for the first time CO2 in the basaltic bedrock of Iceland transforming atmospheric carbon dioxide into rock in a period of two years. (The studio “Carbon To Rock” had planned a trip to Iceland to visit CarbFix which had to be canceled due to COVID-19.)

“Carbon To Rock” uses the lens of volcanic rock to bring to the fore planetary narratives associated with climate material events: Material events that we discover and material events that we project.

Only a few years ago, the prospect of turning CO2 into rock for millennia would have seemed one of the most improbable fictions. Our research is deeply scientific and architectural, but also deeply speculative. CARBON TO ROCK imagines possible futures that are so improbable, but so profoundly necessary, that they first need to enter the collective imagination through fiction before becoming a reality. Our research has led to a series of deeply speculative architectural climate fictions articulated around volcanic rock and geoengineering technologies in the age of climate change. The projects aim to be provocations that highlight the fine line between reality and fiction. A line that appeared to us even thinner as we transitioned to work in a condition of lockdown due to completely new reality triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.