Kim Förster: Evidencing Cement - lecture at Gallery VI PER

The lecture will focus on the historical, cultural, and ecological dimensions of cement as an important but problematic building material. It will provide a comprehensive view of this product and industry, including the operation of kilns and quarries. The discussion emphasizes cultural representations of cement along with a detailed analysis of its impact on the environment, particularly concerning land use, waste management, and pollution affecting communities.
Kim Förster teaches at the University of Manchester and is a member of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). In his research and teaching, he focuses on knowledge and cultural production, as well as institutional and environmental history, paying particular attention to issues of building transitions in terms of social metabolism, practices, and politics of energy and material flows, and the ways in which they are discussed and mediated. He is the author of the books Building Institution (transcript, 2024) and Undisciplining Knowing: Writing Architectural History through the Environment (CCA, 2023), and editor of the open-access series "Environmental Histories of Architecture" (CCA, 2022). His current research project examines the global history of cement as a modern industrial building material and cheap commodity, offering a corporate critique from perspectives that include cultural studies and environmental humanities.
The lecture is part of the accompanying program of the exhibition Ecologies of the Machine: Landscapes of Cement and Power.