Every building is an intervention in the earth’s geology, its materials deriving from the ground and underground, its maintenance from energy, water, and air, and its form inscripting imaginaries of those Earth relations. As a consequence, architecture has long been implicated in processes of geological extraction that have led to the climate emergency. Spanning geographies, disciplines, and practices, this book explores alternative forms and conceptions of architecture that reimagine the relation between building and the Earth to offer possibilities for planetary repair, restitution, and renewal. It builds on the exhibition GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair in the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2025) to situate architecture within the Anthropocene—the geological age of humans which is the result of colonization and its attendant of processes extraction. Unlocking what architecture and colonialism have long marginalized, the book offers a critical imaginative space from which new architectural worlds might emerge.

Owen Hopkins is director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University. Previously he was senior curator of exhibitions and education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and Architecture and program curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. Alongside his curatorial practice, he is author or editor of over twenty books and journals, including, The Manifesto House (Yale University Press, 2025).

Kabage Karanja is an architect, cofounder and director of Cave_bureau, an architectural and research firm based in Nairobi that he started alongside Stella Mutegi in 2014. He leads the research and aesthetic direction of the bureau and is currently a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture.

Stella Mutegi is an architect, cofounder and director of Cave_bureau, an architectural and research firm based in Nairobi that she started alongside Kabage Karanja in 2014. She heads the technical department at Cave, where she orchestrates the seamless coordination of Cave’s ideas into built form. She is currently a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture.

Kathryn Yusoff is professor of inhuman geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her award winning (Association of American Geographers, 2021) transdisciplinary research addresses the colonial afterlives of geology and race, critical environmental studies and the in/humanities. She is author of Geologic Life (Duke University Press, 2024) and A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (University of Minnesota Press, 2018).