An Audible Countdown

An Audible Countdown is a broadsheet publication. This single-issue run uses cartography, graphics, visualizations, and writing to spatially and temporally re-interpret the 2020 demolition of the concrete stack at the former Crawford Coal Plant in Chicago. The contradictions of this event—the decommissioning of a coal fire plant at the sake of its immediate neighbours—represents a significant case study on the often uneven outcomes of industrial (re)development. From community meeting slide decks, demolition permits, dust mitigation control plans, and summary reports, the demolition and its aftermath have left a repository of bureaucratic media in need of investigation and reinterpretation.

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My interpretation of Dear Future

All that is solid is (staked, extracted, processed, contested, sold, forgotten) into air. The spectacle and “shot time” sequencing of the act of demolition obscures much longer material and social transformations around energy transition, land use and speculation, and labour struggle, as a coal plant gives way to a warehouse. We investigate the fallout (cloud/social-political) of this event using design research for its forensic potential in the built environment and for its ability to translate and respond to technical language.

My interpretation of Dear Future