Design for the New School of the Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the planning of the New School of the Anthropocene, an experimental Arts and Humanities college between Cambridge and London. It discusses the ethos of its radical part-time degree curriculum dedicated to the fusion of critical enquiry and creative practice, and posits an alternative non-managerialist model of the student-teacher relationship that might counter the instrumentalism of a neo-liberal “outputs” culture and the market-bureaucratisation of British HE institutions. It goes on to broach the transdisciplinary nature of its curriculum, which addresses the omission of Humanities disciplines in the consideration of climate emergency and mass extinction through fostering an understanding and reexamination of the cultural narratives and metaphors that shape the human location on earth.