Global spatial practice concerned with issues of
environment, territory,
and technology
︎︎︎
SMSTOEARTH is a global spatial practice concerned with issues of environment, territory, and technology. The studio examines how landscapes are constructed through measurement, mapping, and recording, and imagines how other modes of habitation and production might emerge in parallel, or within the gap of, such epistemological regimes. Across outputs of research, space, and media, the studio develops cartographic investigations, installations, publications, exhibitions, listenings, films, soundscapes, and visual systems that register planetary issues at the scale of the body, built artifact, and territory. Past projects work with defunct technology, reused materials, citizen-collected data, and testimonies of communities across a range of geographies, to make legible the relationship between technology and territory, from coastline to glacier.
SMSTOEARTH is currently led by Shariq Shah (he/him), an architectural designer, researcher, and cartographer who currently practices as Senior Cartographer at National Geographic. His research has been generously supported by the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Harvard Asia Center, the Harvard Department of Urban Planning and Design, the Harvard Fairbank Center, and Rhizome NYC. Recent writing and presentations have appeared in and at the Antwerp Museum of Photography, UNCCD COP17, Paris Photo, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Botin Foundation. Shariq holds a Bachelor of Architecture [BArch] from Carnegie Mellon University with a Minor in Human Computer Interaction [HCI], and a Master in Design Studies [MDes] with a concentration in Ecologies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he was
awarded the Dean's Merit Scholarship.
SMSTOEARTH is a global spatial practice concerned with issues of environment, territory, and technology. The studio examines how landscapes are constructed through measurement, mapping, and recording, and imagines how other modes of habitation and production might emerge in parallel, or within the gap of, such epistemological regimes. Across outputs of research, space, and media, the studio develops cartographic investigations, installations, publications, exhibitions, listenings, films, soundscapes, and visual systems that register planetary issues at the scale of the body, built artifact, and territory. Past projects work with defunct technology, reused materials, citizen-collected data, and testimonies of communities across a range of geographies, to make legible the relationship between technology and territory, from coastline to glacier.