Guest-edited by Albert Pope & Brittany Utting

“The architecture we inhabit, the urban systems we rely on, and the landscapes we transform are all part of the technosphere,” write Albert Pope and Brittany Utting, guest editors of Log 60: The Sixth Sphere. For them, the sixth sphere is the technosphere, an emergent man-made system entangled with the Earth’s five natural spheres: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere. “Taken as a whole, the technosphere includes our feedlots and sewer systems, factories and housing, tarmacs and croplands, and every modification we have made to the ground, the glaciers, the sea, the air, and the biosphere. It is a vast and often banal landscape. . . . Almost everything we do – prepare a meal, buy a shirt, message a colleague, fill a prescription, take a bath – we do through the technosphere.” Log 60, a 208-page thematic issue, explores the technosphere as “a planetary enmeshment of bodies, environments, and technologies” by examining the Earth’s natural spheres through the lenses of architecture, science, and philosophy.