A new ecological contract: tools to see otherwise

Abstract

A New Ecological Contract is a pedagogical framework for design studios that focus on sites of socioenvironmental conflict. Through ecocritical video game design, students engage with situated impacts of large-scale climate issues by working through images of environmental impact assessment reports and baseline studies as archives of landscape transformation. This framework pursued two objectives: first, to awaken a critical and spatial political imagination in the context of a four-year constitutional referendum process that challenged the basis of the Chilean economy and its relationship to the environment from which it derives its riches, and second, to present students with a case for using their representational abilities to engage with situated impacts of large scale climate issues by going through environmental impact assessment reports' images and baselines studies approaching a design brief otherwise.