Humans will inevitably become extinct due to environmental breakdown, but we have the power to design ourselves a "beautiful ending", says Paola Antonelli, who will next week open a major exhibition in Milan called Broken Nature.
Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, the XXII Triennale di Milano, will bring together 120 architecture and design projects from the last 30 years that explore humankind's fractured relationship with the planet.
The curator hopes it will make people aware of the "crisis in our humanity" ? that our connection to our environment has been completely compromised, amidst an increase in extreme weather, wildfires and other environmental disasters around the globe.
"We will become extinct; extinction is normal, it's natural," she explained. "We don't have the power to stop our extinction but we have the power to make it count." "Leave a legacy that means something"
Antonelli, who is also senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA in New York, insists that she's not trying to shock anyone. She instead wants to encourage designers, and everyone else, to make the most of the time they have left on the planet.
She claims that planning for the legacy of the human race is the same as planning for a person leaving their job, or when an elderly family member knows they are going to die. Only then will the next dominant species remember humankind with respect.
Research project Italian Li...