The project comprises two parts. The first, Carbon, requires visits to Indian Space Research Organizations (ISRO), Hyderabad, and NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (NASA-GMAO), Maryland, to document scientific research on climate change. Focusing on climate models that track carbon emissions and predict climate scenarios, the project creates new multi-scaler visualizations. They explicate national infrastructures and international mechanics of climate research, including, emissions reporting, sensors and satellite monitoring, atmospheric dynamics, etc. The second part, Decarbon, reviews activism from the global south at upcoming international climate summits. It follows protests, negotiations and proposals on decarbonization, fossil-fuel divestment, de-corporatization, etc. Incorporating this research and visual documentation, the project proposes manifestoes on climate responsibilities and climate justice. Here, techno-market-based climate solutions are critiqued and alternative internationalist frameworks and collective actions are reimagined. Carbon Decarbon: Optics and Manifestos, with multimedia and architectural visualizations, offers ways to see and to engage the present climate futures.

Kadambari Baxi is an architect and educator based in New York. Her current work focuses on issues of climate change, activism and advocacy in architecture. She works collaboratively, forming teams or initiating partnerships on a project basis. Most recently, she and her interdisciplinary team of designers, filmmakers, and scientists, created the multimedia project Air Drifts on global air pollution, exhibited at the Oslo Architectural Triennale; she cofounded an advocacy group WBYA? (Who Builds Your Architecture?), and the group’s work was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and Istanbul Design Biennial. Her architectural work is documented in two publications (coauthored with Reinhold Martin): Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries (Actar Publishers, 2007) and Entropia (Black Dog Publishing, 2000). She is a professor of professional practice in architecture at Barnard College, Columbia University.