The eleventh issue of Room One Thousand investigates architecture’s relationship to history and society’s terrain using geological terminology. This issue’s title, Sediment, serves as a starting point for authors to consider how their projects relate to historical landscape formation. The metaphor will serve as a tool, not a universality, that provides vocabulary to discuss and explore abstract architectural concepts in new ways. We seek articles that reveal how architecture plays an active role in historical terrains and how humanity plays an active role in architectural terrains via memory, societal narratives, identity, perception of place, and more.

More than plain metaphor, sediment is increasingly the literal substance of politics; we find ourselves entangled in fights over microplastics in our soil, mine tailings clogging our rivers, and clouds of anthropogenic dust settling in our lungs, exacerbating existing geographies of racial inequality. Sediment is not only an archive of the past but also the terrain of present struggle.

Editors-in-Chief: Isabelle de Metz, Shelby Kendrick

Graphics Lead: Clare Coburn

Room One Thousand Team: Al Oliva, Arielle Steere, Chloe Wang, Daniela Pardo Duran, Elaine Forbush, Emily Ely, Fiona Käch, Isha Khan, Mike Ren, Sam Hsieh, Xander Lenc

Published in May 2023