Julian Brack

Julian is a recent MA Architecture graduate currently exploring the spatial consequences of financialisation. Prior to his undergraduate studies in Architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, Julian studied Economics & Philosophy at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and ICESI Cali (Colombia). Growing up in Germany, he has gained professional experience in the field of architecture working at BRUTHER in Paris and as a concrete worker on various construction sites. In 2017, he was awarded the 162. Schinkel-Price by the Architects' and Engineers' Association of Berlin.

Using film, digital tools (such as 3D scanning, web design, animation), and gaming engines, his work engages with the inherent violence of financial calculations. His dissertation Financial Algorithms and the City mobilises Actor-Network Theory to contextualise the role of financial algorithms in the production of the contemporary city.

His first year project with ADS8: Data Matter - Digital Networks, Data Centres & Posthuman Institutions looks at the role of financial models as mediators between multiple actors in finance and the built environment. Confronting the clean, brutal logic of mathematical economics with a lived reality and the unheard voices of those who are more than often not represented in the equations, the project aims to draw the attention to financial algorithms as objects through which contemporary economics and finance relate to space.

Julian’s work is inherently collaborative. During his first year at the RCA in ADS8 he worked with housing activists in Marseille to produce evidence of the violence of financial algorithms. For his second year project with ADS8, Julian collaborated with sound artist Jakob Koechert to produce a unique soundscape as a way to oppose the rationales of finance and propose a room to dream and dwell in other worlds.

'Synthetic Forests' is a short fiction film that problematises how data collection practices and bioengineering mobilise forests to extract financial value. Building on the exploration of the spatial consequences of carbon trading, the film critiques current trends of financialisation as a response to the climate crisis, questioning the fundamental assumptions of financialisation.

The film's narrative unfolds in two settings: a fictional laboratory at the Salk Institute in California where scientists work to genetically optimize plants for carbon sequestration, and a forest of genetically engineered eucalypt clones in an unnamed location. The film fictionalises the resistance of a mycelial network towards this forest which is permanently optimised to monetise the carbon sequestration capacity of trees.