CoSEP

 COLLECTIVE for SOCIO-SPATIAL
 & ENVIRONMENTAL PRAXIS 

 UC DAVIS  



RESEARCH TRACKS AND THEMES


1/ Technoscience of Environmental Governance


2/ Socio-Material Palette for a Just Transition


ABOUT
Established in Dec 2023, CoSEP undertakes transdisciplinary,
research-driven projects to address the socio-spatial and political nature of designing and governing the built environment to facilitate the fullness of life.  CoSEP's projects lie at the intersection of design, technology, governance, and social justice. We are committed to praxis, or the reflective manner of combining theory and practice to achieve and sustain just futures. CoSEP is housed at the University of California, Davis, on the land of the home of the Patwin people.


       © Akshita Sivakumar 2023 - 2024

RESEARCH TRACK: Socio-Material Palette for a Just Transition
THEME #1: Hemp and the Built Environment

Projects under this theme address the relationship between hemp and the built environment in terms of just transitions, critical making, and air quality. They focus on socio-material innovation through industrial hemp for California's building industry. Through an interdisciplinary lens involving environmental justice theory, critical making, and social movement action, the project aims to evaluate the suitability of hempcrete and hemp wool as prototypical materials for a just, carbon-negative transition in the state's building industry. We bring a new model for thinking about materials: from prioritizing market acceptance for commercializing materials to prioritizing a just transition as a value that creates new markets.
An alternative model for responsible material innovation for a just transition. © Akshita Sivakumar 2024


PROJECTS UNDER THIS THEME:

i.  Hemp(s)tools
ii. Low VMT blocks


Lab tests + Hempcrete workshop in Taos, New Mexico. May 2024  (workshop photos courtesy : pigmenthunter)