Eleventh International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

This paper considers the issue (and research and experience) of what the author (as a fearologist) has called the global Fear Problem. It reviews briefly how best to define the Fear Problem from a holistic-integral perspective, a critical theory and pedagogy point of view, and re-frames the critiques of what an “architecture of fear” looks like, why it is so hard to recognize, why it is typically denied, dismissed, and exiled from conversations of built environment themes and where to go next in a counter-hegemonic movement of building a culture of fearlessness. Empirical and speculative philosophical data and models will help the learning process and explication of this review. Any thinking around the Anthropocene context and future requires this affective register of knowledge, knowing, and understanding so that we are not re-building anew the same architectures of fear that got the world into the crises of unsustainability, existential crisis, and mass extinction (echoes of Albert Einstein’s dictum re: a change of consciousness is required to really solve our worst problems).