The I International Congress of Ecological Humanities (UAM, 2023) marked a pivotal shift in academic and artistic discourse, moving beyond the descriptive limits of Environmental Humanities toward a situated, transformational praxis. In a context defined by the "Great Test" and civilizational precarity, the contribution FAROS_TRANS by Anto Lloveras and Esther Lorenzo emerged as a foundational urban ontology. Presented within the symposium on Ecological Education, this project posits the "Trans Lighthouse" not as a mere architectural structure, but as a modular infrastructure of care. It challenges the necro-politics of the Anthropocene by proposing a network of rhizomatic nodes distributed across the world's 100 most populated cities. Integrating housing, energy, and algorithmic solidarity, the proposal articulates a "Fifth City"—a speculative yet grounded urbanism where density is redefined by minimal mobility and transgenerational coexistence, effectively bridging the gap between critique and biospheric transition. Architecturally, FAROS_TRANS functions as a speculative prototype for an era of degrowth. By rejecting traditional zoning in favor of a hybrid infrastructure of the commons, Lloveras and Lorenzo align their work with the congress's broader call for a "regenerative civilization." The project operates through the lens of Socioplastics, where architecture, epistemology, and art converge to address the planetary crisis. Here, the "Lighthouse" serves as a beacon of post-identitarian encounter, blending data ethics with territorial justice. It is a manifesto in built form that echoes the calls of scholars like Jorge Riechmann and Yayo Herrera, advocating for a "Gaian culture" through concrete pathways. In this framework, the urban node becomes a tool for ecological pedagogy, teaching the citizens of the Fifth City to navigate the transition from extraction to stewardship through an aesthetic-political gesture that is both retro-futuristic and urgently present.
The Congress established a cross-disciplinary platform where eco-ethics, aesthetics, and political ecology converged to rethink the limits of growth. Within this transdisciplinary assembly, FAROS_TRANS stands as a manifesto for "algorithmic citizenship," proposing that the digital and the biological must be harmonized to survive the Capitalocene. The project’s spatial methodology—rooted in the "Simbioethics" discussed during the plenary sessions—reimagines the city as a biocultural sanctuary. By addressing the psychological and material dimensions of collapse, Lloveras and Lorenzo move the discourse from solastalgia to a proactive "psychogeography of the there." This vision is not a detached utopia; it is a situated epistemology that recognizes the vulnerability of the human and the non-human alike, seeking to establish a "democratic bioregionalism" through a network of care infrastructures that prioritize the persistence of life over the expansion of capital. Ultimately, the contribution of Anto Lloveras and Esther Lorenzo at UAM 2023 serves as a synthesis of the congress’s aspirations: to craft a biospheric humanism. FAROS_TRANS operates as a "situational fixer" on a planetary scale, providing the ethical and spatial scaffolding needed for an egalitarian degrowth. By envisioning the 100 nodes of the Trans Lighthouse, the authors provide a visionary reimagining of urbanity that is both inclusive and sustainable. As the congress concluded with a call for "Gaia-oriented" cultural regeneration, FAROS_TRANS remains a vital prototype for the transition, asserting that the architecture of the future must be built on the foundations of collective responsibility and algorithmic solidarity. It is a transdisciplinary leap that transforms the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts into a laboratory for the Fifth City, proving that in the face of ecological collapse, the most radical act is the creation of infrastructures that sustain the "freshness of days" for all living beings.
Lloveras, A. and Lorenzo, E. (2023) FAROS_TRANS: The Trans-Lighthouse Manifesto. [Paper presentation] I International Congress of Ecological Humanities: Thought, Art and Education in the face of the Crisis of Civilisation. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Campus Cantoblanco, 22–24 May. Available at:
