A brief look at the Figure 1 graph opening the first chapter of the book immediately shows how capital-
intensive the mining industry became in the last years. China has MATCHED the tip point of the World’s
exports of mining and construction machinery. This overlapping moment between the two curves proves
how extreme and not sustainable are the shifts in mineral extraction industry.
That setting the next industrial transformation, located in a new geography (China). And this still
happening within the “rules” of the western capitalism system.


Looking closer on drivers of that change he sets innovation and technology as the actors for the new
geographies of advanced industrialization. Geospatially navigated and robotically operated mines are
clearing away the boundaries between extraction, manufacturing and supply chains, extruding it into a
globally intertwined network, which still paradoxically operates within methodological national politics.
However, taking the example of Asia, bursting the bubble of the global growth curve gives a new
perspective of reconceptualizing and emancipating from traditional ideas of capitalism. However, letting
the front line of that shift be high technological processes leaves risks of them becoming the nurture of
life.

This Reflection is a project of IAAC, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, developed in the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities (MEABB01) 2021/22 by student: Agnieszka Szklarczyk; faculty: Alex Hudley