shaā/SOC
Shaā/SOC is a Franco-Iranian studio working at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, ecology, and anthropology. The studio explores how architecture can question and transform the critical zone of the Earth through situated knowledge, practices, and inquiries. Shaā is linked to SOC, a cartographic research platform that fosters alternative cartographic practices as a means of understanding Earth’s dynamics, notably through collaborations with Bruno Latour.
Shaā/SOC’s work has been exhibited at design biennales—including St Etienne (2024), Rotterdam (2023), and Paris (2022)—and in museums such as LU (2025) and ZKM (2020). Their research has been published in books, articles, and conferences. Terra Forma, Where to Land?, and Critical Zones constitute the main areas of collaborative research, producing multimedia outputs including books, workshops, installations, and cartographies. Following Terra Forma, which traced speculative cartographies, the book Gaiagraphie reconsiders the traditional view of nature by mapping biogeochemical cycles in critical zones. Collaboration with Bruno Latour resulted in the book Comment atterrir? (How to Land), a project that, through workshops with citizen experts, addresses environmental injustices and produces a collective manifesto.
Shaā’s projects emphasize the actors in their cosmopolitical network, the sharing of skills to execute anti-speculative projects, and relationships with soil, rocks, and meteors as foundations for interventions on Earth. The studio is led by two partners with multidisciplinary and multicultural profiles: researcher Alexandra Arènes (FR) and architect Soheil Hajmirbaba (FR/IR).
