Rikke’s PhD Dissertation, Concrete Aesthetics: From Universal Rights to Financial Post-Democracy, examines the effects of contextual shifts in economy, society and politics since 1945 on the meaning of concrete architecture. The specific focus is on the movement from an era of ‘universal rights’ to that of ‘post-democracy,’ and the effect the shifting context has on the way concrete is perceived, and the social and political function it enacts.

Currently, as an Affiliate at ACT, she is working on a subsection of that research, specifically examining sand, which is the crucial element in concrete production. Understanding its abstraction from its environment, and the ecological and economic costs, is an important ground for understanding the larger shift in the meaning of the ‘concrete aesthetic’.

Rikke Luther works on the environmental crisis in relation to language, materials, law and financialization. Her work occupies the hinterland between the fields of landscape, architecture, speech, politics, economy, biology, drawing, photo and education.