ABSTRACT
Introduction Volumetric urbanism is the extension of forms of ecological enclosure into new dimensions of urban life. There are three critical aspects to these changes: fi rst, the rescaling of enclosure from the capsule or building to the domic enclosure of whole cities or at least selected urban districts, comprising complex landscapes of infrastructure, buildings and natural ecologies; second, the move to substitute existing denuded, hostile, or threatening atmospheres with new artifi cial and technologically mediated outsides that are interiorised in domic ecologies; and third, the shift from existing domic ecologies, which are usually designed for human or non-human occupants, to the development of hybrid domic structures that attempt to increase the productivity of human environments by extending the effi ciency of labour processes and the temporal and spatial exploitation of otherwise hostile environments. This chapter explores each of these dynamics and argues that these constitute a recently emerging and highly socially, spatially and ecologically selective logic of urban development that attempts to re-create new securitised atmospheric qualities within domic and volumetric structures that are intended to transcend eco-securitised threats and constraints on urban reproduction.
