Given the rapid evolution of concepts such as smart cities, who are the architects riding the wave of new possibilities for urban design? How do contemporary agencies find pathways to understand the challenges and opportunities presented by evolving urban technology, and how does architecture engage with the expanding pool of associated disciplines? How should schools of architecture and urban design engage with radical digitalised urbanism?
This issue of AD claims that this is contested territory. The two-dimensionality of planners’ urban construct is as limited as engineers’ predilection to zero-in and solve problems. Urban Futures contends that society needs a much broader professional brush than has been applied in the past: interdisciplinary urban design professionals who can reach across the philosophy and mundanity of urban existence with a creative eye. The issue identifies a selection of internally resourceful visionaries who combine sociology, geography, logistics and systems theory with the practical realities and challenges of mobility, sustainable materials, food, water and energy supply, and waste disposal. Crucially, they seek to ensure better urban futures, and a civil and convivial urban experience for all city dwellers.
Contributors: Refik Anadol, Philip Belesky, Shajay Bhooshan, Jane Burry and Marcus White, Thomas Daniell, Vicente Guallart, Shan He, Wanyu He, Dan Hill, Justyna Karakiewicz, Tom Kvan, Areti Markopoulou, Ed Parham, Carlo Ratti, Ferran Sagarra, and Bige Tunçer.
Featured architects: Arup Digital Studio, Guallart Architects, Space10, Space Syntax, UNStudio, and XKool Technology.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Better to Make a Good Future than Predict a Bad One
Chapter 2 A Socially Attuned Future: Memory, Geography and Urban Project - The Case of Metropolitan Barcelona
Chapter 3 Resisting Arrest: The Evolution of UNStudio
Chapter 4 Data-Informed Design: A Call for Theory
Chapter 5 Seeking an Urban Philosophy: Carlo Ratti and the Senseable City
Chapter 6 Perturbanism in Future Cities: Enhancing Sustainability in the Galapagos Islands through Complex Adaptive Systems
Chapter 7 Diving Deep into Unknown Unknowns: People, Cities, Technology, Architecture and Architects
Chapter 8 Augmenting Reality: (Big-)Data-Informed Urban Design and Planning
Chapter 9 Homes, Communities and Games: Constructing Social Agency in Our Urban Futures
Chapter 10 ‘Small Pieces, Loosely Joined’: Practices for Super-local Participative Urbanism
Chapter 11 From Digital Cities to Biocities: Harnessing the Power of the Digital Revolution to Reinvent the Urban Ecology Model
Chapter 12 Synaesthetic Architecture: A Building Dreams
Chapter 13 Data-Driven Urbanism: The Balance Between Spatial Intelligence and Design Craftsmanship
Chapter 14 Urban Experiment: Taking Off on the Wind of AI
Chapter 15 A Perennial Practice: Designing Between Urban Landscape and Urban Network
Chapter 16 Architects Without Architecture: How Transdisciplinary Studios Reposition for 21st-Century Challenges
Chapter 17 From ‘T’ to ‘π’ (pi)-shaped people: Better Urban Practice through Dual Depth in Architecture and Planning Education
Chapter 18 Smart Who? Collective Intelligence Urban Design Models
Chapter 19 From Another Perspective - Cyberspace: Speculative Futures of the Recent Past
Contributors
