In this chapter of the 2K30 newsletter, I want to talk about some architectural solutions.
Solutions that can be developed to support the human being, the habitability of the planet and the sustainability of future resources.
We have already seen that the means of communication and transport continue to evolve at an accelerated pace and with them the decentralization of the population. We get further and further, faster.
New urban centres are being created to support and/or replace old and obsolete urban centres. Cities like New Cairo, Nusantara (the new capital of Indonesia), and the NEOM city-state of Saudi Arabia are great examples. It is true that not all countries have the possibility of building new megacities, but they have areas considered rural that in a short time can be transformed into sustainable urban areas, economically, socially, culturally and environmentally.
A whole paradigm of thought is changing, the human being is beginning to wake up to a reality hitherto forgotten, the Earth is just one, the resources are unique. Socially, the new generations brought an opening for human contact. In this new paradigm, the city is not just an amalgamation of streets and buildings. The city becomes almost a living being, a dynamic being where nature and Being fraternize in peace, feeding on each other. The city becomes an “intelligent” organism but also eco-sufficient to guarantee a sustainable global economy. The city of 15 minutes, the garden city of the 21st century, in which the production of basic necessities, services and education will be included and blended in harmony. The self-sufficient city!
What we could see in so many sci-fi movies and series may well have been a channelling of something under construction. A city of mixed-use elements, with landscaped roofs for cultivation and animal husbandry that feeds on the building’s compost, coexisting with services and housing for those who take care of crops and services, an inclusive city where this growing part of the society over 65 years old can play an important role, a city where the car is at the gates of its limits and was shared and fast transport creates and sustains an optimal flow of people and goods.
In this chapter, architecture will also have to rethink the home, the workplace, the school, the garden, including spaces of worship, and adapt the choices of the new generations to its new paradigm.
To be continued…