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The 21st century is the century of major changes. These changes, which occur due to the fast development of technology, can be felt both on the micro and on the macro scale, in every branch of knowledge and almost all around the globe. Technology is a powerful tool that can transform not only urban planning, but also architecture, as these disciplines ought to always keep up with the technological innovations. Although there still are a plethora of urban areas with traditional tissue and historical buildings, there are also some areas where people have asked themselves: do these cities still satisfy the needs of the contemporary man? There are multiple answers to this question, however, this essay aims to illustrate two urban areas that provide a clear answer to the question, becoming thus manifesto-examples for principles that could greatly influence designing future cities.

The first such example is Singapore, a city-state situated in the South-Eastern Asia. Through the city’s design, the architects, urban planners and everyone who had a contribution to configuring it as it is today, have observed and replied to the human needs of the contemporary society. These needs have been resolved by using certain urban design principles, such as diversity and accesibility. Diversity is one of the principles that stands at the core of the society in Singapore, for the reason that this city is located at the crossroad between multiple cultures, minorities having therefore the need to feel included in the tradition and spirit of the city. For instance, as the Indian and Chinese communities represent quite a big number of Singapore’s population, neighborhoods such as “Chinatown” or “Little India” were born exactly with the aim to make these minorities feel that they belong to the city. In a century in which urban mobility is very high, and the possibility of working remotely is increasing, the cities ought to offer a temporary or definitive home to everyone who finds it an appropiate city for personal and professional growth. Singapore encourages diversity also by offering all of its inhabitants the possibility to achieve performance, offering not only a high quality education, but also very well-paid job and career opportunities. This can be translated to the development of the human resource’s diversity, which in the century of information has to be prepared to take up new challenges with intelligent and enthusiast approaches to contemporary problems from all areas of knowledge and from anywhere in the world.

In the 21st century, sharing information freely is facilitated and encouraged, an aspect fully embraced by Singapore through promoting the informational transparency. Accesibility is an urban design principle used by Singapore, as all the updates and news regarding the upcoming projects of the city, the new investments and development plans are constantly being published. Moreover, the good organization of a city is a concept that is closely related to its accesibility. In contrast to the functionalist city, that proposed the functional segregation of the urban tissue into four distinct areas (living, working, loisir and circulation), Singapore took over a new approach that adapted the functional zonification of the city into a principle called “transect”. The transect represents a system that illustrates the transverse disposal of urban areas, transposing into reality the principles of a new urbanism. These areas are carefully-planned, taking into consideration the humane, environmental and aesthetic elements of the city, gradually ranging from a highly rural area, to a highly urban one. Singapore is therefore a very successful city, in contrast to the functionalist city that failed because of its lack of domesticity specific to the traditional city and also because of its lack of elements that form the image of the city (the way that they were theorized and illustrated by Kevin Lynch in “The Image of The City”).

The second example of a city of the future that perfectly illustrates the requirements of contemporary cities by embodying them is Masdar City, the first completely sustainable city in the world. This city’s main urban design principle is sustainability, this one being the defining element that ought to differentiate 21st century cities from traditional ones. Located in the United Arab Emirates, 5 minutes away from the Abu Dhabi airport and 40 km away from Dubai, this city is very well-connected to other important urban nodes, which enable its inhabitants to gain the connection they need in order to access job opportunities from all around the world. Accessibility inside the city is going to be further developed by introducing a sustainable green system for the common means of transportation in order to satisfy the mobility need of the inhabitants.

Masdar City is a sustainable city because it is based on the three pillars of sustainability: environment, society and economy. That encourages building architecture that has a positive impact on the environment, based on renewable energy sources, such as the solar energy that can easily be exploited in the area. This way, the design of the buildings is ergonomic and functional, built on the future aspirations of their inhabitants that wish for a healthy living environment both for them and for their children. The society’s needs are satisfied by ensuring an environment favorable for dwelling, but also by ensuring career development prospects and by supporting the urban mobility. Masdar City hence supports the post-petroleum future, utilising renewable sources of energy and sustainable building materials. It also has a strong connection with its context, since the architecture that can be found inside the city, but also its architectural and urbanistic programs, are specific to the Arabian area. Therefore, it becomes evident that Masdar City is a pioneer in the development of sustainably developed human settlements in all of its complexity, succeeding to be the first zero carbon consumption city in the world, thus being an example of a future city.

To sum up, Singapore and Masdar City are only two of the cities of the future that already exist today. They embrace urban design principles that are indispensable to well-designed cities that strive to exist many years from now, becoming examples both for the future design of new urban areas, but also for the design of buildings that would live in these cities.

references

1. https://gineersnow.com/industries/renewables/masdar-future-city/attachment/masdar-city-buildings
2. https://masdarcity.ae/en/discover/about-us
3. http://www.placemakers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/urban_rural_lo.jpg
4. https://www.willowinwanderland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/little-india-singapore-xlarge.jpg
5. https://www.hotels.com/go/singapore/best-chinatown-things-to-do
6. https://www.visitsingapore.com/en/
7. https://www.kullabs.com/class-9/enviroment-population-and-health-9/population-situation-of-nepal-and-environment/urbanization-trend-impact-and-urbanization-by-regions
8. https://live.staticflickr.com/283/18354906666_b779182662_b.jpg
9. https://news.masdar.ae/en/news/2019/06/18/12/34/masdar-city—a-template-for-sustainable-urban-development
10. https://news.masdar.ae/en/news/2020/05/20/11/54/adq-launches-fund-to-help-start-ups-establish-headquarters-in-masdar-city

Although the discipline of town planning is a relatively recent concept in theory, a great number of architects throughout history has investigated the issue of town development and envisioned various conceptual proposals for ideal cities. Two remarkable examples of such visions were those of Ebenezer Howard for the British territory, respectively those of Frank Lloyd Wright for the United States. Both proposals were born post The Machine Age, a period of time in which the rise of industrialization brought a revolution not only to the manner in which products of all scales were manufactured and utilised, but also to the quotidian life of the citizens. For this reason, these proposals were imagining a city life in which technology would go hand-in-hand with the pre-industrialization lifestyle, transforming cities in humane, organic, and modern places to live. The visions Howard and Wright had were formerly considered Utopian, since what they stated was radically different from the reality of urbanism at that moment. However, even after almost a century, their ideals might still be considered Utopian, fact to be demonstrated in the following paragraphs.

One first aspect to be taken into consideration is the urban mobility as means of transportation in an ideal city. One of the numerous advantages of the development of technology was the invention of the automobile, a fast and comfortable way of ensuring the flexibility of inter-city transit. The automobile was the novel substitute for the railway transportation, that was once perceived as the main way of navigating through a country. For instance, Wright’s vision of the ideal Broadacre City had twelve-lane highways and special lanes for trucks linking warehouses directly to factories (Wright). In his vision, that would minimise the intensity of the traffic while still preserving the coveted flexibility given by cars. Nevertheless, in Howard’s Garden City, another vision that was conceptualised earlier than Wright’s, the automobile had not yet been invented. Therefore, the main source of transportation in Howard’s time was the rail. His vision of a cluster of associated towns demanded an inter-connectivity ensured by a fast and affordable railway system which allowed citizens to freely move from their dwellings both to the main amenities and to the countryside (Howard). In contemporary times, however, the feasibility of the two Utopian visions is claimed to be very low, since the emphasis on this flexibility given by a fast and confortable urban mobility translates to an environment dominated by pollution (both air and noise), as well as traffic jams. In an era in which the environment has to be put first, the cities ought to shift their focus towards ecological alternatives and to reinvent a new kind of environmentally-friendly mobility.

Secondly, it is of utmost importance to note that the main characteristic of both Howard’s and Wright’s visions is the symbiosis between the industrial city and the natural landscape. Wright’s organic architecture in complete harmony with its surroundings, as well as Howard’s view on houses complemented by gardens, intertwine and highlight the concern for nature to be an integrant part of the town. This way, farms , zoos, parks, all become essential elements in the city not only at the urban scale, but also at the scale of public institutions. For example, zoos and green spaces were considered to be indispensable environments for learning in the Garden Cities, hence being present in all learning facilities (Howard). This principle of relating to nature is taken even further to the predictions of a town’s growth, that ought to have resembled the spontaneous yet controlled growth present in nature. However, the only setback these Utopian ideas have encountered was in the administration area, since it was close to impossible to obtain an isolated self-contained entity that would only grow within itself (More). The authorities would often limit these visionary cities’ power, no matter how positive Howard was in believing they were to transform the Garden Cities into wide-spread urban practices after only one such built experiment. (Howard). The same issue would appear today as well, since the presence of nature, though urbanistically important, has to be well-balanced with all the other functions. Since a city is in general functionally divided, it is often difficult to hybridise the artificial and the natural within it.

In addition to that, both Wright’s and Howard’s proposed urban interventions seem to become appropriate only for their limited circumstances, failing to embody a timeless and placeless character.  Howard discusses the problem of whether an intervention on an already-existing city, as opposed to building a city from scratch, is easier to implement. It becomes evident that creating an urban ideal from the ground up is much more straightforward than attempting to correct something which is already broken. The architecure of the envisioned cities of Wright’s would have to epitomise the unity in diversity principle, which could not have been possible with pre-existent cities that already had multiple building styles. Moreover, it is considered to be generally difficult to alter a pre-existent town’s image without affecting the way citizens relate to it and causing a major dissatisfaction among them (Lynch). Consequently, these Utopian visions were challenging to be put into practice, even though there was a period of redevelopment emerging together with The Machine Age. Nowadays, it becomes clear that Wright’s and Howard’s cities could not be made possible, since now most cities are already established and scarcely flexible anymore.

In conclusion, the Utopian visions of the towns as portrayed by Ebenezer Howard and Frank Lloyd Wright in their writings and visionary projects from the twentieth century have a strong chance of remaining Utopian in the future as well, due to their lack of real-life feasibility. However, their immense merit ought to be recognised, as these proposals did aim to solve a great number of issues former cities had, and revolutionised the traditional ideals of the urban dwelling.

references

1. Howard, Ebenezer. Garden Cities of To-morrow. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., 1902 .
2. Frank Lloyd Wright. Broadacre City: A New Community Plan. New York, Architectural Record Pub. Co, 1935.
3. More, Thomas, et al. Utopia., Munchen Manesse Verlag,2018.
4. Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. 1960.

This project was inspired by The Challenge Academy.

The architecture school was born in the middle of the nineteenth century, aiming to provide institutional education for all future architects and engineers. The most successful example of a school was L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which evolved into the most renowned such institution training thousands of students from all around the world, being one of the driving forces behind the development of then-modern architecture. Although successful in theory, it failed to promote alternative ways of thinking, guiding its students on already-explored paths, such as the rebirth and the reinterpretation of the classical style. Almost three centuries later, we find ourselves virtually in the same situation of looking back to what has already been done by the bright minds of the past. We are learning about architecture in the same manner as students did in the Beaux-Arts times, or in even worse ways. Fundamental learning techniques which were and could still be highly beneficial have now become extinct from schools, such as the architectural contest, or the Grand Tour of architectural masterpieces, while outdated practices are still popular. The same old classroom layouts, the same subjects, the same ways of interaction with a project. Seems like we are far behind the contemporary world that provides us with endless possibilities that emerge from both the rapid progress of technology and from our ever-evolving human nature.

The nineteenth-century schools offered Grand Tours for their students, meaning that direct interaction with the object of study was used as a learning technique. Nowadays, we have even more means of making that possible, means that don’t even involve actual traveling: virtual reality. VR can truly bring numerous advantages to architectural education, not only by enabling students to see the historical edifices they study from different perspectives (both from the outside and from the inside), but also by transcending the limits of interaction with their own projects. How can we better understand the spaces we create than by being able to virtually explore them? Moreover, the architectural ways of representation could also be upgraded. The lifeless technical drawings can be brought to life, creativity taking on new levels and bringing the project even closer to reality. The architect-client or student-professor relationship could be greatly improved if VR was used for better visualization of ideas. New ways of teaching could be born, in which the professor meets the student in a virtual space and they are both able to play with volumes, shapes, colors in order to convey their ideas as close to what they look like inside their minds. However, we are still human and virtual reality cannot replace our environment completely. Therefore, it should be used wisely and for a limited time in a day, focusing on spending the rest of the time trying out other effective and interesting learning methods that are humane and physical. Technology should be used responsibly and it has to augment our human lives, not destroy them.

The theoretical part plays a huge role in the development of future architects as well. Architecture is a highly interdisciplinary career, meaning that it requires training in an interdisciplinary environment. For instance, the collaboration between students from different faculties may spark imagination and lead to interesting and innovative ideas, projects and results. Moreover, architecture students should be encouraged to take some courses from other universities as well (closely related to architecture, or not), in order for them to be able to get a sense of what they enjoy most and build a suitable career path for themselves. Exploration is key in this case, which is exactly the reason why collaborating with students and professors from diverse fields could prove to be highly beneficial.

Architecture education ought to take an ageless approach as well, inviting students from different years or even teachers and students to work together and share their knowledge with each other. The design experience that teachers or older students have can be useful for the younger students, while the fresh ideas and original perspectives of the beginners can be inspiring for the more experienced. This collaboration is not necessary to take place only for studio projects, but also for studying theoretical subjects, by creating study groups. This way, the distinction between experienced and beginner can slowly diffuse, so that a healthier teaching environment is created. While the obvious statement that students learn from teachers is true, we can also prove that the opposite can be just as true. In this case, the collaboration can go even further, by forming teams that can take on more considerable projects, such as contests, thus providing a motivating, challenging environment that is advantageous for everyone.

While we acquire knowledge mostly with our brains, we need our whole body to support creativity and to express it beautifully. Physical activities are proved to encourage that, which is why they should be included in the architecture school curriculum. Having a sports field big enough to fit the practice of various sports can be a great way of motivating students to bring movement to their creative process. They may learn to express themselves through dancing, body art, yoga, or body fluidity classes, which seem to be the most suitable ways of making art with our bodies. The body’s motion is proved to elevate the mental state and this can translate to a rise in creativity levels. Hand in hand with the health of the body goes the health of the mind, which can be maintained using mindfulness techniques. Mindfulness can improve the students’ focus, clear the mental clutter and make room for new ideas.

Although technology plays a huge role in our lives already, and we can further use it to upgrade ourselves, we should never forget our human nature. This is why the ideal school should have anthropological studies, whether it’s the study of the mind or the body. Architects are working with people, therefore skills such as psychology (understanding people’s behaviors), public speaking (connecting to people through spoken discourses), or human scale (as architecture is destined for people to use) might find their place in the curriculum. Buildings of the future could take new dimensions provided all architects knew how to best collaborate with their clients as well as how to best design for them. The development of strong interpersonal relationships is a skill useful in both our personal and professional life.

While I am aware that not all the design fiction presented in this essay is feasible and straightforward for future implementation, this is the way in which I envision the ideal environment for education in architecture. We are constantly changing and evolving and I strongly believe our schools, as well as teaching and learning methods, should keep up the pace. Although it’s hard to tear everything down and start from scratch, we can constantly work on improving what we have now. Let’s dare to wish for a future in which we have better education and better architecture.