Architectural Future(s)2023–24
Feed Overview

BARC0158





Coordinator
H&T DIRECTOR
Tutors

Guests









Domains The Bartlett School of Architecture
University College London

MSci Architecture
Y4 History & Theory

Kay Sedki

Guang Yu Ren

Kay Sedki
Stamatis Zografos

Emily Mann (UCL, Survey of London)
Michael Hebbert (UCL, BSP)
Polly Hudson (Alan Turing Institute)
Peg Rawes (UCL, BSA)
Emily Priest (UCL; AA)
Reinier de Graaf (OMA/AMO)
José L. Torero Cullen (UCL, CEGE)
Toby Day (UCL)

Yesterday’s Future(s) Non-Linear Histories
Urban Future(s) Precarity & Equity
Future(s) of the Past - Heritage & Memory
Digital and Planetary Future(s)
Future Ecologies - Sustainable Future(s)
Future Architecture(s) - Future Architects


“Future(s) That Are Our Own”

Our present was once the future and yesterday’s dream. Now, as we look forward,  what future(s) do we envision for ourselves, for others and for our planet? Faced with new and exciting innovations, on one hand, and urgent challenges, on the other, to what end(s) shall we mobilise our creative imaginaries, and by what means can we achieve them?



The Twentieth Century was laden with speculative hypotheses in every area of life, and architects could not resist the temptation to prophesy about the shape life must take to adhere to their lofty visions. From Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, to Constant’s New Babylon, the Futurama at the New York Fair to the Deconstructivists at MoMA, through Fuller’s domes, Isozaki’s capsules and Kaplický’s blobs, Sant’Elia’s Città Nuova to Archigram’s Insant City, and Niemeyer’s Brasilia to Rem’s Exodus, the visionary architectures of the avant-garde failed to anticipate the future they aimed to inspire; due, at times, to their egocentric visions or, at others, to their naïvetés towards the complexities that govern our realities. So, now, armed with hindsight and knowledge of yesterday’s aspirations and failures, must we abandon speculation and divorce our creative work from imaginable dreams? And if, “everything imaginable can be dreamed,” (Calvino, Invisible Cities), is everything imagineable worth dreaming?  In the wake of WWII, Fred Polak writes in Images of the Future (1955) that without dreaming up alternative and better realities we cannot transcend the shortcomings of our present ones. Our imaginaries must then stem from a desire to improve conditions for ourselves and others; our dreams must be, like our future(s), plural, collective and participatory; they ought to encapsulate our best intentions and elevate our moral standards; they must factor in our differences and regard our histories; they should look up towards the innovative spirit of our time and discover its usefulness for improving our world and our environment, without looking down on the obstacles facing those farther away from the scope of our sight;  and if we must dream of architecture, then let’s dream of buildings immersed in life, and of our future(s) that are uniquely our own.


“architect, verb”

Lecture, Panel Discussion and Book signing
With Reinier De Graaf (OMA/AMO)
BSA, 22 Gordon St, London, 23/11/23



Architecture is a future-oriented practice; quick to conceptualise and slow to materialise; often late – or, otherwise, too early. Actions of architecture are inherently speculative, constantly navigating a world of uncertainty and change. Today, in practice and in education, mirrors have turned towards architecture itself inviting critique and speculation about the future of architectural practice and putting to question its values and influence. These questions drive the history & theory module, Architectural Future(s), on MSci Year 4, where students and guests discuss different ‘domains of change’ impacting (or impacted by) architecture. In this public episode of Architectural Future(s), our guest, Reinier de Graaf, will share his thoughts on some of these notions with students and a wider audience. The event is organised by Architecture MSci for the cluster programmes Architecture BSc,  Architecture MArch and Engineering and Architectural Design MEng andincludes a poster exhibition and a student-led discussion panel.

How to build world-class, award winning, creative, innovative, sustainable, liveable and beautiful spaces that foster a sense of place and wellbeing.

Be it sci-fi megastructures in the Middle East or historicist towns in the UK, new projects are invariably marketed with the same buzzwords: “world-class”, “award-winning”, “creative”, “innovative”, “sustainable”, “livable”, “beautiful” or fostering “a sense of place and wellbeing”. What is the significance of such terms? When does a building warrant the label “world-class”? Why is one city more “liveable” than the next? What is the meaning of “innovation” in architecture? And what building can credibly claim to improve anyone's “wellbeing”?  If De Graaf’s debut book Four Walls and a Roof was about debunking myths within the architecture profession, architect, verb aims to debunk myths projected onto architecture by the outside world – a rebuttal of doctrines which have been applied to architecture over the last twenty years. The incorporation of extraneous terms such as “livability”, “innovation” or “wellbeing” into the glossary of architecture is part of an ongoing trend in which the language to debate architecture is less and less architects' own, and more and more that of outside forces imposing outside expectations. Once a profession known for its manifestos, architecture finds itself increasingly forced to adopt ever-more extreme postures of virtue, held accountable by the world of finance, the social sciences or the medical sector.

Reinier de Graaf (1964, Schiedam) is a Dutch architect and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and the co-founder of its think-tank AMO. Reinier is the author of Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, the novel The Masterplan, and the recently published architect, verb. He lives in Amsterdam.

Yesterday’s Future(s)
Lecture
Kay Sedki
Abstract Posters
Home



Dis/Replacement: Processes of Displacement and Replacement During Periods of Transformation at The Barrington Recovery Site

Anna Williams
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024The Barrington Recovery Site, a former Cambridgeshire Clunch quarry and cement works within the ancient Parish of Barrington, is currently being infilled and developed with 220 new suburban homes.This essay examines the instances and practices of simultaneous re-placements, uncovering what new compositions are constituted through periods of transformation.

[View..]



Euston Town: retaking the city in the wake of HS2

Dominic Nunn
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 A delay in the HS2 redevelopment of Euston and the premature demolitions has left local resident communities awaiting a new urban centre which has an indeterminable delivery date. This essay is an exploration of how to enact a democratic right to the city by assessing activist strategies to reclaim derelict, redevelopment-bound land.

[View..]


Order and Dis-Order Within the London Food Landscape: Exploring the Street Party and Structures of Social Eating

Hanna Eriksson Södergren
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 Social eating in public space is a convivial action that has been limited in the modern London high street. This essay looks at an alternative social eating practice, the street party, and how its structure challenges the currently limiting ideals of social eating on the high street.

[View..]


Pamphlet for a Humanized Architectural Future Conserving and Celebrating Local Communities through Relicfication

Hansen Wang
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 Our Local community is unique and important! And it is crucial that we strive to protect it. In this pamphlet, the importance of the local community will be discussed and reaffirmed, followed by some emerging methods that can be implicated in our community’s conservation and celebration. To ensure a humanized vision of architectural future, the diverse building blocks of our urban fabric must be preserved!

[View..]


Reimagining Solidarities and Spaces in the Era of Industry 4.0 : Exploring the case study of Battersea as a Microcosm for a New Industrial Urbanism

Ismail Mir
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 This essay explores the profound impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on urban spaces and the nature of work. Drawing from Battersea, London as a case study, it highlights the evolving dynamics of Industry 4.0 and suggests strategies for optimizing city life and workspaces in this rapidly changing technological landscape.

[View..]


Transient Homes

Maria Paola Barreca
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 The sense of home in Woodberry Down Estate regeneration: An exploration of social housing precarity and temporary housing provisions.


[View..]


The Dialectic Relationship between the Peak District and Manchester, An enquiry into the perception, reality and politics of industrial innovation on the Derbyshire Moors

Toby Prest
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 The city and the countryside have been forever engaged in a conceptual tug of war. It could be remarked that this struggle is mediated by industry. In absence, it contains the city through lack of means, and in abundance, it colonises the countryside through expansion. This essay evaluates this conflict through the Hegelian Dialectic.


[View..]


Gazing and Glancing: Moments of Queer Mutuality in Public Spaces

Xan Goetzee Barral
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 The intimate, idiosyncratic and ephemeral qualities of the phenomenon of the 'queer gaze' are explored across past, present, and future temporalities through the application of Sara Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology’ to a series of interviews.


[View..]


Fragmented Cognition of City’s Image: distractions from technology

Xan Goetzee Barral
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 People’s optical unconsciousness about the building environment is because these buildings are often passively accepted by people in a distracted way. Hence, the cognition of the image of the city becomes fragmented and chaotic. The city experience affected by technology is fast and constantly changing and passively accepted by people, which makes people feel overwhelmed and unable to immerse themselves in actively building their own cognition of the image of the city.


[View..]


The Desire for Dragons: A Critical Study Into the Application of 'Concrete Fantasy' and 'Parafiction' in Our Architectural Future(s)

Samuel Jackson
UCL, BSA, MSci Y4, 2024 Today, in our time, they exist in the city and each day they wake, the boundaries between reality and fiction become harder to detect. They have no control over the dimension in which they move. They exist in multiple realms, often simultaneously, but cannot always abide by their rules. The Great Imagination helps them to find truth and meaning through a fantasy; one dependent on perpetual revisions to the outlines that define their real world. They cannot hope to evolve without this fantasy. Cultures cannot grow without myth, and they have exhausted their best stock. They must find more or perhaps invent some. With such precarious times ahead, what might become of their new mythologies and beacons of hope that help them navigate through unchartered lands? The story of this age need not be a cautionary tale.


[View..]