by Mahshid Rezaei
In today’s world, amidst mounting concerns about climate change, architects find themselves grappling with numerous questions:
- What should the architecture of tomorrow look like?
- Which materials should it
incorporate? - What about technologies?
Yet, perhaps we should delve deeper and pose a more fundamental inquiry:
What defines architecture in the future?
Or, better yet, what should architecture be in the future?
Mere adjustments to aesthetics, materials, or technologies may not suffice for a sustainable future. Instead, we must scrutinize the essence of architecture – its past, present, and envisioned future. Could it be that the perception of architecture requires a radical shift from its current state?
I propose a hypothesis: Architecture is only halfway through its metamorphosis.
Consider, for instance, the paintings of Jan Brueghel the Elder from the 16th century, such as “Hunters in the Snow,” contrasted with the utopian cities envisioned by architects and urban designers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Whereas architecture once harmonized with nature as part of the landscape, it later emerged as the central figure in the collective imagination of the future – a utopian one, at that. This shift marginalized many other elements of the scenery, such as the landscape, casting us in a new light: entitled and authoritarian. Frankly, it’s no wonder we face a crisis today; it’s the consequence of our century-old visions of future cities. Aren’t we currently living in the dystopias of our past utopias?
What if we dared to reimagine future architecture from a less authoritative stance? What if architecture relinquished its role as the protagonist of our urban landscapes and assumed a more modest position? After all, isn’t architecture fundamentally a response to human needs, and don’t we have many other needs? Does architecture truly need to dominate the scene?
If we divide the time that architecture has been in use into pre-context, context, and post-context, then we can shed light on how this metamorphosis is a valid hypothesis. In the pre-context era, architecture was used as a backdrop. It was a setting, like a vast field, a beautiful forest, or a sea. Starting from the Renaissance with discoveries such as perspective and geometry, architecture began to be more highlighted in pictures. Fast forward to the context phase, beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century and extending to the present, architecture became the authoritative protagonist of our living environments, to the extent that it is now hard to imagine a city without high-rise buildings, towers, bridges, freeways, and consequently, cars. Architecture became a product that manifests our desire for building, speed, and consumption. Now, I am proposing a postcontext where the redefinition of architecture, combined with many new possibilities for a utopian future, allows us to live in different cities: cities that are not aggressively taking over nature but are rather a continuation of nature, allowing the boundaries to blur and slowly disappear.
Our collective imagination of a utopian city has evolved from seeing buildings and freeways to envisioning a harmonious picture that includes nature, biodiversity, slow mobility, fresh air, natural light, social justice, and democracy. AI plays a crucial role in this transformation, not by dictating specific solutions but by unlocking our imagination to see beyond current paradigms.
By redefining architecture in this way, we allow ourselves to explore new possibilities for living in harmony with the environment.
The potential of AI lies in its ability to help us reimagine the fundamental concepts of what a city can be. It can aid us in visualizing a future where architecture is not about dominance or isolation from nature but about coexistence and integration. This shift in imagination is the first step toward realizing a regenerative, climate-positive future.
The future is not about continuing to exploit nature with newer and more advanced technologies; it should be about using technology as a tool to mitigate climate change, social injustice, and other global challenges. Architecture will be redefined to take a more responsible stance, not to diminish its importance but to leverage its potential in moving from a human-centric perspective to a more democratic approach. The idea is not to fight nature anymore by isolating ourselves in carefully designed cities but to allow the planet, with everything it includes, to co-exist in the most harmonious, sustainable, and democratic way possible.