Oxford Brookes University
Andrew Dawson and Igea Troiani
What happens when water resources diminish? When industrial pollution becomes so thick we can't breathe? When we can no longer live on the earth? What architectural technologies will we adopt to save us? The environmental agenda is having an unprecedented effect on contemporary architecture, practice and education. All our media heralds it the next big disaster. This Unit C studio evaluated, in a critical way, the problem of the future of the planet earth by looking at precedent examples by visionaries (architects, filmmakers, science fiction novelists, comic writers) who have tried to fantasise and envision how our cities, architecture, social and governmental systems will change. Unit C students produced their own apocalyptic visions of the world we will live in. All studio projects were set in 2048 in London or New York.
By embracing science fiction as an architectural design tool, the studio deliberately sets the environmental agenda as a creative one, extending beyond our current solutions of wind turbines, insulated cavities etc. into a world of unknown architectures, urbanism and new social systems. Students were encouraged to design futurist-primitive architecture.