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EMERGENT CONDITIONS

THE FUTURE OF THE CITY

Speculative design

What can a city look like? How will it evolve in the future?

My group was interested in the following themes:

- nature vs urban space

- Social distancing

- Automated work

We developed a city reflecting these themes. The City of Tubes became our hermetic, ultra-controlled, robotised city. While definitely not being a blissful utopia of freedom. For us, it was a way for us to speculate on the future of work, the way we treat our environment in urban cities as well as a reflection on social distancing that was imposed on us during the pandemic.

My work focussed on the living space and certain everyday activities of the citizens.

Collaborators:

Iris Gong

Mavis Cao

Myles Cutchember

Field research of locations we consider to be "micro-cities"

Ideation - potential themes for the city

Early sketch of the city of tubes

The City of Nothing

A space where nature is untamed and where people can go outside and enjoy nature and exercise. It is also the oxygen reservoir for the city. Most tubes are not allowed to pass under the city pof nothing to preserve soil quality

Tubes

Tubes are the main mode of transport for goods, energy and people

The Good Centers

Production and delivery of goods takes place here. It is mostly controlled by AI, there are only a few human workers who manage the machines and perform physical labour.

Short stories on what life looks like in the city...

A living unit and its tubes

This is Tom's home. He lives in a 1 person apartment block. Space is expensive in the city of Tubes therefore the apartments are built to be compact, efficient and with social distancing in mind, this is because a lot of space is needed for the tubes!

 

Different tubes feed into the "single person apartments", tubes for goods, water and electricity and also for humans to leave their homes to the factories (a select few) or to the breathtaking City of Nothing, maybe Tom will take a walk there today...

Work & leisure

Tom's work is to help with the software maintenance of factory machines. He does all of this work from the comfort of his home and doesn't have fixed or long hours usually. He uses his touch screen that he can drag around his wall but he mostly uses to watch different forms of entertainment as well.

Intimacy

Tom has been dating Lydia for a few months. They met through a dating app and happen to be living next door to each other. They go on zoom dates and send each other various goods through the tube system. In the evening they use the mesh windows to be able to hold each other's hands, the mesh windows are the only form of physical intimacy they can have at the moment.

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