The Dream of Architecture and the Border of Imagination

What can be better to start an architectural Blog than a closer look at how our cities might look like, if they wouldn’t be designed by architects?
[Images by: Rayn Church]

Visionary ideas and utopia have always played an important role in the process of architectural design, but it is still hard to find those architects who are willing to go as far as the un-build-able and to rethink the possibilities of the future.
Architectural designs, also when looking at the most radical proposals, are usually framed into the borders of the architecture profession itself.
It seems like the “strict guide lines” and “rules” of the contemporary are rewriting the ways for the architectural creation by preventing it from free imagination that can lead to the production of extreme visionary works.

[Images / concept Design for Star Wars / by: Rayn Church]

One can start searching for those almost “ethical” profession borders which are probably laying somewhere next to technology’s highest end, or next to the known possibilities of the near future, but one thing is for sure, if something starts flying, it should allready be called 'science fiction'.

It is therefore pretty exciting to find such intensive work, that dealing with the possibilities of the far future of our cities in other places of creative production.

Film makers as well as computer game developers are taking such utopian ideas for futuristic surroundings to the next level.
For example designers and art directors of the Film Minority Report (2002 - directed by Steven Spielberg), which is playing in 2054 have portrayed a detailed credible future, with a somewhat realistic projection of urban design development.

[Images / Concept Design for Minority Report, by: James Clyne]

“Washington D C has evolved into three layers, the monuments of Washington that does not change; an upscale, bedroom community across the Potomac where Anderton lives that has developed vertically; and the old part of the city that has not kept up with the technological advances afforded to the rich. There’s a dark, decaying city which is where our tenement hotel, the alley chase and a significant part of the movie takes place." (McDowell, Set Designer)

Unlike blade runner, or other film set’s futuristic city designs, which develop the urban growth vertically, Minority Reports shows a traditional Horizontal development integrating single standing high raises trough out the entire city.

The film creates an entire environment concept, dealing intensively with every possible detail to back up the film script of the future.
Starting from future transportation possibilities through computer interfaces to small details as hand watches and cellular phones, it enables the viewer to a better imagination of such environmental developments.

It is possible to imagine that such detailed designs of other elements apart of the urban surrounding is what makes the film set, and the city within it, so “real”, which unlike architectural utopias gives the viewer a better look into all possible changes in his day to day life and does not leave these subjects unattended, dealing only with the build environment.

The unavoidable question now might be, do architects need to start designing hand watches? Well this can be left for the future to tell. Although one thing is certain, the development of new technologies does and would effect our build environment, so that we can learn a lot, about the possibilities laying a head, by taking a closer look at utopian ideas coming from a different direction.

References and Other related links:

http://www.jamesclyne.com/index.php / http://www.ryanchurch.com/index.htm / http://nickpugh.com/main.php?x=405987664 / http://www.grnr.com/gallery.php / http://www.kadonaga.net/index.html / http://www.drawthrough.com/index.php