General media thread for architecture, urban planning and design

[ac3r]

For More Radicals and Playgrounds in the City: https://artsoftheworkingclass.org/text/r...-interview

When play is considered as a sociogenic force we need to ask ourselves: who is excluded and who is invited to comply with the rules of the games we create? Whether in the form of a free-flow architecture or a matter of long-term urban planning, the answers we give determine the boundaries of what we desire from togetherness. There are the expectations to unearth in the playfulness within us, some of which keep us replicating a hierarchy of sorts, in and outside of the sandbox. The following interview highlights the curatorial intentions behind the exhibition Radical Playgrounds: From Competition to Collaboration at Gropius Bau, Berlin.

[ac3r]

Sharing this intriguing film that explores our planetary extinction in case anyone here has never heard of it before. It is more of an artistically driven work than anything documentary or narrative based but the animations, costumes and sound are all spectacular and worth sharing.

Firstly, SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) is holding an exhibition this September titled Views of Planet City, featuring over 60 programs and exhibitions relating to Liam Young's short film titled Planet City. Drawing from Edward O. Wilson's well acclaimed 2016 book Half-City which proposes we "remove at least 50% of our planet’s land and marine areas from human use and set them aside for preservation and regeneration of biodiversity" the architect, architectural theorist and artist Liam Young directed a short film that depicts a speculative solution to the climate crisis and endless urban sprawl. Expanding on Wilson's original idea, Planet City shows what our future may look like if we were to construct a single metropolis of 10 billion people - the expected population of our planet by 2050 - and allowed nature to reclaim the remainder of the planet for itself, lest we prolong the inevitable extinction of the Earth we currently occupy.

Humans dominate the planet. Following centuries of colonisation, globalisation and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism we have remade the world from the scale of the cell to the tectonic plate. But what if we radically reversed this planetary sprawl? What if we reached a global consensus to retreat from our vast network of cities and entangled supply chains into one hyper-dense metropolis housing the entire population of earth? Planet City explores the productive potential of extreme desification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness.

Although widely provocative, Planet City eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial masterplan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture - a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research and traditional knowledge. It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.

This is a fiction shaped like a city. Simultaneously an extraordinary image of tomorrow and an urgent examination of the environmental questions facing us today.

---

The film follows a continuous festival procession dancing through the city on a 365 day loop. Each day it intersects with a different carnival, culture and celebration, changing the beat as it goes, endlessly cycling through new colors, costumes and cacophonies.

Watch Liam Young - Planet City, 2021 (unfortunately the only full version I can find is on BiliBili and is low resolution...if I can find something better, I'll reply with a link): https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1eg4117...3137374C48

More information on Planet City and other extraordinary works by Young including numerous architectural proposals, theory, films, documentaries, art, dance, writing, theory and more can be found on his website: https://www.liamyoung.org/

If you are interested in the upcoming exhibition which is opening September 14th at the Pacific Design Centre in West Hollywood/Los Angeles, USA you can find more information here: https://pst.art/en/exhibitions/views-of-planet-city

[ac3r]

The Daniel's Faculty's Fall 2024 public lecture and exhibit program schedule is out and begins September 12th 2024. If you are interested in any of the events - which cover everything from architecture, philosophy, art, theory etc - head over to the link below and be sure to register on the Eventbrite page for the event you are interested in. All events are free, but they do prefer you register first.

https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/news/wed...ic-program