Future Fictions

How can architecture strengthen the bond between people and place, and the placelessness of homogenized cities?’. Australian environmental thinker Glenn Albrecht, seeing the links between human and ecosystem health, coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to articulate the emotional and behavioural consequences of climate change. ‘Eco-anxiety’ of this kind is an emerging phenomenon, triggered by both small-scale and global environmental challenges. As a unit focused on environment and future-thinking, this year Unit 11 imagined a new vocabulary for Generation Anthropocene and asked, “How can architecture respond to the emotional and environmental effects of the climate crisis?”.

Situating ourselves within a global context, this line of questioning has been interrogated through projects sited across the globe. Cities and their architecture are never finished and are by their nature experimental. With this in mind, we initially drew inspiration from Boston, USA, focusing on four stories where interrelating narratives and histories gave both a provocation and a site for investigation. By exposing the complexity of human/environmental relationships they provide a physical, cultural and political context for the Unit’s work. In response to readings of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, published in 1887, utopian thinking is understood as an extrapolation of the present and emerges from a longing for change. “What models for future life can be imagined in the 21st Century?”

In addition, the unit was also inspired by the radical transformations of Boston’s physical geography to enable the city’s rapid economic expansion. The draining of marsh and flattening of hills allowed the creation of territories for institutional, domestic and ecclesiastical development, alongside the Emerald Necklace of public parks, which emerged as the public realms of Bellamy’s vision. We asked, “How will future transformations in society and the natural environment be reflected in the built environment?”

These research strands have been adapted and challenged across the unit, resulting in a wide variety of proposals connecting people, place and the environment.

4th Year Students: Henry Aldridge, Jiawei Fan, Jennifer Oguguo, Jacqueline Yu
5th Year Students: Harry Andrews, Emily Child, Ernest Chin, Chia-Yi Chou, Pearl Chow, Chris Collyer, Charlie Pye, Mark Ng, Ron Tse, Maya Whitfield, Bill Chuzhengnan Xu

Prizes and Medals
Max Fordham Environmental Design Prize—Chia-Yi Chou
Year 5 Portfolio Prize—Chia-Yi Chou