To conclude Winy Maas’s year at Domus, we invited a number of authors we consider essential to write a short reflection about the future of urbanism, architecture, art and design; about the future of humanity; about the future of spaceship Earth... We also asked them to provide us with an image of their choice to illustrate their words. All the authors we contacted responded with enormous generosity to our call. In a context of climate crisis, of the threat of (yet) another global recession, and of profound scepticism about the future, one tries to find optimism between the lines written by each contributor. One understands that, even if there is no crystal ball that can tell what will become of us, there is a lot in the past to learn from – that crisis can be an opportunity to make us better, and that humanity has overcome previous calamities by giving imagination a chance. Let’s bring out the best in ourselves and design a future full of imagination.
Javier Arpa

The science fiction of my youth is the reality of today: the science fiction of today will be reality for the next generation. The pioneering cities of the future are set to similarly amaze us all.

Big data comes with the promise of new sustainability and mobility standards in the urban sphere but there is a risk of it deploying subtle persuasion and governance technologies.

The industrial spatial systems within the factory and in the city at large are becoming increasingly sustainable, agile and hybrid, supporting a democratic work culture and creating an urban biome that closely mimics the bio-diverse natural world.

We live in a sitopia (from Greek sitos, food + topos, place). Sitopia isn’t utopia, yet by learning to value food and harnessing its power, we can come close to the utopian dream of creating a fair, healthy, resilient society.

In order to generate completely new ideas about the future city, concepts of financial and design speculation must be integrated with a third variable: landscape.

Artist Klaus Littmann has installed a forest in a stadium to highlight the fragility of our natural world. The entire playing surface of the facility (unused for much of the year) has been covered by landscape architect Enzo Enea with a forest of trees typical of central Europe, some of which weigh up to six tons. The trees will be replanted nearby after the exhibition closes. The artist was inspired by a 1971 dystopian painting which depicts a stadium crowd looking at an artificial forest in a world without any nature. Klaus Littmann’s message is crystal clear: in the future will forests exist only as exhibition objects? The answer to this question depend on us.

The development of timber structures for tall buildings is a strategic measure to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry, in view of a demand for housing that is expected to surge by 2030.

In today’s crisis situation, there has never been a greater need for architectural research, expertise and design imagination.

Building for small businesses, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.

The architect Winy Maas and Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam have a deep think about how the city can be made denser and friendlier at the same time. Interview with Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam.

To deal with the looming crisis and relative lack of resources, architecture has to be far more sensitive to context and capable of satisfying human needs.

A quantitative and thematic analysis of 10 issues of Domus.

Noelle Mason, Backscatter Blueprint (La Maleta), cyanotype, from the series X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility, 2018–2109. The work will be exhibited from 7 to 24.11.2019 at the Design Canberra Festival in the group exhibition “Now You See Me: Visualizing the Surveillance State“.