Architects (me included) often like to complain about the dullness of our cities and the challenging conditions they're faced with designing and building interesting projects in the city.
Whether that's true or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that the solutions to some of our greatest urban challenges (housing crisis, anyone?) already exist, but somehow aren't being implemented on a wider scale, or even considered because they are too out of the ordinary.
I'm not claiming that all these ideas are good or even feasible, but as is the case for any creative endeavour, a lot of ideas will be discarded and the best ones will come out on top as a result of many iterations and refinement over time.
What's amazing is that by removing all the traditional constraints, these students can free themselves from thinking like a practicing architect and invent new typologies.
Yet, we rarely invest in these kinds of exercises outside of academia and instead revert to the status quo or the pre-existing solution that is safe, time-tested, without questioning whether it's still valid.
How do we encourage more investment of resources into creating and testing new ideas, so that we can be sure that we are building a city that is relevant to our current needs and not those of 50 years ago?
Hat tip to Reza Nik for sharing his student's work.
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