ARC3705H S
Instructor: Hans Ibelings
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 3:00pm - 6:00pm

This seminar examines how in the near future the design, production and use of architecture and cities will be affected by rapidly and dramatically changing ecological circumstances and technological developments. In the course students will explore the intersection of climate change and technological innovations and their impact on the (built) environment, and on the life led in and between buildings. In this seminar students will develop scenarios, in words and images, of architecture in the coming decades. The course will look back at futures of the recent past and look forward to potential, possible, probable, and plausible futures of architecture and cities. What will be the impact of driverless cars on mobility, online shopping on city centres, artificial intelligence on the design of buildings, virtual realities on material worlds, or a jobless society on how the built environment is used and how people interact?

What will be the consequences of climate change for building, architecture, cities, food and water security, migration, biodiversity? What will be the architecture of 2030, 2040, 2050?

The course consists of brief lectures, scenario writing exercises, discussions, and student presentations.