Preface

Dis-Ruptive Horizons

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The built world reflects human development - and human development has never been a straightforward process. While we can try our best to anticipate the changing needs of our cities, these needs are often shaped by complex forces moving more quickly or inscrutably than planners or designers can anticipate. The consequences are always disruptive, but they can also be existential. Environmental crises and associated phenomena such as rapid migration, violent conflicts, resource scarcity and biodiversity loss have historically disrupted ancient civilisations, just as they are affecting rapid change in modern societies, but on a planetary scale.

 

Human action has always been driven by a strong power of imagination. While this ingenuity has led to countless masterpieces it has also unfortunately led to some unforeseen disruptive consequences. This duality of power that human impact possesses puts forward an imperative question: Where do we place the fine line between imagination and insolence within this field of tension on the horizon? 

 

In this edition of Urbanogram, a compilation of theoretical as well as practical works bears witness for ongoing disruptions. A total of eleven articles from young architectural designers, theorists and artists with a high diversity of cultural backgrounds allows insights into distinct anthropogenic [1] scenarios contemporarily encountered in urban environments in different parts of this world. At this, the plural notion of horizons acts as a provocative gesture to accentuate a multitude of pressing challenges, which can be faced if we are receptive to a diverse variety of scenarios and propositions.

 

Dis-Ruptive Horizons focuses on four key subject areas directly linked to the anthropogenic condition described above: Trauma, Infrastructure, Technology and Housing. While Trauma treats disruptions suffered by societies and their built environments through destruction and cultural displacement, Infrastructure addresses issues emerging within common and public spaces by raising questions about participation, identity, safety, and inclusivity. Technology shifts the narrative perspective from locally rooted studies to a wider investigation by analysing technocentric narratives in the context of climate crisis on a global scale. The journal concludes with three distinct works about Housing, which not only mirror current practices, but critically look into the future of cohabitation on a planet with limited resources and rapidly growing populations.

 

In their essays our writers explore how conflicting and disruptive forces manifest in the built environment, how they have shaped our material and immaterial world in the past and in the present, and how they might affect our future. It is the objective of this issue of Urbanogram to highlight pluralist approaches to the anthropogenic condition we are all part of. It has never been more important to conceptualise new inclusive, brave, nonconformist, and indeed, disruptive horizons. Our writers, architects and architectural theorists are meeting these new challenges with an open mindset and a toolkit full of creativity.

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Editorial Team

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Cover Image

 

Serving as a strong symbol as well as defining representation, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) searched for sites that clearly showcase traces of the profound and extensive impact of human activities on a global level. Nine sites were selected for consideration, ranging from coral reefs in Australia and the Gulf of Mexico, seafloor sediments in the Baltic Sea, one lake in Canada and another one in California, a peat bog in Poland, ice sediments in Antarctica, a volcano crater in China to a bay in Japan. Each site indicates physical evidence of human activity in the form of organic and inorganic sediments, radioactive isotopes from atomic explosions or residues of burnt fossil fuels or fertilizers. [1]

 

The cover image [2] contains satellite photographs of a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. The island floats in the dark blue sea and is surrounded by swirls of bright green and yellow algae bloom that is strongly fueled by fertilizer residues in the water. Traces of the increased blooming and fertilizer concentration can be found in the sediments on its ocean floor. Despite the beauty of the blooming algae, its occurrence serves as a drastic visual reminder of the rupture in the earth’s geological timeline. [3]

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