Timaeusopolis is a world we imagined for the New York CityVision Competition.
Brief:
If the future is gone, what past is expecting us?
Try to imagine New York in its future if the manipulation of the urban context and its architectural objects, joined with its inhabitants, will be influenced by SPACE and TIME.
In the formulation of your project proposal, you can follow one of these two themes, or combine them:
1. FROM PAST TO FUTURE. What went wrong?
2. FROM FUTURE TO PAST. An anachronistic future?
Timaeusopolis
There was a city of rigid order and symmetry whose citizens, blinded by greed and ambition, were too proud and overconfident to listen to the dreadful prophecies of the rising seas. In time, these predictions not only came true but exceeded the most conservative of forecasts. By the time the arrogant bureaucracy reacted, a third of the city was well underwater. Chaos took over as most retreated to higher grounds and away from the abandoned inundation of what was once a proud metropolis.
Far from becoming deserted, the flooded districts became home to the few courageous souls who refused to leave and to the many sea creatures that for centuries resided underneath and about the great vast blue; each bringing a grain of seaworthy knowledge to reconstruct a city like no other. In this city, the traditional orders have been reinvented: people swim to work, public squares float along the canals, gardens grow vertically, streets hover in the sky above… land and sea coexists in symbiotic harmony.
If you look carefully when the summer sun sets over the water covered old streets, you might spot a curious bureaucrat peeking from a corner, debating whether to join or never return to this strange but blissful place.
As part of Worlds of CityVision, 2012
CityVision is an architecture laboratory with the aim of generating a dialogue between the contemporary city and its future image. It’s a way to explore the reality and the future of architectural design thanks to an editorial project, CityVision magazine; the organization of international architecture competition, CityVision competition; events and lectures, CityVision events.
