This fall semester (2019/20) The Why Factory will offer MSc3/4 Making Future Cities, The Next Agenda.
Our planet is subject to dramatic climate change that requires all of us to speed up action in order to save it. But we are so slow… The depletion of natural resources is accelerating tremendously. Huge income disparities create enormous social tensions. Moving populations demand for action. Rampant desertification demands forests. Exponential population growth requires more products, more food, more oxygen, more energy, more water, better waste treatment. We need an agenda for change. An agenda to be implemented. Now! That together form and make the future city.
The Why Factory graduation studio invites students to explore their own fascination. Together they define the next agenda for future cities. Can our cities be truly green? Can they be fully adaptable? Can they be healthy? Welcoming? Diverse? Can they rely on air transportation, on free mobility? Can they be fully automated? Fully transparent? Can they be free, open, and democratic?
The goal of the studio is to guide students to develop strong individual proposals and a collective research. The studio will not only focus on one existing city, but rather explore an atlas of cities in order to compare and stress the implementation of those topics in different realities. The Why Factory methodology is supported by the Future Models seminar bringing expertise in the field of computation, design process and visual thinking.
We believe that the future city appears on all levels, on all scales. From XXS to XXL and vice versa. From better materials, to better facades, to better houses, better cities and a better world. Yes, everything is urbanism!