There exists a parallel universe – or rather, an architecture parallel to that of those skyscrapers anchored to the earth by both gravity and realistic budgets. That parallel architecture is speculative architecture. It does not ask what we can build today, but rather imagines what we ought to build tomorrow. It is a discipline which, through a combination of science fiction, critical theory and spatial design, envisions utopian concepts that go beyond the fate of our species as inhabitants of the planet.
Speculative architecture began in the 1960s as an ironic and radical reaction to the dizzying advances in technology and the euphoria of the space race. Avant-garde collectives such as Archigram and Superstudio designed, at that time, floating cities, monumental networks enveloping the planet, and nomadic structures that moved like living organisms. They did not submit plans to property developers nor did they seek specific clients; they launched intellectual satellites.
Their message was unequivocal: architecture is not bricks, steel and concrete, but a reflection of the human condition. Therefore, the question should not be so much about the feasibility of their proposals as about the future of that condition. After all, the future is not a fixed destination, but a malleable canvas that speculative architects dare to smear with bold strokes.
By deliberately ignoring economic constraints and regulatory restrictions, these creators explore the consequences of our current actions and pose questions that nobody else is asking. What will our homes be like in an inhabited multiplanetary universe? And what of the city, if work, leisure and rest are moved into virtual environments? Far from being idle, these questions anticipate dilemmas that conventional architecture will face sooner or later.
Liam Young, for example, with his Planet City project, proposes concentrating the entire human population — 10,000 million people — into a single metropolis the size of an average region, and returning the rest of the planet to nature, so that ecosystems can regenerate and flora and fauna can thrive. Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers are using synthetic biology to cultivate materials that grow rather than being manufactured, in a form of ‘architecture of living buildings’.
Ultimately, speculative architecture reminds us of a truth we often forget: to transform the future, we must first imagine it. And the audacity to imagine that future, even if it has no immediate consequences, lays the conceptual foundations upon which, one day, the buildings that will change the world will be built.
By Manolo Barberá, senior hydraulic modeller in the Architecture Department at Amusement Logic
