FabricateCity Series: Imagining the Next Metropolis
August 2018
Preamble
According to Vivian Sobchack, an American cinema and media theorist and cultural critic, “the Science fiction film is a film genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown” (Sobchack 63).
This definition suggests a continuum between (real-world) empiricism and (supernatural) transcendentalism, with science fiction film on the side of empiricism, and horror film and fantasy film on the side of transcendentalism. However, there are numerous well-known examples of science fiction horror films, epitomized by such pictures as Frankenstein and Alien.
The visual style of science fiction films can be characterized by a clash between alien and familiar images. This clash is implemented when alien images become familiar, as in A Clockwork Orange, when the repetitions of the Korova Milkbar make the alien decor seem more familiar. As well, familiar images become alien, as in the films Repo Man and Liquid Sky. For example, in Dr. Strangelove, the distortion of the humans make the familiar images seem more alien. Finally, alien and familiar images are juxtaposed, as in The Deadly Mantis, when a giant praying mantis is shown climbing the Washington Monument.
Cultural theorist Scott Bukatman has proposed that science fiction film allows contemporary culture to witness an expression of the sublime, be it through exaggerated scale, apocalypse or transcendence.
Source: Wikipedia
Insights
While science fiction movies are a speculation of future society, future direction in architecture and urbanity is undertaken in Design Studio in architecture schools. This form of design exploration is especially relevant in the present twenty-first century, where social and economic conditions are rapidly changing under unrelenting waves of technological improvement in areas of automation, artificial intelligence and information systems. Old modes of architecture production are no longer able to reflect new spatial practices.
Under the conditions of new modes of knowledge production, architecture emerges from trajectories of pervasive use of artificial intelligence, information technology, information systems, automation and robotics that have penetrated the inner sanctum of human mind, social fabrics and civic and economic polity of the state. Control and manipulation of information through artificial intelligence integrated with hardware has emerged. We need not look further then Google, Amazon, Facebook, AliBaba, Tencent, Apple, and Samsung to understand probable future direction.
Thus, imagining a future metropolis is imperative in the exploration and the creation of emergent architecture; a place where architecture is the mediator of knowledge production and transmission.
Reference Movies
eXisten Z 1999, David Cronenberg
Inception 2010, Christopher Nolan
Ghost in the Shell 1995, Masamune Shirow
Her 2013, Spike Jonze
Metropolis 1927, Fritz Lang (Giorgio Moroder’s Edition)
The Matrix 1999, Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski
Brazil 1985, Terry Gillian
Blade Runner 1982, Ridley Scott