Beyond Today

A look at the emerging trends of architecture that will redefine the way the world looks in the next decade.

- Seema Sreedharan

Have you ever envisioned how our cities will look in the future? There are two parallel visions. One — futuristic, straight out of a sci-fimotion picture, and on the extreme, a rather bleak version of cities collapsing under environmental and man-made disasters. But we are talking about the world in between. We might not be colonising Space any time soon, but some exciting trends are giving us plenty of reasons to get enthusiastic about the future of the built environment. The architecture of the future is, in fact, far more spectacular than you could imagine, and it is closer than we might think. The current projects are already answering the imagined needs and desires of the next generation. In our current era, as technology hurtles along at a fast pace and makes innovation all the more possible, intrepid architects, designers and engineers are continually looking to the future to create the next world-changing invention.

TREND: DISASTER-PROOF ARCHITECTURE Case Study: Futuristic Forts, Mexico by artist Dionisio GonzaÌlez

Dauphin Island, located off the coast of Alabama in the Gulf of Mexico, is known for experiencing perpetual and catastrophic hurricanes. When a storm hits the small island of around 1,200 people, it often washes away much of the coastline with it, leaving residents to rebuild their homes again and again following every big storm. "I was fascinated by this society's resilience and ability to endure creation and destruction in such rapid succession," says artist Dionisio GonzaÌlez, who has always held an interest in architecture. He embarked on a mission to design surreal structures that fuse fantasy with the inhabitants' inevitable reality. For his series 'Dauphin Island', GonzaÌlez designed dreamlike, futuristic forts made from iron and concrete, fusing the role of artist with that of architect, engineer and urban planner.