Future Cities

The idea of the cities of the future is a delicate one. For half a decade we have witnessed the steady erosion of the city as a centralized social entity. As sprawl continues unabated, we have to wonder what the city of the future needs to be. There is little need for the city in a traditional sense. For centuries it has been the nexus of interaction between minds. But the internet has usurped that function. Likewise it has begun to dislodge the city as the primary commercial center of our society. In the U.S., the city is disolving into a paper thin network of semi-urban nodes. One need no longer reside in the metropolis to be current or up to date with the latest theories, trends, social fads, or the cutting edge in music, art, and literature. The newest trends seem more at home on the web than in store windows... so the man sitting in Iowa can be as in touch with the cutting edge as the woman sitting in Manhattan. The romantic idea of a booming metropolis is just a myth we hold on to for the sake of nostalgia. Something to stem the vertigo induced by the disolution of place.

So what role can a city play in the future? Is there some other need that massive human interaction can satisfy? Or must we realign our expectations with regard to the metropolis and begin constructing a network of cosmopolitain, semi-urban attractors that distribute goods and culture evenly across the spectrum? There's been a lot of talk about the need to revitalize the city center, but I am becoming more convinced that this is simply nostalgia for the archaic, or quaint. The mourning of a lost era.

What the cities can provide though is critical mass. They may not be the nexus of inspiration, but they can certainly be the furnace of large-scale cultural change. There seem to be two forces at work in the world, a generative, creative force which brings novelty into the world, and a accelerating force (like a wind-tunnel) that puts such novel concepts to the test. Great leaps of complexity require a lot of energy in addition to novel concepts and the great urban centers can certainly provide that energy. But in reality they are just cultural factories... the cultural studios where the cultural prototypes are made can be anywhere.

The Suitcase House: Exhibits: Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT

The Suitcase House: Exhibits: Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT

The original "Suitcase House" as conceived in 1945 was a much less glamorous affair. The intended use, much more deeply rooted in the wartime/post-depression mindset of rapid deployment and migrant work. That period in American history was marked by more nomadicism than almost any other. The Great Depression uprooted millions of Americans and WW2 became the most mobile war ever fought. Movement and speed were essential concepts for any designer. It was the beginning of the great age of uncertainty... and those capable of moving and adapting were those who survived and succeeded. It was this concept that made Nazi Germany so successful at first with it's Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tanks that would invade and destroy enemy territory before they had a chance to mount a defense. The first workers to show up for a job were the ones hired.

Speed won the day. While it may have been easy to mount such fast moving phenomena, maintaining them was another problem entirely. Logistics for something like that is labrynthian. As the advertisement for the Suitcase House shows in it's list of uses, the product is intended for logistical support of mutable phenomena: Migrant worker housing, Disaster relief, construction offices, field kitchens, invasion beach heads... With a 20 minute erection time and weighing just over a ton, the Suitcase House was an instant shelter for people who might show up anywhere and need to stay awhile... but not too long.

My biggest problem with these creations from that era is the uni-direction nature of the life of the project. The Suitcase House is sold on it's erection simplicity alone. It is meant to be built fast and then (we might suppose) abandoned... or made permanent. Though it really isn't designed to be a permanent object. It belongs to the archaeology of Toffler's Future Shock world. A world where manufactured goods are simply disposable. There is never any thought given to how this suitcase might be closed again and taken to another place. The opening sequence is lavishly illustrated and outlined... but the de-construction process is ignored.

I immediately think of the contemporary "mobile home" which is not mobile at all. It is more like a fossil as decks, lean-tos, and carports accrete around it and cement it to its location... drowning the spirit of mobility with the need for permanence. The term is a misnomer. These are mobile pre-homes. That is, they are mobile boxes that become homes... and permanent. I was always more interested in the de-construction process. How do you (re)move a "permanent" thing. The Sioux teepee, NASA's mobile launching towers, tour busses, even the original mobile home featured in John Steinbeck's autobiographical "Travels With Charley," succeed in being mobile in the true sense of the concept.

We can clearly see several types of kinetic architecture playing out here: Chang's suitcase house is a fixed shell which continuously transforms internally in two directions, The 1945 Suitcase House is a single linear transformation from condensed components to fixed house. The Sioux teepee is a collapsible structure which transforms between two fixed states ("erected" and "in motion",) NASA's rolling launch towers and the trailer home are non-transforming fixed architectures which are mobile. Each fulfills a niche use. The teepee perhaps comes as close as possible to a cultural mandate for motion. The site of the teepee need contain only one characteristic and that is the presence of American Bison. It is the most free of the lot. Can we conceive of a project which combines all these transformations into one object? And can we erect a life-style/culture around that creation? Or is there perhaps already a lifestyle which craves this object? Are we, as a people, tending to this lifestyle and, if so, is it the lack of a culture and technology that permit it, which keeps its realization at bay? Or perhaps we have reached a technological threshold which permits our minds to go where physical barriers impede our bodies. Or perhaps we can go so far and return so quickly that we need not take our homes with us?