Picture by Hans Tak, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016

Technologies like driverless cars and smart heating systems could end up making cities dysfunctional according to Maarten Hajer, chief curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016. Speaking at an opening event for the biennale, Hajer called for architects and designers to stop treating the advent of smart technologies as inevitable, and to question whether they will solve any problems at all.

“People with lots of media force pretend to know exactly what the future will look like, as if there is no choice,” he said. “I’m of course thinking about self-driving vehicles inevitably coming our way.” Discussions about the future of cities are at risk of being “mesmerised” by technology, he added. “We think about big data coming towards us, 3D printing demoting us, or the implication of robots in the sphere of health, as if they are inevitabilities. My call is for us to think about what we want from those technological advances.”

“I have nothing against good technology, it’s wonderful, but you always want social problems to be the priority. If it doesn’t help us get CO2 down, if it doesn’t help us make cities more socially inclusive, if it doesn’t help us make meaningful work, I’m not interested in smart technology. Sometimes I think: “if smart technology is the solution, then what was the problem again?”

Read the full interview at Dezeen. Thanks to Anne-Marie Pronk.

By Laurie Lipton.

Anatomies by Fernando Vicente. Via Tecob & Bioephemera. Inspired by the works of Fritz Kahn and others (see illustrations below).

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Above: Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace), Fritz Kahn, 1926. More of his work here and here.

“Fritz Kahn’s books and illustrations explored the inner machinery of
the human body, using metaphors of modern industrial life. Kahn turned
the brain into a complex factory with light projectors, conveyor belts,
secretaries and cinema screens; he showed the journeys of blood cells
as locomotives encircling the globe; and he compared bones to modern
building materials such as reinforced concrete.” (source).

 
Above: Corps Machine, illustrator unknown, found at Agence Eureka.

 
Above: The Head Office, by Harrold Wheeler, 1941

Above: The miracle of life, by Harold Wheeler, 1941

Above: Detail of a Chinese health poster (source).

The Venus Project advocates an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization: “Many people believe that there is too much technology in the world today, and that technology is the major cause of our environmental pollution. This is not the case.”