Co-created with the Architectural League of New York
The converging and ongoing crises of COVID-19, climate change, radical economic inequality, pervasive racism, and racist violence require that all systems, infrastructures, and institutions, including architecture, space, and cities, be reimagined. This reimagining must include how and to what ends architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design can act in the world.
This workshop, organized by The Architectural League of New York, brought architects, planners, and historians in conversation to listen to each other, identify critical issues, and develop ideas about what might and should be done.
After the virus ends, millions will become used to – and even prefer – work from home. Employers downsize offices. Fewer people commute by car. Our now overbuilt highways and airports will be restored to nature.
Now thousands of vacant offices and buildings will be too expensive and energy inefficient. Abandoned towers, malls, airports, and arenas will become ruins, a modern Acropolis.
Instead of flying to Europe, eco-friendly tourists visit this new “Museum to American Civilization.”
Demolished highways and buildings in flood zones will become landfill. The sedimentary layers in these landfill mountains will be a geological history of American civilization in the Anthropocene.
Credits
Directed by Tak Ying Chan
Written by Myles Zhang
Narrated by Natsume Ono
Image credits
Tak Ying Chan (NYC Subway)
Tal Fuerst (Little Italy, Manhattan)
Natsume Ono (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Hayden Bernhardt (Birmingham, Alabama)
Myles Zhang (NJ Meadowlands)
Special thanks
Julio Salcedo-Fernandez
The Architectural League of New York