little people / black and white future (?)

From the blog of Lebbeus Woods comes an entry entitled “Utopia Redux” which features a series of images by Cooper Union student Daniel Meriador. They depict a strange and silent technological architecture of humankind, juxtaposed, or floating whimsically, against degraded or hostile-seeming landscapes. Using photo-montage, the images are disarmingly simple, and almost iconographic. The typical elements of classic science fiction imagery are there, the vastness of the landscape and the tiny, solitary, contemplative human figure. Woods points out the ambiguity with regard to whether the images are a vision of utopia or dystopia. Meriador has beautifully encapsulated the notion that neither scenario is completely plausible. It’s pointless to view the future as black and white. Instead there is the complex dynamic, an enlightened form of sustainability, touched on in previous Plastic Futures posts, characterised by constant flux. Woods supposes that the new generation of student architects are both more idealistic and realistic about the future as well as more process driven than their novelty obsessed predecessors. For me it inspires a long suppressed urge to make ‘artistic’ architectural imagery for its own sake, from an internally driven, self contained impulse, as a focus for outward reflection or speculation. Read the Lebbeus Woods article here.