48 SUSTAINABILITY
HOW TO SAVE THE PLANET IN 15 MINUTES SPECULATIVE ARCHITECT LIAM YOUNG MAY NOT HAVE A MAGIC BULLET FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, BUT HE’S TRYING TO PROVE IT CAN BE DONE IN HIS PROVOCATIVE SHORT FILM, PLANET CITY. / ELISA SCARTON
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his isn’t another negative story about how we’re all going to die from climate change,” Liam Young says, as his Uber navigates traffic one summer evening in Los Angeles. “Rather it’s trying to say that there are ways forward through collective action and a global consensus that don’t mean we’re going to live in a context of scarcity. It just means we’re going to live differently and that difference can also be beautiful and wondrous and fun.” Young outlines his way forward in 15 evocatively rendered minutes for a short film entitled Project City, which made its debut as part of the NGV Triennial held in Melbourne earlier this year. The Australia-born speculative architect and director is the co-founder of Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, an urban futures think tank that explores the local and global implications of new technologies. He also heads Unknown Fields, a nomadic research studio that travels on expeditions to chronicle these emerging conditions as they occur on the ground – COVID-19 pandemic restrictions permitting. “Project City was designed to be both utopian and dystopian simultaneously, depending on who sees it,” beams Young from across the Pacific. “Some people say they would love to live there. Others are scared off, asking, ‘Why aren’t there more trees? Why is it pink?’ It’s the last place they want to be.
THE BUSINESS OF ARCHITECTURE
ECONOMIES AND SCALE “CLIMATE CHANGE IS NO LONGER A TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEM. IT’S A CULTURAL AND POLITICAL PROBLEM.” And so they see it as a cautionary tale, projecting it through their own lens, with their own biases and contractions.” Teaming up with host of LA-based creatives, including costume designer Ane Crabtree, of The Handmaid’s Tale fame, Young offers up a glimpse into an alternative future where the entire population – all 10 billion of us – occupy 0.02 percent of the planetary surface in one hyper-dense, self-sufficient metropolis. That 10 billion figure is not arbitrary. Nor is Young alone in presenting his alternative vision of a future planet Earth. BIG ‘starchitect’ Bjarke Ingels ended 2020 by suggesting a solution to the climate problems in store for the world’s projected 2050 population. Dubbed the Masterplanet concept, it involved scaling up existing infrastructure to cover the entire planet. Central to this thesis was the creation of a single power grid to supply every country with renewable energy, thereby solving the current problem of inconsistent supply. It’s something of which Young is sceptical.
“A massive consensus is going to be needed in order to engage with problems we face at scale,” he says. “It’s collective action and it involves systemic change, not a singular magic bullet, technological solution or master energy grid that will solve the renewable energy system. “It’s about a total rewiring of who we are and how we define ourselves and our interests.” In Planet City, we live in 221,367 square kilometres of ‘residential mountains’, some of which rise up 165 storeys. Power comes from 49,445,671,570 solar panels, while 2357 algae farms filter pollution and provide supplementary food when we’re craving something other than the fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the vertical orchards and mega farms that occupy the space between our buildings. In this closed-loop world, we generate no waste and navigate the streets on 4,311,543,982 bicycles. It sounds incredible. Impossible. Science fiction at its most adventurous, but Young is quick to point out that it’s none of the above. “So many of the architects that are engaging with climate change come to it from a very solutionist perspective – here’s a problem and we could make a new building or a new material that’s going to solve that problem for us,” he says.
