未來城市——漂泊．垂直．廢墟：虛構與真實交織的人類世建築藍圖

by Paul Dobraszczyk, 保羅．多伯拉茲克

★英國知名建築、藝術研究者從陸、海、空多維度全面檢視人類對「未來都市」的「跨域想像」藍圖，建築、能源、藝術、設計、電影、視覺、未來學領域必讀的靈感奇書！
★收錄70幅取材自建築草圖、小說文本、影視場景等多元藝術幻想風格的華麗圖像，探遍作家、藝術家、建築師、科學家、都市規劃者想像中的未來世界！
★烏托邦想像文學與電影「化虛擬為現實」的按圖索驥踏查寶典、輔助片單！
★《星際大戰》、《銀翼殺手》等賽博龐克科幻經典迷的絕逸收藏！

我們身處的現代都會天際線日漸高遠，但今日城市生活卻被氣候變遷、人口過剩、社群分化、跨域爭奪等後現代的多重威脅籠罩。面對不確定的將來，「想像力」也許是能夠幫助人們理解未來晦澀圖像的可行工具。長此以往，來自各方的建築師、藝術家、小說家、電影導演持續提煉呼應時代的多媒介靈視，伴隨技術更新與觀念演化，預言步步成真，幻想化為實相。科技與夢境交纏紐繞，互寫韻腳。未來的城市烏托邦奏鳴曲調，已然激響。

建築學者多伯拉茲克在書中展示了一系列蔚為奇觀的想像城市界域——漂浮、飛行、垂直、地下、廢墟等——打破陸海空的既定界限。聳立於波斯灣畔的杜拜摩天樓映照出巴別通天塔的螺旋軸柱，而開發中國家的貧民區外觀卻形似賽博龐克作品的荒誕都城。全書立基於厚實的學術脈絡，連通綜合多元的跨域浮想，讀者將與作者同行，穿梭遊走於形色不一的建築風貌、文本敘事與電影詩學之間，重新連結想像國度與現實世界，掌握這份扎根當下、觸手可及的全人類未來創意尋索輿圖。

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, Art

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2021

Reviews

[Nightkid · Rating 3 out of 5]

對未日小說或電影感興趣的讀者，應該會喜愛此書的內容——作者將大災難過後，關於城市的形態劃分為海面、地底和廢墟三種進行論述，介紹了各種小說、影視作品或畫作，然後再輔以不同建築師或科學家提出的應對方案，內容略嫌有點大雜燴。

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars!

This book is made up of three sections. In the first part the author seems to talk about and hover around many ideas, but at no time did I feel like we actually got into any of them in any great or satisfying detail. There was a vagueness an aimlessness about this structure that didn’t quite fit right.

We get lengthy descriptions, detailed backgrounds and many quotes from the plots of dubious disaster movies and dystopic/futuristic novels, with particular repeated emphasis on J.G. Ballard, William Gibson and “Blade Runner”. Some of these descriptions are interesting, but after a while this almost exhaustive list really does start to read like a student’s dissertation on the futuristic ecological disaster genre.

To be honest I am not really sure what the author was trying to do with this book and I am pretty certain that he wasn’t too sure himself. It isn’t awful and he can write, but the structure is all over the place and someone really should have marshalled it better.

It definitely picks up a little come the second section. The Shard being described as “autistic architecture” by one commentator did make me laugh. I was also intrigued by the concepts of “green washing” which consists of companies making a big song and dance about some minor concessions towards the environment, but it is really still just another standard blight on the environment. And the idea of “Salvagepunk” where the ruins of the past are being refashioned into the (often overpriced) treasures of the future was also compelling.

Overall this was a peculiar beast, I enjoyed many elements of it but too often I found it too vague, rambling and speculative to get to whatever point he was trying to get across.

[Sean]

Planners need to be able to anticipate the future. Doing so is the difference between creating the world we want to live in, and simply allowing the forces of chance (or, just as often, the market) to decide for us. In the nearer term our anticipations are more familiar: macroeconomic fluctuations, energy shifts, even autonomous vehicle systems. But in the long run our potentialities get more fantastical- flying cities, sunken cities, cities under the earth. But in the long story of civilization, everything more advanced than two sticks to bang together was fantastical at one point, so we might as well get planning before fantasy overtakes us. A sober analysis of how such potentialities might actually grow and develop is in order, and as such, it’s great to see a book that at least appears to take such matters seriously.

In a book of this sort, there are three major subjects to cover: the speculative types of city-building that currently can only appear as fiction, the fledgling versions of these available to us in the present at our current level of technology, and a projection of what the full maturation of these plans may reasonably look like in the future. This book covers the first adequately enough, but focuses far too much on the second to the detriment of the third. Obviously whatever we’ve managed to build so far is a necessary clue towards our potential course of development into the future, but since that future is so distant, so much of what we have at present are essentially art projects (once more, with feeling: Architecture Is Not Art!), and not particularly relevant to the actual future of human settlement. This book is dragged down by what’s effectively a catalog of gimmicks, and it’d be better served by more of a focus on how our distant speculations may actually appear and function, conjectural though it may necessarily be.

And actually, now that I think about it, if you really do require some sort of contemporary analogue to firm up the conjecture on the long road towards realizing the fictional, this book might have benefitted from spending a little more time engaging with vernacular architecture. Something like the {treehouses}, while not actively or intentionally anticipating Laputa, are at least actual architecture, unlike Tomas Saraceno’s silly little art projects, which, again, are not.

The main issue throughout the book is the consistent tone of art criticism (and the attendant socio-political-philosophical posturing). Rather than taking art (fiction) as a jumping-off point for a discussion of unrealized structures,

In the end (and the beginning, and the middle), this book isn’t about architecture at all, really—much less about planning. At every juncture, it’s really about Art. Which is fine if you’re into that sort of thing, I guess, but it’s not what it says on the tin.

Anyway, I DNF’d it halfway through cause at some point I realized the only thing I was getting out of it was a few book recs, and the last thing I need is more fucking books to read

[Cilvia Danks · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting expose of architectural cisions of the future and their bases. It wouldve done well to massively reduce the number of words dedicated to discussing the motivations of fictional characters, and focus on the details of the obstacles between these visions and reality. i particularly enjoyed the ending focusing on how architectures future is a negotiation of form that eclipses the traditional top-down development cycle