Design Studies 5A: Complete Symbiotic Reliance

City X: A New Epoch

In semester one of this thesis project, my fellow studio partner Sean Craig and I produced an architectural design competition brief asking ourselves to create our own provocations of a future, fictional civilisation with a close symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence. Through this, we sought to investigate how the chosen technology will manifest in society and, in turn, the subsequent realities of the people, the architecture, the city and the technology itself.

 

City X

In a future, post-independent Scotland, the country has found itself in an economic boom of opportunity. In order to sustain an independent country, whilst embracing its long history of inventiveness and creativity, the government has capitalised on the market of emerging Artificial Intelligent technologies. However, as Scotland continues to grow exponentially through its self-governance, social issues such as overpopulation in the central belt begin to arise. To alleviate the strain of the over-populated areas, the Scottish government proposed ambitious population redistribution strategies, encouraging counter-urbanisation through the migration of citizens towards more rural areas such as the Highlands and Islands. By creating new focal points for population redistribution, the opportunity arose to provide urban testing grounds for the new and innovative AI technologies. One of the most unique New Scottish ‘New Towns’ is nestled on the rugged Inner Hebridean Island of Eigg named: City X. 

Arguably the most thriving settlement of the New Scottish ‘New Towns’, City X’s citizens live in a state of technologically automated post-scarcity where advancements in Artificial Intelligence control all necessary work and labour requirements. Here, the everyday formal constraints of what we perceive as ‘time’ has become irrelevant as with no labour constraints, the anxiety of the clock is eluded. With this level of lifestyle freedom, the residents have boundless opportunity to reflect, contemplate, better themselves, become one with nature and converse with other residents within the unique built environment of the island.