How will new mobility patterns shape the built environment?

This story discusses changes in the built environment caused by a shift in mass mobility behavior. In both extreme futures, roads and street grids as we know them are irrelevant and the design and experience of places are privileged. The window offers a perspective of these two futures reflecting on interior and exterior space as well as on sparsity and density.   

Storyline

Two people organize for a date. B hops on a train to meet A, who is preparing dinner for both. The world begins to diverge on two paths, one towards 0 mobility and one towards ∞ mobility. A and B find themselves trapped in the environments that wrap around them.

Density 

Throughout history, our towns have been shaped by the way we move. The medieval city, crossed by walking paths and animal paths, is compact and optimizes displacement. Centuries later, high speed vehicles based on fossil fuels became cheap and ubiquitous, and urban sprawl increases. 

In the context of new information technologies and rising biotech, would this trend remain the same? Will less speed equal more density and vice-versa? If you don't leave home and goods can easily be delivered to you, would you stay to the city or would you isolate in nature?

Transformable spaces

As you stir broccoli for dinner, your home office merges with the living room, opening space for the bathroom – that is shared among 4 neighboring apartments. It's 6 pm and Home knows you need a shower soon, your date is almost here. 

Can homes seamlessly enhance density in cities without losing comfort and identification to spaces?

Cluster autonomous mobility  

Add your itinerary to the cloud and hop on a pod marked in green, it will take you to your destination. 

When traveling long distances, pods may enter high speed roads and attach to others, forming a swarm of vehicles. These fleets save energy and infrastructure, sometimes transporting thousands of passengers at the same time, all on different, independent journeys.               

Inteligent delivery

Windows are the interface between the internal and external world, they are constantly reading and transmitting environmental data from all of us. Write what you need on the glass and it will soon fall from the sky for you. 

The package is edible, try it in a smoothie. 

Evolution of partitions

Windows reveal so much of different cultures and eras. Dimension, material, shapes, how people position themselves next to them. Everything tells a story. 

Round corner windows are intrinsically associated with automobiles since they don't accumulate dirt, a propaganda of the sanitary revolution after World War I. Corner windows became an icon of the modernist movement, telling us that the façades were no longer structural. Some cultures privilege windows towards internal backyards to preserve its inhabitants' privacy. Transformable façades create windows on demand.

What is the future window?