Architects of the Future

When you look at the photograph above what do you see? A city skyline? A river? St Paul’s Cathedral? How about construction cranes? If you look very carefully you can see over 20 of them. This photo was taken from the cafeteria on top of the Tate Modern Museum on the South Bank of London this past May. This panorama is only a small part of the city, and there were even more construction cranes to the left and right. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of London. One thinks of London as a fairly historic city full of old buildings spanning the centuries, which is true to a certain extent, but it is also a dynamic city on the move, constantly being renewed. Given that there are very few vacant sites in London, something must have been on these sites before the new buildings were designed. But what was it? Presumably the existing building was of no further value or just no longer useful for today’s occupants. One can image repurposing almost any old building for retail, small businesses, restaurants, but demolition is final confirmation that a building has no further use.

On our recent trip to London, my wife and I picked up an architectural guide book that locate and describe buildings of interest. Interestingly, many current notable buildings stand on the sites of previously notable buildings that apparently no longer seemed useful to the previous owners. Pull them down and make way for the present! (Probably with little regard for history.) After all, history is all around you, so what if one or two old buildings disappear. It’s the reality of a modern city, no matter if its roots go all the way back to the Roman era. But it did beg the question, what was there previously, and even before that? How much history has been lost, presumably many by generations? I guess, in the end, it was theirs to discard, and rightly so.

On this same trip we also visited an equally old city, York. York was originally a Roman garrison town which has somehow managed to preserve a large portion of its medieval structures, at least within the old walled section of the city. Also the home of the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter, commonly known as the York Minster, one of the largest Gothic Cathedrals in Britain, started in the 1220. Perhaps limited growth and the preservation of the old city wall kept all the new development outside the limits of the old historic town. Even the five fortified gates into the town are still standing! A town partially frozen in time, probably more by accident than on purpose. An old town that gives you the feeling of what it might have been like 600 years ago. No construction cranes here, just lots a tourists.

It is an interesting contrast in scale and development of two old Roman forts that, two thousand years later, give or take a decade or two, turned out to be very different. Lots of work for architects in London, not so much in the inner city of York.

Which gets me to my original musings while sipping my iced tea in the Tate restaurant overlooking the Thames. I was actually quite surprised by the sheer number of construction cranes I could see from this vantage point, considerably more than the 20 or so in the photo, and that was just the north bank. Which coincided with other more esoteric observations I’ve had over the past couple of years. Have you ever noticed that in every movie about the future, be it on this planet, planets far far away or a space station of some sort or other there are no construction cranes? Almost never! Apparently there is no new construction in the future, because all our future cities are finished. More like York and not at all like London. No new development, just all perfectly designed in the first, and presumably, last place. Which begs the question, are there no architects required in these future cities? Or are they just renovating all those perfect buildings or has that profession been eliminated?

Thank goodness our visions of the future are always blurry, but it is a bit disconcerting that you almost never run into architects in the future. Are there any in the Rebel Alliance? These are not the drawings you are looking for. How about The Federation, beam me up the CD’s Scotty! No replicant architects in Blade Runner, trying to design the perfect building before they burn out? Well, maybe that last one is a little too close to the mark. Unfortunately, our modern culture’s vision of the future seems to have written us architects out of the script. But at the end of the day, I should not have been so surprised by the number of construction cranes on the London skyline, or any other major city for that fact. It is a good sign of a healthy evolving urban environment that has plenty jobs for designers and builders. Replacing the old with the new and at some point in the future replacing our new with their new. The never ending cycle that keeps us all occupied and, hopefully, humble.