"Having 9 billion people on earth could be a huge disaster" How can we make something positive out of it through architecture? On November 29th, Van Bo Le-Mentzel, an architect and innovative urban planner from Berlin, proposed seven ideas about cities, homes and life in the future during Trend Session #9 at Hager Forum.
Will the city of tomorrow be built using collective intelligence? Circular cities, multifunctional buildings, DIY housing kits, so many ideas to explore, and even more by watching the entire talk.
Van Bo Le-Mentzel's 7 statements on the future of architecture:
Statement 1: Be Yin & Yang, my friend
What if we were to think vertically and build circular cities where we create places that include different kind of buildings for all kinds of people and activities?
“Be yin and yang, my friends” means that we should plan cities in a way in which we do not decide to put up a building specifically for use as an office, or for residential purposes or as a school. Let’s be yin and yang and make all that in one place: Co-Being houses as a new type of co-living, wonder homes as a type of affordable flats, tiny houses as temporary fast housing and many more examples yet to be discovered.
Statement 2: Forget master plans
We cannot plan today what people will need in 20 years. But how can we build a city or a village without a master plan? Maybe with Tiny Houses for temporary and fast housing? Tiny houses are fully equipped houses, but on a small scale, and can be placed almost anywhere. For example, the very first German temporary Tiny House village was set up with experimental housing prototypes in the unused courtyard of the Bauhaus museum. It provides a lot of opportunities to rethink “unused spaces”.
Statement 3: Make streets for humans, not for cars
There is a shortage of free empty spaces, apartments and living spaces. So, where do we go? What about putting homes on the streets? Let's create temporary villages on public places and streets with sidewalk houses that can be combined for singles, couples, families and co-living with a community zone in the centre.
Statement 4: Trust in crowd intelligence
Today we have YouTube tutorials. We don't actually need an architect to design a house. We don't even need a carpenter to build a chair. There are so many DIY videos online in which we can learn anything, everything ... We can learn anything via Wikipedia and YouTube. Perhaps not everything, but almost everything.
What if we could all create our own houses? Have you heard about “Do it your shelf”?
Statement 5: Focus on community, not on individuals
Co-being houses are the next generation of co-living. The basic idea is “More We - Less Me”. Create community spaces by downsizing individual space and live with a community without constraints.
Statement 6: Create Homes, not machines
Human-friendly spaces need lovely neighbourhoods. Do you know wonder homes - the backbone of the circular city?
Statement 7: Discover for yourself...
And where does Hager fit into all this?
Van Bo Le-Mentzel's recommendation to help Hager contribute to the future of architecture is to focus on innovative and intelligent solutions in order to create shared electricity circuits accessible to different types of users.
Many ideas could emerge by rethinking the way we see things. Who knows how our spaces could be transformed at Hager?
We look forward to continuing to explore the future of architecture in his next article.
Some ways to better understand the future of architecture:
Watch the video on the smallest house in the world, Tiny House, designed by Van Bo Le-Mentzel or follow the Tiny House Facebook page
Follow Van Bo Le-Mentzel on Facebook
Read the article: Tiny Houses, Big Dreams - Van Bo Le-Mentzel on opening up spaces of possibility
Or explore the National Geographic article This is what the future's sustainable cities could look like
Van Bo Le-Mentzel
