The drawing I made could very well be what the New York City skyline is in some unknown time. What vehicle could manage this new city? The only car that currently makes sense in a future metropolis is the smart car.

“In future cities striving to standardise ‘perfection’ – we will celebrate and personalise with ‘imperfection’ in our own homes.”

We see a world moving ever more towards a high standard of functionality, perfection, cleanliness, high technology and convenience. Our home will be our private haven where we can build our own versions of ‘perfection’, by building which might currently be seen as the ‘imperfections’. We will take sanctuary and delight in the less functional, tarnished and irrational and we will personalise our homes with our own individual perceptions of beauty.

The outside world may develop into what is generally perceived to be a safer, more logical and better human environment but it will be in the privacy of one’s home that we can explore what is truly sacred to us as individuals. To express one scenario of our homes providing sanctuary in the future we made individual, irregular tiles and allowed the faults of the casting process to occur and indeed to shine as a reaction to the standardization of our lives in the city.

We chose to work in concrete as it is the building block and fundamental icon of all large cities around the world. Each tile was separately stained with acid and we built a tiled carpet with entirely unique characteristics. The acid staining process is an excellent medium to express the deterioration, tarnishing, oxidization, destruction and the natural processes we are fighting so hard to eradicate from our modern daily lives. But in our vision of the future when everything is required to be ‘perfect’, only in our home will these ‘stains’ be viewed as a rare and pleasant beauty.

The home will be the last sanctuary of imperfections. We will not only see the beauty of mould, rust and decay but we will actively celebrate it.

a creative solution to assure a hundred percent functionality

At the smart urban stage in Paris, Sarah Illenberger herself presented the outcome of many hours of fiber work.

The idea for a car made from cardboard was originally set up by german packaging specialist CARTONDRUCK. Together with Sarah Illenberger they puzzled about material and design to achieve a creative solution and to assure that the car, the outside mirrors and inside controls stay a hundred percent functional.

This unique cooperation made from sustainable creativity and sustainable material was documented by video blogger Clemens Poloczek a.k.a. Ignant. Take a look at the result.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=21QiprC0cmM

dancing like string theory

I wanted to see a reflection of the questioner, Magne, so chose to start with the piano keys and follow the deep piano drone. In the broad sense of the question I felt that only the universe (or probably the multiverse as we might come to understand it) can answer.

So i decided that light and sound would play a large part of it. Traveling through the city at night. Dancing like string theory.

The only person we might see along the way represents a sense of destiny or a higher power. The door we arrive at represents the future. Waiting to be opened, to be explored.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPj3dN5Iyw

leave your digital comfort zone

Learning to play again is actually pretty easy. All you have to do is to leave your digital comfort zone and embrace the concept of trial and error again.

Through the artist minigolf – or the “Berlin Battle Royale“ as we call it – we tried to re-establish an analog and interactive experience everybody loved when they were younger… so for its first chapter we invited a handful of international artists that still carry a soft spot for the haptic side of life to individually design the course of their dreams.

So you better sharpen your senses and get physical. Allow it.

wherever life takes me and heart holds me

Why are you creating what you are creating?
Because it sweetens up my life.

Where will you live in 5 years?
Wherever life takes me and heart holds me.

What will your city of the future look like?
Like a colourfull, architectural mixtape.

How do you like to move around in your city?
Together, with my Amsterdam bike and my black spotted dog.

What would be your question for the city of the future?
What took you so long?

City of the future, have you ditched your dreary corporate and civic partners, put on your party dress and danced?

Why are you creating what you are creating?
For me, art is about life. I make art about ideas, experiences, thoughts or concepts that are important to me. I hope to connect with viewers of my art by leading them to a place within themselves where they connect with emotions and issues that are important to them

Where will you live in 5 years?
In 5 years I will live in the same place I now live – a world that both geographically and intellectually shifts, changes, evolves, devolves, transforms.

What will your city of the future look like?
My city of the future will be colorful, vibrant, full of energy, creativity and fun. People will have tired of the corporate and civic controls that drained the vitality from our streets. Color, imagination and joy will be the call as communities reclaim ownership of their streets, neighborhoods, cities and lives.

How do you like to move around in your city?
I like to move around in my city with senses wide open, seeking potential, hunting creativity, searching for possibilities, rummaging for resourcefulness, in quest of innovation, imagination, and joy.

What would be your question for the city of the future?
City of the future, have you ditched your dreary corporate and civic partners, put on your party dress and danced?

great and well-thought-out design

Why are you creating what you are creating?
First of all, our aim is to answer our command with a functionnal and minimal way of thinking. Set apart this, we think we’re all creating under the influences of our time and their inherent style and fashion. To go further, the tools we are using to create are probably dictating us a certain way of thinking and producing forms/ styles.

Where will you live in 5 years?
We don’t know.

What will your city of the future look like?
Cities built with great and well-thought-out design. (optimistic way of life !)

How do you like to move around in your city?
We’re daily users of “velo’v” (urban free bicycle sharing system) to go to our office or to school. It’s more faster, cleaner and it make us sculpted bodies !

What would be your question for the city of the future?
The first question coming to our mind is “will cities be still livable to the poor and middle classes (and soon for upper classes) due to the augmentation of the prices. We are at a critical point, will we be able to restore cities as places to live rather than places to work.

Where will you live in 5 years?
No clue!

What will your city of the future look like?
Sustainable, personal, full of possibilities.

How do you like to move around in your city?
I really wish we had a railway system– like the extensive metro system in Europe. If we did, that would be what I would always use. In Austin I don’t live by a bus route and am too far from most places so I try to carpool as much as possible.

What would be your question for the city of the future?
How are you helping make our ecological footprint smaller?