Could We Thrive Amidst the Ruins?

Architects love to imagine the future. In essence, our work depends on selling a fictional vision of how a place may look, should our project be chosen. To be sold, of course, this future has to be presented as desirable: big, luscious trees growing on green roofs of spotlessly shiny towers of glass and concrete; businessmen cycling to work beneath impossibly blue skies; a handful of expensive electric cars; children playing and laughing on a busy street with no iPad in sight…  It is hardly a secret that architectural renderings promise more than they deliver. But never have they felt …