Lord Norman Foster shares his thoughts on the future of our cities and how architects must play an interdisciplinary role in shaping this future.
Speaking in an interview about 2 years ago, Lord Foster, stresses the need for architecture to surpass buildings and tackle its greatest obstacle – global warming, honing in on its roots and factors involved to create viable urban solutions. He also speaks on infrastructure as another aspect that architects need to work on an be involved with along with the need for a revised interdisciplinary approach to design if we are ever to achieve advances in sustainability.
By 2050, 25% of humanity will be living in cities. The biggest challenge facing cities and urbanities is global warming. The causes of that, the generation of power, industry, agriculture, transport and buildings, it is that collective that needs to be addressed….We have to be looking outside of buildings. We have to be looking at settlements, the combination of infrastructure, the connections, the public spaces, the links and the transport, because the sustainable now and in the future, it’s about strong civic leadership, pedestrianisation, people over cars. It’s about high density… As a profession, we have to embrace other disciplines. The future and addressing the issues of greater complexity means that from the very beginning we need more disciplines working together. We can’t have the arrogance of believing that we can design a building and let the others kind of make it a reality.
