La Città Ideale 2033, Drawing Visions of Future Cities
LA CITTA IDEALE 2033:
Drawing Visions of Future Cities Through Personal Constructs by Guillermo Aranda-Mena Ph.D.
The Exhibition
I am an
artist, an academic and architecture is my muse, I must confess, this affair
has been going on for 30 years or so. When drawing my ideal city, La mia Città
Ideale, I am not testing reality but creatively visualising future
scenarios in a very personal manner. Academically I place my work within the
theory of Personal Constructs and I will explain more on that later. This
exhibition emerged from a personal sense of purpose and desire to imagine urban
futures, and to draw and reflect on the fabric of our cities and what makes
them thrive, by analogy, a positive psychologist would identify what
makes a person tick.
Cities are
certainly the most complex and perplexing of all human inventions. As a species,
we have engaged with the idea of cities for over 6,000 years since Mesopotamia
and Egypt. The Assyrian and Babylonian empires firstly exercised the design of democratic
cities dating back to Hippodamus who devised a regular grid or plan for the ancient
city of Miletus built 7 C. B C, this is some 2,700 years before Melbourne’s
Hoddle grid. The idea of modern cities, only go back 500 years when the Italian
Renaissance came about, Piero della Francesa’s realistic frescoes for Urbino’s Palace
marked a clear departure to accurate renders and depictions of design intent, applying
the rules of perspective for architecture and urbanism of human scale.
Leonardo
D’Vinci best embodies the spirit of renaissance, he was both, a scientist, and
an artist. His work with cities spanned from military architecture to civil
engineering including a system of canals and waterways for Milano. Today it is
possible to see Naviglio Grande and Darsena, a thriving area of of the city and
legacy of D’Vinci. Other great renaissance architects such as Filippo
Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and Andrea Palladio much influenced
generation after generation of architects and city designers up to our days all
of which placed the human at the centre of cities, thus humanism.
D’Vinci went further into placing the human at the centre of the universe, and
with that he devised the Modulor, where every taken measurement was in
relation to the human body, anthropomorphism the result. Some renaisanse
theories and lessons are still in use today. Luckily, we are also more aware of
the impact of our cities to the natural environment, to our health, wellbeing
and even to our emotional and mental state. Urban design has certainly moved
beyond mere ergonomics.
La Città
Ideale, The Ideal City, such an elusive ambition, why wasting time
thinking of it? Still, there are certain attributes that define what an ideal
city could be. The liveability survey annually conducted by the Economist
Intelligence Unit is one example of various emerging liveability indices we use
to benchmark cities around the world. We Melbournians, should know this by hart,
as our city seems to appear and reappear on the liveability podium year after
year, at times receiving all accolades (Economist most liveable city for 6
years in a row, 2011-2017). Other cities on the glorious podium include Vienna,
Sydney, Vancouver, Oslo, and Stockholm. Unfortunately, there are flaws in the
various benchmarks as the geographic scope does not include the wider
metropolitan areas and only focus on inner-city suburbs. Thus, not representative
of the true pulse of the city with its larger metropolitan realm in which questions
of affordability, mobility, safety, amenity, and opportunity may be far from optimal
and the question or liveability truly challenged, but let’s look at the bright
side, things could be way worst.
“Which of
all is your favourite city?” is often the question I get from friends, colleagues,
and newly introduced strangers, and even by myself. Cities are complex systems
and are better defined by an array of attributes rather than a single sentence,
statement, or definition. Each city I have lived in, from my native Mexico City
to San Luis Potosi and Guadalajara during my upbringing in Mexico, to Porto, Seville,
Madrid and Barcelona in Iberia as university student and young architecture
graduate. To Milano and Mantua in Italy in the last 12 or so years on
intermittent experiences as a Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano and
the UNESCO Chair in Mantova. My teaching Singapore and Hong Kong, also as
intermittent experiences for over close to two decades. Each city has something
amazing to offer, I have enjoyed all of them “as the most liveable city” for
various reasons. In some cases, the charming architecture and rich history such
as in Manova. In other cases the culinary experience of Guadalajara and
Singapore, each a unique gastropolis for unique food and culinary
experience. Even the smaller towns, which I also experienced during my
postgraduate studies such Esbjerg in Denmark, Loughborough or Reading in the UK,
all of which offered great local and authentic (non-touristy) village-like feel.
By combining all attributes and lived experiences to the more rational metrics
of infrastructure, amenity, safety, services or employment, I can then draw my
own conclusions, and build my own worlds, my own cities. La mia Città Ideale. Which
is yours?
An art
exhibition like this one, equips us with open scenarios as possibilities to explore
and find that special place or city for everyone who attempts to see it. My
Città Ideale 2033 has no hidden agenda to begin a subversive movement other
than to remind our social consciousness in the ways we go about our lives. Yes,
the environment might also shape us but at the end we, humans, have the ability
the future we want and despite the poor depiction of our planet we have many
reasons to celebrate many achievements we have created. For the time being walk
with me and enjoy this future city tour, of La mia Città Ideale 2033.
Overall vision
This
exhibition is about cities and thus it should resonate with Melbournians and
Australians after all, we are an urban nation. In 2022 84.5% of Australia’s
population was reported to live in cities, 2/3 in our 8 capital cities. My
vision for future cities is based on my lived experiences around the globe
since my early international sojourns in the USA and Canada as a teenager, in
Europe and the UK throughout my 20s and in Australasia and the world for over
20 years. Thus, my paintings are informed by my mind, my definitions or ‘constructs’
which you can also read as perceptions from lived experiences, acquired knowledge,
and imagination.
I place my
ideal city in the proximity of one decade, the year 2033 is within reach. Not
so distant into the future and not too entrenched into our present giving a comfortable
foresight. I am not a prophet nor a futurologist,
I like to place myself as a well-read individual with interest and curiosity
about the ways we design and build our environments, from cities to and
engaging individual who has valued community engagement and participation in
every step of my professional life as an artist, designer and academic.
Utopia is
a fallacy, an oxymoron, a mirage, it is said that utopia is a deliberate pun,
spelled one way it means ‘good place’, and spelled another, it means ‘no
place’, perhaps more in tune with Utopia, Australia. In times where the human
is displaced from his or her habitat, call it floodings, fires, pandemics,
fame, war, it is perhaps time to bring the bright side back into the picture,
the human living in harmony with its natural ecosystem in symbiosis. More than
50% of the global population now live in urban areas. Cities, the most complex
of all human creations and our best alternative to improve the human condition,
I have experienced thriving cities in my lifetime, and that is the closest to
utopia, La Citta Ideale.
Revisiting
classical visions for ideal cities such as Plato’s The Republic (375 B.C.)
concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the
just man. It is a Socratic Dialogue in which he considers the nature of
existing regimens and then proposes hypothetical cities or scenarios culminating
in Kallipolis, a utopian city-state ruled by a class of
philosopher-kings. Plato’s Republic also discusses ageing, love, theory of
forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of philosophy and poetry in
society. ‘Ideal cities’ can be seen today in locations such as Sabbioneta in
Lombardia, an example of renaissance theories well worth looking at, built from
scratch in the 17th C. by Vespasiano I. Gonzaga near Mantua. Bothe
of which in became UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2008 and in which I been
teaching architecture for over a decade.
In the Americas, pre-Columbian civilizations are known to all of us, such as the Aztecs and Mayas in what is now Mexico along with many other cultures and cities in a region known as meso-America (mid-Mexico and Central America). In Asia, the Zhou dynasty built the great cities of Classical China and the Maurya and Gupta empires left the legacy of cities of the Golden Age of India. Through human history cities have flourished and decayed and in cases erased and empires fully disappeared. Today we can see much Le Corbusier’s inter-war models for city planning and reconstruction, only a few built but his theories proved highly influential in Europe and around the world, sometimes for better and others for the worst. At the end city design is a product of political decisions and social rather than a mandate for a drafting board, at least that is the spirit at least according to American Canadian writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs who advocated for the protection of neighbourhoods and community nurturing over social and economic infrastructure development.
The Artist
I love
cities, after all I was born in the largest metropolis on earth, Mexico City. I
have since lived in many beautiful cities both, within Mexico and around the
globe. This year I celebrate two decades since I call Melbourne home and still,
I consider myself a nomad, a sort of traveller.
I am an artist and architecture is my muse, it has always
been, since I have recollection of memory. As a child I loved building paper
maquettes of little castles when visiting my grandmother San Luis Potosi,
Mexico, she would provide me with paper, glue, colour pencils, sticky tape and scissors
at the age of 5. I must have been 5 or 6 years old; my parents were busy
working and building their dream home, I have since lived in over a dozen
cities. My worldview depicts my vision of cities, La Città Ideale
is a generic reflection of my mind and life experiences, I have been a true
global citizen, as I teenager I spent summers in the US and Canada as a university
student I completed my architecture studies in Seville, Spain and lived in
Madrid and Barcelona. Since graduation I have worked and further studied in Portugal,
Denmark, and the UK.
I grew up
in Mexico in two Spanish colonial cities: San Luis Potosi, and Guadalajara; and
completed my architecture studies in Seville, Spain. I also lived in Barcelona,
Madrid, and Porto as a young architect. While doing my Ph.D. investigation at
The University of Reading, I much enjoyed its proximity to London, the
27-minute train ride into London Paddington came quite handy to enjoy the city.
The City of Bath, Oxford and Cardiff were other cities I often frequented while
my 7 years in the UK. Paris and Brussels were at reach via the Eurotunnel
student prices. In more recent years I have resided in Delft, Zurich, Mantua
and Milano. I go to teach to Singapore and Hong Kong and have been doing so for
over 10 years in HK and nearly 20 in Singapore.
My Città
Ideale can be better depicted in terms of values, e.g. what we is worth in our
society, from safety, to affordability, amenity, opportunity (employment),
mobility (transport), health, nature and wellbeing to more ethereal values such
as beauty, charm, heritage or awe. If these values are socially shared, then we
can build our ideal cities, our Città Ideale. Others have tried to build Utopia
before, and we got some things right, not all, Tower of Babel was a failure of
epic proportions, the fundamental problem is still the same, lack of empathy in
our human existence, the Babel calamity could be simply avoided but a return to
what it is to be human and better understanding of the places where we do
things, or cities and environment.
Be a flâneur* in my Città Ideale.
Welcome.
Artistic Process,
Influences and Philosophical Context:
Contrary
to the common perception that artistic work is conducted in solitude and
self-imposed isolation, predominantly individualistic, I found the process of
preparing for this exhibition highly engaging, the themes here presented are
issues of concern to all and much discussed the various topics with friends,
colleagues, and acquaintances, from my Italian colleagues at the UNESCO Chair
to my local St Kilda barista Bruce. On the other hand, the art curatorial
process has taken me onto another level of artistic proficiency through regular
crits and reviews, a special thanks to Tracey McIrvine, Visual Arts Manager at
Gasworks Arts Park, one of our final crits commented on my work as ‘expansive
and yet, retains identity’; ‘it reconfigures space’; ‘it is androgenous
aesthetically’, ‘it is truthful, honest, I love the work’, I then felt
ready to exhibit, to go out there!
My art
studio is mobile, I have prepared for this exhibition while travelling to
various distant locations, last year and earlier this one, 100% cotton paper
(300 gsm), brushes and watercolours were my travel companions to Sweden, Italy,
Hong Kong and Singapore. Trips to Mexico and California were also shared with family
and friends. Overall, watercolours travel well, odourless, and easy to clean if
an accident happens. It is not rare to see me unpacking my mobile studio while
cruising at 38,000 ft high, at my local St Kilda café or anywhere in between. For
the larger format works I worked as an artist-in-residence in the
above-mentioned locations.
For this
exhibition I wanted to engage with primitive modes of production, those that go
back millennia such as cotton paper and watercolours. For instrumentation, I use
brushes, fountain pens, and dip pens made of bamboo some of which are carved by
me. Up to recently, artists used to be skilful alchemists, they created their
own paper, pigments, instruments, and potions. There is a sense of liberation when
there is no need less or not reliant on products made by others, but to be able
to paint with clay or even coffee grounds if needed to. There a sense of
liberation with being self-sufficient, when the artistic process allows me to connect
with a basic primitive side of doing things, a technique conversant with the
Altamira caves of the Palaeolithic painted some 37,000 years ago.
Academically I place the work prepared for this exhibition
within Personal Construct Theory (PCT), a branch of psychology devised by
George Kelly (1955) based on phenomenology and European Logical Positivism. One
contribution of my Ph.D. was to bring PCT into architecture and design management.
Construct theory presents a framework to explore the human mind, thought and
perceptions based on personals experiences, definitions, or schemas which
individuals continuously form throughout life, it places every human being as a
scientist, and we live our lives validating our theories or world views. It is
an important model to complement the prevailing positivist objectivism. Thus,
the individual or personal constructs becomes the mental or cognitive
scaffolding by which we form our worldviews and build the reality we live in,
our cities.
While
preparing for this exhibition I got to think on aspects of originality and thus
my Città Ideale is a new take to an old tale, it certainly goes along
with the spirit of Mark Twain “there is no such thing as a new idea. It is
impossible, we simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of
mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious
combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of coloured glass
that have been in use through all the ages”.
Expectations from the
audience
In this
exhibition you can expect to engage with urban issues faced by cities around
the globe. Still much is reflected upon Melbourne. What are those liveability
attributes that will ensure we recover and retain our title of the most
liveable city by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Although
architecturally driven, this exhibition is not about an aesthetic imperative
and transcends any ‘isms’ such as modernism, post-modernism,
deconstructivism, parametricisms or meta-modernism to mention a few of the
adjectives where architecture is often pigeonholed or succumbed to. I have
instead developed an interest in drawing from firsthand experience or
phenomenology, and adopt attributes often found in our everyday environment
such love for nature (biophilia), health and wellbeing, liveability. Here I
have exercised my mind, hand and imagination to depict possible realities, I
would say, a diaphanous visionary statement and thus I invite you to look at my
work, imagine and complete your visionary cities or environments. Walk with me
and find your own city. There is no compass, tour guide nor GPS, navigate at
your own using your own (mental) kaleidoscope in search of your Kallipolis,
your Città Ideale.
With this
exhibition I am aiming to create a hive of ideas, activated through my work,
materialised through visitors of this exhibition. La Città Ideale is not yet
another prophetic attempt to reinvent the world in which we live but a
democratic space to engage in observation, dialogue and reflection. The value
of my artwork lays on the fact that is sits on the borderline of resolution and
ambiguity. This tension is my most powerful statement.
Is Utopia
a mere mirage or does it actually feasible? There is a human settlement
in the Northern Territory officially named Utopia (Urapuntja in Alywarre) so
after all, it does exist, at least in Australia. The Italian renaissance of the
1500’s much engaged with Plato’s idea of utopia or ideal city, Kallipolis, not
only from a governance standpoint but with the physicality of it, cities as
democratic organisations, safe and healthy spaces where to live, where the
human condition could thrive. Our future cities are about giving back to
nature, they are about our health and wellbeing, and they must be inclusive.
D’Vinci’s Modulor has now morphed into an emotional being of all shapes, ages,
and belief systems and that is a good thing.
My
intention has not been to indulge into self-referential grandiosity of a
visionary truth but to present the visitor with an opportunity to engage with
the work, discuss with friends and the wider community our past, present, and
future cities. For this, I present you with 20 depictions of urban futures, or
scenarios in various formats, each interesting and entertaining. Let’s
transcend the status quo and engage as experts, after all, the experts often
get it wrong. My exhibition presents an opportunity to create a hive of minds,
tell me, what is your storey? Therefore, here I present you with trustworthy
propositions from both, my life experience and expert knowledge, but contrarily
to a common perception, city design emerges from engaged communities, not
disfranchised experts, “just see around us, St Kilda, Elwood, Albert Park and
Port Melbourne are notoriously known for our strong voice and community
participation”.
I must
confess, my love affair with Melbourne has been going on for close to 20 years.
Two decades since I moved to ‘the big smog’ has moulded me into the
person I am today. At the same time, I continue travelling and spending temporary
residencies in other cities such as Milan, Mantova, Malmo, Singapore, Hong Kong
and Guadalajara, my city in Mexico so you may find loose architectural
references to some of those places. This exhibition is not about any specific
place but I can run away from the places I live in and must enjoy, an as such
they provide with a reliable reference to draw as I create my reality (my
construct system) of what is that ideal city in a not so distant in a not-so-distant
future. Welcome to La Città Ideale 2033.
* flâneur: French, a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way; an idler or loafer.