At the TEDxCity2.0 talk in San Francisco earlier this month, Craig Scott of IwamotoScott Architecture presented these mindboggling renderings of giant, hovering daisies. Unlike the sky-suspended, donut-shaped pedestrian plaza that will supposedly grace the future firmament in Manhattan, these structures are built to harvest fog for fresh water, according to Architizer. It's all part of the San Francisco of year 2108, or what could be if built environments weren't so resistant to change, says Scott. IwamotoScott proposed a coevolved urban landscape for the future, a city in which major structures support each other rather than thrive or struggle independently. The crux of the plan's symbiotic city is the sprawling, underground Hydro-Net, which traps rain water—the streets will be porous, see—and distributes power and fuel. The city will rely solely on geothermic energy and hydrogen-producing algae and fog, and the environment will be built around those needs, starting with fog-collecting air amoebas, apparently.
"The proposition for us was to provoke, to think about the city, which is very resistant to change in its built environment, and to think that there are ways of coexisting and coevolving new architectures," says Scott. Well, it's certainly provocative, perhaps even more so than other wacky renderings to have emerged recently, like the apartments built into an abandoned bridge, the world's first floating town, those man-made island domes, and that sparkling "Earth City" utopia.
· Blade Runner Meets Flower Power In IwamotoScott's City Of The Future [Architizer]
· All Architectural Craziness Coverage [Curbed National]