CONNECTED. Things about future, cities and people

www.citiesandpeople.eu

A project by Zeppelin (RO), Archis (NL), Nordic Urban Design Association NUDA (NO), Fargfabriken (SE), Eurodite (RO)

The project investigated the future impact of the new technologies upon the European urbanities. Developing concepts like smart city or smart community, the research revealed the future social and cultural mutations that tend to better valorize individuals and communities together with their human, creative and entrepreneurial potential. As proposed through narrative and dramatized visions, the European space appears like a dense interconnected territory defined by complex rules and sophisticated standards of human interaction. 

While the linguistic barriers are probable to be spectacularly overcome through technology and the spaciousness to be diversely perceived due to highly increased future mobility, how is this immense space going to look like and how could Europe be redefined from the cultural and urban points of view? Given this framework, how are we going to use the cultural richness and diversity of Europe, when the globalizing technologies bring progressively more alienation as well as behaviors’ and practices’ leveling? The project included an exhibition opened simultaneously in Bergen, Amsterdam, Bucharest and Stockholm in the autumn of 2014. The 4 parallel events have been interconnected through video transmissions. The members of the trans-disciplinary groups involved in the project kept lectures and debates (on City Thinking, Futurology, Art, Architecture, Technology) in those places as well as in other cities (Copenhagen, Oslo, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Chisinau etc.) relevant for the NS axis of the project. A trans-disciplinary documentation on this subject was produced and disseminated through a collection of articles published in magazines and on web platforms. A booklet distributed in partnerships with international transport lines helped collect additional ideas and opinions from the general public, which have been presented in the exhibition. A mobile app stood for the exhibition guideline.

www.citiesandpeople.eu