Author: ЛОПЕС СТИВЕН САНЧЕС / LÓPEZ STEVEN SANCHEZ
PREFACE
Steven Patricio López Sánchez
UCACUE – Ecuador
I am Steven, a student of 8th cycle of Architecture, a person who cares about his future generations, who lives in a society that has the concept that if technology evolves, so does man. The excessive thinking and use of this concept means that day by day, human beings stop performing common activities, which I think make us feel alive, feel the coins in our hands, tie our shoelaces, touch our food before preparing it, feel the water on our skin, see, give and receive love, take a bus and watch people happy and sad, but alive. To feel alive in addition to satisfying our basic organic needs is to engage in activities that make you live life. Therefore, thinking about the future is disturbing, perhaps the human being will continue to exist, but will not feel alive, and I hope that this will not happen.
INTRODUCTION
The most common problems of society will always be limiting for human beings, especially the poor distribution of wealth and the different living habits of people. The objectives to be reached are to establish the different influential parameters in 2100 to determine a future way of life that we do not know if it exists, where housing, life, and all its cultural, ecological, economic context will possibly be problematic, the human being is used to solve problems, but when it comes to anticipate them and prevent them before they happen, it is not fast and functional.
CHAPTER 1
Momentous details from the year 2020 to the year 2100
The beginning of the background of this proposal begins in the year 2020, where we lived a conflictive year with a virus that hit all the countries of the world and the economic crisis. This made society's living habits change, but this is not new, the world has already gone through this several times, and if they change, architecture is also reformed, in a way of seeking solutions to social problems, that is, architecture is transformed depending on social problems. Starting from this point, it can be said that architecture always must renew itself and remains in a cycle of renovation to satisfy social needs (Puyol, 2022).
Currently, 60 per cent of the world's population lives in Asia, 16 per cent in Africa, 10 per cent in Europe, 9 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and only 5 per cent in North America and Oceania. China and India are the world's largest countries and constitute almost 40 per cent of the world's population (Ebert, 2021).
The world's population is growing at a slower pace, but is still increasing substantially. Some 83 million people are added to the world each year. It is expected that there will be about a billion more people in the world in the next 15 years, bringing the total world population from 7.3 billion in mid-2015 to 8.5 billion in 2030, rising to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. But it is important to stress that this slow but worrying growth will not happen on all continents. In Europe, with the help of statistics, it is predicted that the population will decrease by 20 % by 2100 (Vassallo, 2020).
The most populous city is estimated to have more than 700 million people by 2050, making Nigeria the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India. By 2100, Nigeria will be home to 76 million people, while the most populous city on earth, Lima, will maintain an average population of 9 million people. In addition, India will reach 1.7 billion people around 2050, while China is on track to stabilise at 1.4 billion (Ebert, 2021).
Considering the population data, the countries that are world powers will fight against the clock to reduce this problem of population atonement, and why for these countries it is important to solve this, because there is no longer any habitable space or this space is badly distributed. A clear example is China, this country is the third largest on the planet, it has a large territorial extension but its population is concentrated in one area of the country, they thought that the solution is to build a city. Ordos Kangbashi is in the north-western part of Inner Mongolia. The city was built at great speed in 2001, opened in 2003, and has all the amenities of a big city, wide avenues and ring roads, gardens, parks and recreation areas. But it was a total failure, the city is only 35% occupied (Alencar, 1987).
The year 2100 will see many changes, social, cultural, natural, ecological, economic and especially infrastructural. Robots in the year 2100 will complement human beings in even the most complex tasks. We will see everything from robots taking care of and cleaning the home to robots capable of providing medical care. Many of today's professions could, at some point, be performed by a robot. A society in which, at first glance, it will be impossible to distinguish between a human being and a robot, and in which both will have access to the same opportunities.
Oil will run out in 2070 according to statistics. This forces car companies to renew themselves, between 2025 - 2045 we will have electric cars and cars that use solar energy as fuel for their operation. The materiality of the cars will also change, they will be made of a light material but resistant to strong impacts avoiding in this range of years’ accidents between cars. But for these years’ cars will have to be smaller in terms of their dimensions, remember that we are in constant growth and of course cities will renew their roads and highways, but the number of cars will be greater than the number of cars that do not abound on these roads. Therefore, in the years 2045-2100 transportation will be with cars available to anyone, i.e. there will be cars on the streets that anyone can use and move to the place that requires it, this car will drive itself without any risk and connected with other vehicles to take information and decide a good route (Diaz, 2011).
But cars will be a secondary means of transport because in the years 2080 and 2100 there will already be comfortable human transport equipment by means of pipelines, it will be a kind of train that circulates by air and land, but transporting a group of 2 or 4 people. But common transports in 2020 like a bicycle will still be on the market, but they will be upgraded, they will be electric, with safety sensors and mapping for routes, and even with a high degree of usability. The other major challenge is related to security, as smart mobility systems require a huge amount of information to be shared over the internet. The main risks of this are data interception, destruction and, most dangerous of all, control of a device by an attacker, with the power to alter its operation and operate it at will, it is important to keep on top of all cyber security.
Developing laws to improve urban mobility has therefore become a global objective. This is not only for demographic reasons, but also for environmental reasons. Emission-free urban logistics will be achieved by the year 2030, and the trend is towards new transport management models based on demand, so that a bus will not run at certain times, as is currently the case, but when people are waiting at stops, thus achieving a balance between public and private transport. In the years 2030-2035 there will already be trips to the planet Mars, these trips will initially be exploratory, but in 2033 small colonies will begin to be established on Mars, these colonies will only have access to people with a high economic status, which generates an incredible social difference that some people live on Mars and a larger group of people do not have a decent home and own. In the following years (2035-2100) the export of raw materials from the planet Mars begins, as well as chemical compounds which are of vital importance for the creation of further technology.
Transport from country to country, from continent to continent, will be in a matter of hours, maximum two, remember that it is already possible to travel to the planet Mars, this will be in ships with a fuel specially created to travel fast, these trips will be through channels which will be changing depending on the weather, and will no longer travel only by air but at subsoil level and at sea level at high speeds with spectacular views. Virtual shopping centres, public transport waiting shelters will be interactive in 30 years' time: they will allow you to go shopping while you wait, as they will offer you what they know you need and you pay with a facial gesture, and when you enter a place or pay for something, we will wear microchips that read biometric features, such as your heartbeat or the way you walk, so you can open your front door or make an economic transaction without keys or passwords. Home garden, fruit and vegetables will be harvested in the vertical garden on the terrace. But this scenario will change from 2050 onwards, when all food will be precooked or printed on 3D printers and food delivery will no longer be an everyday occurrence as it is today, by 2020. No two cities are the same, each city has its own needs and resources. We have to take into account the rhythms and density of people in each place, as well as the culture, lifestyle, climate and uses of the inhabitants," González points out. What we can predict for the future is that everything will be connected to the network: from street furniture to our homes. In terms of mobility, advances continue to show us that what seemed impossible years ago, the pavement of big cities will be smart and will have sensors that allow people who still drive a car to drive properly (Moraglio, 2018).
Smart furniture, from street furniture to the homes we will live in, will be connected to the network in 2100. These objects will produce vast amounts of data and some cities will build police-style control centers to make predictions about life in the city, including where a crime will take place before it happens. Shopping is going to be very different in 2100. 3D printers will be available in many shops, making it possible to create all kinds of customized products. Robot assistants will help you find what you are looking for and perform tasks such as stocktaking. The boundary between the real and the virtual will be blurred. Products will be displayed on virtual screens with layers of augmented reality to show you what objects look like out of the box (Moutoukias, 2022).
Human network. Rather than mobile phones in our pockets, the citizen of 2100 will probably carry a computer, possibly similar to Google Glasses. This will mean that city dwellers will be sensors themselves, raising questions about how to keep this data private (Mrozowski, 2018).
Living street lights - by 2100 there will be equipment that, instead of a row of lights in the street, the roads will produce their own energy and light up only when vehicles or people are there, contributing to the ecosystem and not affecting plant or animal cycles. The improvement of materials used in construction, such as cement, concrete and asphalt, are the focus of much research aimed at offering improvements in strength, efficiency and cost reduction, among other things. Thanks to nanotechnology, an eco-efficient, thermochromics cement that changes color with temperature and can be used as a smart coating. The same research center is developing a new type of concrete that can repair itself. Unlike other research with concrete that repairs itself from the outside, the aim in this case is for the material to be able to do so from the inside, thanks to microcapsules that fill with material that breaks up when a crack occurs in the concrete in order to repair it. In the case of asphalt, work is being developed that doubles the useful life of the asphalt by adding small steel wool fibres that have the capacity to melt the asphalt when an electric current is supplied to it, which allows the asphalt and gravel mixture that is used as road pavement to be recomposed. These applications will take place in the years 2025-2045, thereafter working with material that has as its raw material rocks and chemical compounds from the planet Mars.
Latin American cities will face a population that is not growing or is simply decreasing and an ageing society: today a large majority of Latin American cities have between 30 and 70 people over 60 years of age for every 100 under 15 years of age. In 2050, that range will be 80-180. In many cases, the population over 60 will have tripled. The traditional demographic pyramid we learned about in school will have begun to invert. However, these older adults will live much more active lives than our grandparents and parents did. Therefore, we can no longer expect economic growth to be fractionalised by population growth (Blanco, 1988). In the years 2030-2040 the polar areas will melt and sea levels will rise. Archipelagos and huge regions of the world will be permanently flooded. Global warming causes seawater to evaporate in greater quantities, leading to more flooding, while in other regions droughts and the expansion of drylands will increase. This will bring with it a huge wave of migration. Many animal and plant species will disappear. The damage will be such that it is impossible to know clearly what dangers we will face. The climate will be disastrous in the years 2030-2050, but in 2050 the revolutionary equipment is created and the one that gives hope to humanity to continue to inhabit the planet earth. It will purify the air and eliminate the greenhouse effect, but the vegetation has to increase year by year. This equipment will continue to do so until 2100, it has no side effects and is of vital importance. But for these years we also have something unimaginable for humans, we are colonizing Mars. But this is not good at all, as this is only for the wealthy classes. In the same range of years, we are about to run out of fresh water, vital for the life of human beings, but our salvation will come closer than we imagined, a revolutionary equipment capable of converting salt water into fresh water within the reach of all people controlled by the government, thus solving a possible end of the human race and additionally controlling dehydration in Africa.
Maintaining the climate, we have now is a technological challenge, but solutions were found in 2040 so that the climate does not exceed the usual and become an oven or an uninhabitable freeze, this point is important because the city in a range less will expand horizontally, its expansion will be more vertical, creating buildings unimaginable to date with incredible heights, giving engineering a huge leap. But for animals this will not be very convenient. 17% of the mass of marine animals (fish, invertebrates, mammals) could disappear by 2100 if CO2 emissions continue at the current rate. Already underway, this loss, which only takes into account the effects of climate, without considering other factors (such as overfishing and pollution), would have a major impact on biodiversity and food security. Predictions by major international organizations suggest that the average sea level could rise by more than one meter by 2100, so it is inevitable to consider what will become of the future of cities, which are in danger of disappearing major cities. Thus, one of the greatest challenges for architecture and urban planning is the configuration of cities that will sooner rather than later face the feared rise in ocean levels (Love, 2013). Everyday things will also change, clothing will be waterproof, quick to wash, food will be faster as fast food and instant food will be precooked, cooking fresh food will be a luxury.
And as expected robotics will abound in 2100, everything will be accounted for and managed by artificial intelligence. And the era of Androids and human-like robots will begin, capable of sensing and recognizing feelings, also able to perform tasks, i.e. a robot at our disposal. Artificially intelligent machines will also be available for rubbish collection, city cleaning, parcel delivery, construction, recreational centers, commodity sales and so on. Mutant suit, because it protects like sportswear that maintains the ambient temperature inside at 21 degrees Celsius and changes characteristics according to the outside temperature. You could even submerge yourself in water with it and still not feel the cold. The suit will change shape depending on the situation we are in. Socially, the way we relate to each other will change completely. There will be empathic social networks, which will detect our hormone level, physical state, emotions, and interact with us accordingly, most likely in 20 years' time. In terms of electricity installations, decentralized electricity grids in remote areas that allow neighbors to buy and sell renewable energy among themselves, allowing the local economy to flourish. Regenerative agriculture and permaculture practices that absorb carbon from the atmosphere and return it to the soil, helping to grow nutrient-rich food. Harnessing algae, which can grow up to half a meter a day, while restoring marine habitats and providing us with food, fibre, fertilizer and biofuel.
By 2100, everyone in the world will have free access to the internet. We will carry devices everywhere with a continuous internet connection, giving us access to all human knowledge anywhere on the planet, eliminating even today's language barriers. We will consume new, more nutritious, organic and ethical foods. For example, we will have meat grown without killing animals, without generating diseases, without ecological problems, and the meat of the future will be cheaper and more nutritious. 3D printers will play a major role in history until the year 2100, providing us with food, commodities, and building essential elements of a city, such as roads, parks, signage, advertising, and so on. But their most essential contribution will be to medicine. The doctors of 2100 will use these tools to monitor patients and predict how they will respond to specific therapeutic plans tailored to their physiology, rather than relying on the average response of large groups of people participating in clinical trials. Advances in chip miniaturization, bioengineering and materials science are laying the groundwork for new devices that may even replace complex organs such as the eye or pancreas, or at least help them to function better.
In short, if we look at 2100, we have a larger population with little building space, transportation changes drastically and it is no longer necessary to have a car. Cooking food is no longer frequent, robotics will be present everywhere and at all times, different lifestyles and climate control management will be indispensable.
CHAPTER 2
Affordability of a home in families of social interest.
In the 2100s, everything from street furniture to the furniture in the homes we live in will be connected to the network and will perform a wide range of activities. These private spaces where man will relate to his home will no longer be cleaned as the material automatically cleans the accumulation of dust and disinfects properly at times when family members are not around. But cars will be a secondary means of transport, since in the years 2080 and 2100 there will already be equipment for comfortable human transport by means of ducts. Homes will have virtual living rooms, you can create a virtual reality experience with a shared screen at home, where you can work with people thousands of kilometers away. You will be able to appear there, in hologram, as if you were present. The materiality of these houses will be brought from the planet Mars, which is super economic, resistant and light, with resistance to wind and water, good load transmitter, which makes it an ideal material for the construction of a minimal housing.
As for the wealth of 2100, it will still be very poorly distributed and there will always be a vulnerable class. People with more money will have access to a home with all their desires and needs, and some wealthier people will be able to consolidate their homes on the planet Mars, as indicated in the previous chapter.
The most worrying problem is that a house or any project is generated for the group of people who request the design, that is to say that the number of family members, lifestyles, physical build of the people, climate, sunshine, humidity, use of space, time spent in the house, closeness of members, religion and type of urbanization where the project is implanted will change. This social group is generally located on the outskirts of the city. In 2100, transportation and distances between points will be reduced as transportation will be public, agile and fast. Everything described is at a general level, but if we subdivide this problem, the climate increases the complications, and not only with the climate, if we add beliefs, countries, culture and people of the family member, it will increase the variables of the social housing equation.
So this vulnerable social group has many factors against and some in favor, and we have to highlight that those in favor reward those who are against, for the year 2100 the installations of basic services such as water, electricity, telephone and Internet will be more feasible and do not need an assembly or a study to the site or even less to the house to have them, Therefore, the dimensions will be drastically smaller than those established today, and this is an important point since the territorial space in 2100 will be short, it has to occupy as little as possible, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the scope of the budget is short through foundations and the government. Therefore, the housing scenario is improving and the budget allows us to be able to realize better finishes or spaces. However, depending on the case, systems have been created for very specific cases. Several factors condition both the strategy and the materiality of the project. On the one hand, the set must be completely dismountable and foldable, to make artist residencies compatible with other types of programmers that will take place in the same space throughout the year, such as exhibitions or other events, and on the other hand, the storage of the set during periods when there is no residency.
Housing is the physical manifestation of the space required by man to live together with his family. When it is conceived as a necessity of life, whose materialization demands the investment of scarce resources, it requires the most rational effort possible, where the greatest performance, efficiency and economy are achieved. This point of view demands the most exhaustive studies that guarantee the performance of activities and functions with the appropriate hygiene and comfort in the smallest possible space; that also faithfully interprets the idiosyncrasy and culture of the user, giving full satisfaction to the aspirations of the intellect, feeling and spirit. Nevertheless, the breadth of the thematic field, its limits must be kept very much in mind, which allow it to be appreciated, conceived, defined and materialized in the authentic range of social housing; where on the one hand the minimum thresholds avoid falling into the wrong levels, as also the maximum ones avoid over spending wasteful excesses. basic needs of a person such as rest, food, transport, in the smallest possible space to condense the housing module to its minimum expression. At the same time, the fact that they are entirely prefabricated elements, made entirely in the factory, aims to make them more accessible to the population. A proposal for transportable social housing or housing located in strategic places in the city should not be overlooked. These can be transported by bicycles or cars in which the housing does not have everything necessary, but by 2100 it will be sufficient.
CHAPTER 3
Solutions to housing problems.
As the general social environment of 2100 has already been described, we will now turn to the architecture, to the components that have changed and remained the same until 2100. The science of creating living spaces after the structural point of view is stagnant, no material has been created that is used on a general level like reinforced concrete. Reinforced concrete will always be used, but in dwellings it is possible to work with materials such as reinforced plastic, artificial wood fibre and others.
And it is also defined where these social groups are located (outside the city), so starting from all the technological advances and lifestyles we can begin to structure social housing, but first it is important to locate their needs and seek solutions to the different variables.
Pure needs:
-Rest (Bedroom)
-Food preparation (Small kitchen)
-Small dining room
Work room (space to carry out different activities) -Service room.
-Utility room.
These are the basic needs in 2100, it is interesting how technology can change our habits and even the spaces of a house and with it our lives. As already explained, these social housing will be implemented outside the city, this gives us an additional plus in terms of design as the house can comply with proper sunlight and adequate ventilation. The most difficult variable to solve is how many people will live in this housing, and this variable is constantly changing, so we propose a non-fixed construction, that is to say, one that can be assembled and disassembled. This would solve this variable in a small percentage, but the optimum would be to create only 1 dwelling, but it is not possible in social housing because the space is reduced and the budget is excessively low.
As far as the budgeted value for the year 2100 is concerned, there are already building materials that can be assembled and disassembled, which are economical and resistant. This can be reused or in the case of expansion or reduction of space be instantaneous and aesthetically pleasing. For the control of light and air, intelligent curtains will be used which, depending on the time of day and season, will control the windows and the temperature of the house.
The stairs are eliminated and a lift is proposed with a hydraulic system which will take you from the ground floor to the first floor, the number of floors will depend on the number of family members. In the bedroom we have a folding bed so that when we need a work space we can use the bedroom. The laundry is no longer necessary as explained in the previous chapter, the clothes are reusable and we do not need a washing machine, just put them in the wardrobe and they will be clean.
All household appliances and furniture are electronic with artificial intelligence, which means that if by accident we spill any liquid, the house, without having to ask for it, will carry out tasks to dry it.
EPILOGUE
The world, the conditions of life, our social and cultural environment that is always in continuous change, allows us humans to evolve in technology, much of this technology is unnecessary eliminating activities that make us feel human, as a student of architecture I have always been concerned about the space where we humans live, mostly in cities, which are an organism created by ourselves that if not handled with care we can be creating our own annihilating chronometer, Avoiding future problems of a future that does not exist until now has to be done from now, not from tomorrow, specialized and basic sciences focused on how human beings can maintain themselves and guarantee a prosperous and long life not only for themselves but also for future generations is what is needed, If we ask ourselves what our life would be like in 5 months, perhaps the changes will not be considerable, but if we ask ourselves the same question but in 15 years, the variables to consider are infinite, and from that point we have to act, anticipate events, so that our generations do not have to solve problems caused by those of us who are here today.
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