CHARTING NEW TERRITORIES

Proposing new habitats in ‘extreme’ areas

“We are producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation” — Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, at the World Architecture Festival.

Our lives today are dictated by our fast-spun surroundings. Thousands of people throng to urban metropolitan cities, hoping to get in on the promise of a better lifestyle in all spheres of life. The other side of this coin, however, is overpopulation in small concentrated areas which is leading to the destruction of land and resources. The current state of the natural sphere is well-documented, and it is clear that the way forward has to be different from the path we are on right now.

The quest for complete modernization has been underway since the first permanent civilization was set up. Our ancestors used materials available to them, using nature to fashion tools for surviving. The better part of historic civilizations is that they lived alongside nature, instead of overpowering it. Today’s scenario is pretty much the opposite of it. Now when we talk about sustainable living, we reference the way our ancestors lived. But today, we have at our disposal, great advancements in technology that have revolutionized the way we live. The future promises more inventions in terms of mobility, communication and infrastructure. Cities are closer than they have ever been, and instead of looking at the cons of today’s society, we can find a complete solution in learning from the past, observing the present, and charting the future. The way forward has to be a combination of advanced technologies and natural techniques and traditions, to be incorporated seamlessly into our habitats.

Increasingly fast development of infrastructure and mobility is causing urbanization to expand to areas earlier unexplored and untouched by modern technologies; areas that still have their historic culture and heritage preserved. What if we considered a clean slate — an area devoid of rich history, yet with great potential for future settlements? Keeping in mind the blend of nature and technology in our day to day lives, we can completely revolutionize the way cities are planned, and grow. The colony will belong to the future, considering the technology of today and built for the specific environment. The ideas are limitless — there is no end to revolutionizing a new habitat, being designed from the scratch. Transport innovations, like the Hyper Loop (the fastest mode of land bound transit), can make the idea of new cities belonging to otherwise barren lands a physical reality, in that the transport and communication network stays alive throughout the world.

Taking this opportunity to build a more responsible class of habitats which inspire a new set of cities to come, Extreme Habitat Challenge (EHC) 2019 presents the Sahara Habitat Challenge — pushing designers to explore habitat concepts that are responsible, yet brave to grow human civilization in sync with nature + technology + planet. This design exercise can be considered similar to colonizing a new earth with technology of today.

The competition proposes a preliminary area in the Sahara Desert, a space devoid of permanent civilizations and subject to extreme climates — a completely clean slate. The area provided is proposed to sit on the Hyperloop route between the overly dense cities of Mumbai, India and New York, USA. The proposed site can be located anywhere in this preliminary area, giving participants freedom to research on terrain and resources and design a habitat from scratch, without any pre-requisites. The challenge is to design a habitat prototype for 1000 people that can be easily scaled as per the factors on which the individual site is designed.

The Extreme Habitat Challenge focuses on an awareness in design, incorporating the past, present and future wisdom, while not compensating on the Live-Work-Play dialect of the modern human civilization. The aim of the challenge is to think out of the box — to accommodate growing populations in the space available to us, without stamping deep footprints on nature.

It is time to use our knowledge and technologies to chart a new structure of future development.

It is time to become the citizens of the world.

To apply, visit http://ehc19.uni.xyz/