New Publics, New Practice: Technology and Collaboration in Spatial Practice for a Changing World

The future in architecture has always been heavily theorised. Technology has occupied much of its theoretical horizons and material innovation has often been posited as a prerequisite to social freedoms. While the post-war period yielded utopian visions generated by the advent of cheap and expanded manufacturing, Buckminster Fuller not only theorised technological production as a mechanism for human freedoms but went so far as to propose pathways to planetary symbiosis between human and non-human ecosystems through collective planning and systems theory. It’s hardly surprising that such fervour distorted our sense of humility when it came to the future, not only at home but in the rest of the world. While technological promise produced utopian ideologies in the industrialised nations, it was feeding into evolving post-war development rhetoric to cement a vision of technological necessity that bled into global politics in such a way as to create a static and globally accepted idea that ‘poverty’ was not only dangerous to these future visions but categorically un-industrialised and in need of technological salvation. As the Reagan and Thatcher era consolidated the political project of neoliberalism after the end of the Cold War and state-led architecture and planning diminished, architecture’s position in popular service faded into obscurity. And so, what comes for young professionals now? What are the pathways to unlocking the possibilities for new understandings of technology and public in the architectural profession?