heavy as air, light as ground

While China is becoming the economical leader worldwide, Beijing is celebrating through its intense architectural development not only the rise of the nation but also the illusion of an improved wealth. Adjacent to imperial age buildings, Beijing get crowded with buildings of European architects. The exponential city boost of the last decades brought to a general indifference towards the environment and the livable side of the city itself. The erroneous planning, the ruinous logics of speculation and the smog issue that constantly covers Beijing are all visible aspect of this negligence. The population concentrates in the main urbanized areas, rising a new dwelling emergency that has been rarely resolved. This will probably degenerate in the next decades. We are imaging that this issue in the next few years will cause a worldwide collapse. The Earth, to regenerate, will absorb the cities, relieving the “ailing” surface. Consequentially, the human being will be forced to live in the underground, developing new inhabitable colonies. Only the symbols, the monumental buildings, will survive on the surface, to orient those coming from the space. This will generate a purged open air museum, leading a new cultural renaissance. Below this, a continuous city will expand, in which dwellings, working spaces and leisure areas will interchange. In this new global order, what matters the most is the space management: the areas devoted to each activity will shrink to the minimum. Every human being will live in a basic module refined for every needs. This can join other modules, based on the family unit. The remaining areas will be a neutral surface that will take any bespoke identity the owner decides. The shops won’t be divided by sectors but they will just provide a pc to order any good. Everything will be 3d printed and digitally shipped where required. The hotels will be massively affected by this transformation, becoming a rigid hive to capitalize the land. Now a paradox is visible: in the underground, the city is crapped and the land maximized. On the surface, on the contrary, the scenario is the opposite: in the open air museum the human being has disappeared. He has converted to live under an almost lunar crust. The city is stuck at the very last step of globalization where not a single symbol can identify it and where the buildings are condemned to their own wilderness.