WAF Keynote: Prototypes for the Future

We live in extraordinary times and, in many ways, the challenges facing cities, cultures and the planet have never been greater. Some have speculated that the global COVID pandemic is merely first tremors of a vast shockwave brought on by environmental decline, failed socio-economic policy and cynical political manipulation. Perhaps more than ever before, the need for reconsidering the fundamental values, agendas and possibilities of architecture and urbanism is clear. We must begin to imagine fundamentally new questions and trajectories that go beyond the lifeless, recycled formalisms, neoDarwinian ethics and vacant marketing-speech—we must begin to answer the question of how can we, as architects, work towards a living future for our spaces, societies and species? In this talk, Ole Scheeren, Principal of international architectural practice Buro Ole Scheeren, will explore the role of this question in the work of the office and how the search for an answer has informed the development of several of the office's unprecedented and city-defining structures.

Ole Scheeren, Principal, Büro Ole Scheeren

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