A Conscious City

In the 20th century, modern approaches to urbanism resulted in cities with grid-like master plans built of concrete, contributing to the disruption and destruction of nature and ecosystems. Proposing an alternative path for the 21st century, LAVA advocates for urban design to harmonize with the environment rather than oppose it. Out of this ethos emerges The Conscious City, a prototype for a city based on the understanding processes of growth, with an organic master process adaptable to changing future needs. Conceived around a network of 'cool routes‘—urban arteries comprising technology, transportation, and connectivity that enhance quality urban social interactions—it provides an alternative infrastructural and mobility model with a decentralized system.

Many cities have already been built, but in instances where new cities are built from scratch, design offers an opportunity for a new nature-based approach on the coast of the Red Sea, where the mountains meet the sea and an abundant coral reef grows. “We meticulously analyzed the landscape and crafted an adaptive smart city master plan to gracefully swell around the curve of the coast, extending into the natural ‘wadis,’ or canyons, that thread through the mountains, nurturing mixed-use neighborhoods to flourish,” explains LAVA Partner Alexander Rieck. The natural artery-style growth of the city plan contributes to a decentralized infrastructure that is more apt for remote, extreme, or mountainous locations.

By setting the master plan within the existing landscape of interconnected valleys, rich with natural topographic features, the city can evolve in tandem with the forces of nature, embedded with recent technology, enabling it to become an organism that continually learns. This data feeds a parametric computer ‘cloud’ model that allows continuous growth strategy creation and simulation—in alignment with the potential of the landscape and even based upon valuable features of past cities and civilizations. Evolving from traditional master planning, this approach, initially developed in the K.A.CARE project and further refined in this endeavor, signifies a notable transition towards master simulation in city design.

The ‘cool routes’ infrastructure is embedded with technology, giving rise to an intelligent network that improves the city’s functioning. Artificial intelligence (AI) is integral, acting as an algorithm that orchestrates the environment based on the desires and necessities of its inhabitants and environmental conditions. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed mobility and logistics in cities and profoundly altered our built environment, changing relationships between nature, spaces, and structures.

LAVA used the coral reef as a blueprint for the design of this technology, seeing it not just as a natural wonder but as a symbolic representation of what the future society could resemble. It's viewed as an intricate system where various organisms coexist, much like how artificial intelligence is envisioned to function in this future city. “Informed by biomimicry, the coral reef serves as a blueprint for the ‘Society of the Future,’ representing a natural analog system of computation—a symbiotic existence of diverse organisms governed by an underlying algorithm and swarm intelligence,” notes Alexander Rieck.

With artificial intelligence set to become an essential part of future cities, its infrastructure must be organized to reflect the symbiosis and constant adaptation of the environment. In this context, our environment will become the interface—spatial characteristics will dynamically adjust to accommodate various needs and purposes. IoT and Architecture will become tools, and the interaction will become immediate.


Our book What If (2022, Birkhäuser) features this project.