synthetic worlds

Madison Bartsch

Joe Dahmen Fionn Byrne Brendan Buchanan Dee Adam Rysanek

The climate crisis has arrived. Canadian cities need to develop a radical new architecture typology to respond to the acute events that require shelter from inhospitable environmental conditions. In Vancouver periods of extreme heat and unhealthy air due to forest fires are becoming a regular occurrence. This project is a proposal for a new model of enclosing public spaces to multiply their functionality for times of crisis and the everyday. Sites adjacent to community centres could be enclosed and adapted to provide shelter for the vulnerable inhabitants of the city, human and non-human alike. These new types of enclosures are neither fully natural nor fully artificial but synthetic worlds that might act as arks to transport us into a future where we’ve found a solution to global climate change or adapted to the circumstances.