Background: Faith as a catalyst to generic cities

The 21st century is known for the age of globalization. The process of urbanization in cities, the interaction between people and integration among businesses & society are no longer driven just by local forces like climate, culture, geography or its inhabitants. It’s also a well-known fact that data-driven technologies are playing a major role in shaping us and the kind of cities we live in today.  These forces of technology, for all the good they are doing to us in so many ways, are also powerfully speeding up the homogenization of culture. This force of technology in the world we live in today has been there for quite some time and now seems to be unstoppable. In the past, cities have always been seen as an incubator for creative ideas and human evolution. However, with our technological evolution, the question this brief seeks is retaining this distinct identity of a city as an incubator of creative ideas in the next century. Can faith act as a catalyst here? 

Technology 

Technologies that we use today, have strengthened our connection with each other as human beings which resulted in reducing time & space. It has also allowed us to have a virtual presence anywhere in the world at any time. This sounds wonderful until we realize that this has resulted, in some ways, making us feel like we are less where we really are. In other ways it makes all places seem more or less the same.  When we try to connect with someone for any purpose, we can immediately connect whether we are on a vacation or at work.  Today, we are more bonded to our interest groups for collaborative development, which is possible from any geographical location because of the virtual networks and our handheld devices. 

What does it mean? : Every place is so generic that it feels like just a node or a network to connect, and so do we as a person act like a node or a network.

"People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, faith, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth, these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterless ness provides the best context for living." —Rem Koolhaas for an interview in Wired, July 1996 

Globalization

The urban setup we live in today is a result of the multi-layered evolution that our cities have gone through. If we take the example of cities of western countries, urban areas were known for issues, crises or challenges in the past. The urban crisis was a given, cities were deemed harsh, dirty and dangerous. On the contrary, the Asian cities that now loom so large were large, but they did not loom. These Asian cities had very little to do with the global economy and they were technologically backward. The major cities on the world stage were European and American for the most part, and many of them were known for the mess that they had in the cities. Today we might have come over these issues, Asian cities like Shanghai, Tokyo or Mumbai are known for their presence in the global economy, cities from the west are setting examples for others to follow. But this has also generated a plethora of urban issues for which we seek a new solution today.  The word Urban crisis might not be there but has taken a new shape. Pedestrianization, climate change, traffic congestion are some of the many issues for which we seek the solution today. These common issues in almost all the mega-cities, in turn, started generating universal solutions. In this race of making the world a better place for ourselves, we have shaped the cities what we see today, that is what we promote, that is what we as an activist, architects, designers, planners, filmmakers or any other stakeholders of the city seek. This race, in turn, has given birth to a “Generic city” that we see in Megacities, be it, New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, or Shanghai. This poses a question for the cities of the next century or rather centuries.

What will make a city special? Will stakeholders of the city ever be able to build special places in the next century? Can culture, faith or different identities of regions build these spaces in the next century? 

Your Utopia, my Dystopia

Cities of the 21st century are racing with each other to make a utopian society. They are setting up examples for each other to be followed by each other. This race is the process in which we are building a “Generic city” driven by wealth and technology. We cannot underestimate the extent to which, nowadays our cities feel the same. It is because the people in them are more the same than they once were. These cities can be anywhere yet it may give you a sense of being nowhere. Today nowhere is virtually any place, every place that is the world of technology, accessible to all of us. Now every place is, to a greater or lesser extent, a product of its time. 

Challenge: Design for faith 

Does architecture yet again have the potential to make our cities di-generic? Can we save our cities from the destined? Can we introduce faith as a prominent factor affecting cities? 

If skylines around the world are looking too much the same, Is this because the new and important buildings are done by the big names (designers) from far away and not by the locals or the opposite is true? In the age where the information is easy to consume, what role does starchitecture play, or what role does local architecture play? Not only skyscrapers but museums, civic centre's, concert halls, bridges, libraries, opera houses all give cities part of their identity as well. Many of these buildings that succeed best and make places feel special may not be designed by local architects either, but by architects who were hired because it was thought that they could bring more imagination and a sense of freshness to the problem. This brings us to so many questions that are the starting point of untangling this issue:

• How can we reclaim our cities to act differently from each other in the next centuries through faith?
• What does the architectural design need to have or provide to disengage and distinguish itself from the evolving technology?
• Can architecture be more than an object or an icon? If so, how?
• What kind of urban programs do we consider to be useful to its inhabitants and what do they seek from the city?
• Can architecture again become a node or intersection for people? If so, how? can faith play a part in this?
• What kind of space possesses a question that you are in a special place for all age groups where they can interact with each other? 

Faith

Every city needs to be a place in which the basic idea of the urban fabric of streets and public places and decent architecture forms the foundation. But if that is all we have, and if we lose our desire for great and special buildings that break out of all of this then we have failed our cities just as much. The “Generic city” is not only a place with identical glass towers and freeways and malls. It is also the place that stops caring about things that are different and no longer builds buildings that break the rules and makes us feel that we are in a place that is like no place else. And that, the feeling of being in a special place, is one of the greatest gifts that any city can give us. 

Can an architectural building in one of the “Generic cities” make the urban space/architecture special through faith?

Design Objectives

Your outcome can be a combination of anyone, two or all three forces that exist in a city. Function: 

• Function: A function-driven outcome to make people understand that function matters in a technology-driven society. 

• Local Forces: A combination of multiple local forces, like climate, people, culture, geography, etc.

• Global Forces: A unique unmatched style that breaks the boundary of architecture and design that we know today.

Site of the competition

The Japanese economic miracle is known as Japan's record period of economic growth between the post-World War II era to the end of the Cold War. During the economic boom, japan rapidly became the world's second-largest economy (after the United States). However by the 1990s, Japan's demographics began stagnating and the workforce was no longer expanding as it did in previous decades, despite per-worker productivity remaining high. As a countermeasure, the government’s 2018 Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform, Japan will allow a greater number of foreign workers into the country, marking a major shift in its immigration stance. As Japan still predominantly hosts the Japanese population this will significantly reshape the demographics of the country in the coming century. How will this affect the already ‘globalizing’ architectural trends of such a culturally rich country in faith? 

Celebration of Faith

Despite the demographic crisis of Japan, the most significant feature of the country is the religious, faith and cultural background that has endured generations. This is also a rising concern in the upcoming immigration policy’s baseline that the foreign citizens finding work in Japan have to be conversant and aware of the rich history that Japan holds. But the current demographic trends reflect that the population of Japan might face a much severe decline in the coming decades, and it will need a lot of immigrants in the coming years. With such a new wave of young cosmopolitan citizens, the face of tomorrow’s Japan will be quite different from today. While predicting the progressive ideology of the country, there will be an opportunity to practise different faith on Japanese soil. But how will worshipping and faith as an architectural function with such a significant demographic shift transform over the coming century in Japan; when the world eventually is destined to become generic?

Chuobohatei, Tokyo

• Site Area: 40,000 sqm (~10 Acres)
• Max Ground coverage: 40%
• Coordinates: 35°35'24.6"N 139° 49'01.2"E
• Location: Koto City

No restrictions on building codes are applicable to this challenge to design a center for faith. As Japan invites more migrants, an already small country requires more and more space to live. In the coming future, the most probable place Japan might move to will be the waters. What it implies is how Tokyo uses its generated waste to forge artificial islands for the reclamation of oceans. As more and more islands like these emerge on the coasts of Tokyo, the ‘Celebration of faith’ building finds its central place on one of the artificial islands that are already created today. Faith stands as a symbol of old Japan finding a new sense of harmony with newfound land and people helping it grow and develop in the future. We invite you to design a center for faith that changes the generic city of Tokyo. 

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Entries 

Winner

SPHERE

The sphere is like the sacred and divine form of space for faith. It is the final stage in the transformation of energy that follows a divine purpose. The sphere is the most efficient form to store and spread energy. All planets and stars follow the same as if they have a shared code of consciousness. This transformation is a manifestation of common destiny.

 

People's Choice Award 

Spiritual Journey to Oneness

The building is a sacred place for people of all faith, religions or backgrounds to connect with the Divine and their higher self (the real self, awakened aspects of oneself, assessing deeper truths and knowledge). It is designed beyond experience with a series of spaces that allows visitors to experience the process of spirituality.

 

Editor's Choice entries

Transcendence

Transcendence. Is an attempt to capture the city from an alternative perspective, or a set of perspectives. following the narrative of three characters, moving from the perception of the city to the transformative experience of the building reaching for the final conclusion of each of the three characters in their search for transcendence and faith.

 

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The project challenges the concepts of generic and iconic but imagines one in the realm of the other. It understands how external factors such as culture, faith, nature, etc. helps in creating iconic architecture out of generic forms. We delve into the process of 'Japanization' here, and position it where its inherent definition changes in the face of immigration.

Explore other architecture competitions for of Di-Generic cities- Shanghai and Los Angeles