PREFACE

 By Domenica Abad-Pintado

UCACUE – Ecuador

 

 What is going to happen? It is a question that personally is always in my head more time than it should, the intrigue of an uncertain future is something that I know that many of us always have us speculating without getting an answer, the fear of the unknown will always be present, but I do not want to start this story with something as negative as the feeling of fear, although this is inevitable, that is why at the moment of developing and throwing a sort of prophecy for 2100 I hope to calm many people with these crazy theories, but mainly to calm me, a woman who has the habit of overthinking and locking herself inside her pessimistic thoughts that usually never come to pass, this time for this allegory of the future that I present, I decided to change this bad habit and predict a future with a healthy society in which I would like to live.

Being a student of architecture every day the challenges that are presented to me are the solutions of living spaces for the human being so that he can live comfortably and enjoy a fullness in his home, as well as in the urban environment the goal is to generate the same full conditions for a healthy and splendid society, so most of this story will be directed to how the spaces will be in the future, because if we realize the architecture directs the modus operandi of the human being, therefore his mental state, and therefore the state of society itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Every day I receive news of strong cases of corruption, not only in politics, or of young people who become too rebellious to the point that they are a problem for the people around them, I as one of them try to identify the problem and in this writing present a solution that I have been thinking about. The first problem I had was to order my ideas to start writing, since I do not consider myself a writer, much less a good one, for this, I had to resort to several science fiction books to be able to have an idea of where to start, besides also resorting to movies of the same genre, I must highlight one in particular called Equals, Twin Souls, a 2016 film directed by Drake Doremus, where he illustrates a utopian future of peace and organization, which is the one that comes closest to my idea of the future. On the other hand, there is the central part of this work which is the social housing, which at the time of designing must take into account the clear rules to create a livable place for a human being and even more important a human being of the year 2100, which we do not know what living needs will have, so that was the biggest challenge.

 

The moment a society goes into crisis, it fragments and loses its collective values of the common good. With the common identity there is a group feeling where individuals tend to group among their own (Taberna, 2014).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

A new story

 

Due to a deadly virus, humanity had to go through very hard times. At first the economy declined, the pandemic had been so devastating that the main livelihood was affected, then followed the politics because, corruption reached an unimaginable limit where there was a civil war that exterminated it, emerging a new current where scientists and leaders were responsible for directing the new world. Another point that was affected was the society, because the debauchery that had been granted to themselves, to the people ended up killing them, the excesses, the way of thinking, even the education they received from their family was something that the new leaders took very seriously and imposed new rules.

 

On the other hand, the environment had great benefits, since, in one way or another, everything was immobilized, which made the new leaders realize the importance of taking care of the environment. That is why they started with an ideal future so that history would not repeat itself. As you might expect, this disease devastated many cities, leaving them almost uninhabited.

 

In an average of 10 years that this pandemic lasted, a cure was found which took too long to reach the countries. Not because of the time it took to develop it, but because of the corruption that worsened during the pandemic, the political higher-ups decided to keep the cure and let people continue to die for their own good, or sell it at excessively high prices. This caused a civil war in most of the world where the people rose up and ousted those who used to be their rulers. After that things got worse, there was no one to organize, so society began to fall apart, which was what had been seen for a long time.

 

In the new generation, the responsible family nucleus left their children aside, raising in a certain way people who did not want to contribute to society, allowing them to live in the excesses created by the human being himself, ending with the little empathy that was left.

 

The new leaders decided to control the human being, since they realized that a head without organization becomes chaos. To do this they divided into sectors and distributed tasks for their survival, excessive industrialization was stopped and they returned to harvest from the land, little by little this chaos that had almost finished with the human being, began to stabilize and many things ceased to exist, mainly a strong birth control, then people left aside consumerism, cars were no longer produced because the sectors that had been divided became satellite cities where an average of ten thousand people lived there and not being very large spaces to travel this means was no longer necessary.

 

The buildings became self-sustainable, but it must be taken into account that during the process of chaos the construction was affected by the war of the sand, because as in everything the human being began to overexploit this medium and when it was finished it became the new gold in this area. The solution was to reuse plastic as a new construction material, both structural and for furniture (Diseclar, 2014).

 

Fig. 1. Garden Building    Source: Author

 

 

The satellite cities were conceived in the capital of each country, for the rest of the cities that were abandoned, they were demolished so that nature could reemerge, in addition, that material was reused in the creation of the satellite city. The bicycle became the new means of transportation, now people could move easily and without having to pollute. The new streets used green and sustainable asphalt which is a mixture of recycled rubber from tires with asphalt so as not to use so much of this material knowing that the sand was one step away from disappearing (ACCASoftware, 2019).

 

With the city already educated, it was still necessary to educate people, they began to remove the excesses and practically forced people to lead a healthy life, implementing sports, healthy food, family coexistence, because young people who learned to cooperate in their small society called family could learn to empathize with society in general. This was an arduous process, because being a human being is free, it has always been and will always be considered so, and when someone imposed rules on him his rebellious side refused to follow them. But what the human being must keep in mind is that he needs rules and an organized routine to be able to have peace and to transmit it. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it is a habit'' said Aristotle looking for a way to reach divinity, and in a way, it is true only with good habits a good society is forged, the inhabitants began to listen and decided to carry out this plan before their own chaos exterminates them.

 

The pattern of behavior was regulated and began to have a reasoning that came from the same mind of the person when he finds himself and leaves aside the excesses, only then did humanity realize that it was free to can think and have a clear and independent purpose, but that in a way is a contribution to society itself. A structured life was what the human being always needed, and it is what he will always need.

 

Fig. 2. Fullness of mind    Source: Author

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2

The present day

 

When humanity began to decay so did the large structures that used to be recognized, because they were abandoned being a pollutant to the environment, for that reason the new leaders decided to create the new social housing with the project ''Planomai'' (Greek word meaning planet), this focused on reusing the abandoned buildings to use them as housing for all the "saved" as they called them. In this new era, there are no social classes, everyone works as a community depending on the specialization they have chosen at the age of majority, which is 20 years old. This age was chosen because education was intensified by including in all educational institutions more subjects that would specialize in the thinking of young people, such as ethics and philosophy. Apart from this they had to follow compulsory courses in basic engineering, agriculture, sewing, so that everyone would have the same knowledge and there would be community support.

 

In this society people are held in high esteem, because it begins a time of coexistence with oneself; if we take into account the dependence on society and the pressure that was exerted in the past, it turned people into automatons, followers of unhealthy concepts, usually these ideas became fanaticism that drove the masses crazy, it is not healthy to adapt to a sick society that will eventually make you sick, as a result of not knowing how to be with yourself. It had a great weight to seek to be accompanied which is not bad, but did not let the own thoughts are formed reflected in crime, corruption, blind people of power who led fanatical masses, this worked moderately in a stable world, but the conditions ceased to be stable where selfish leaders were no longer needed, on the contrary free individuals were needed to invent new forms of human beings that these defend human dignity, so that this is not stable, it is optimal.

 

To focus on the new actuality, we will take an inhabitant of the building. ''Demos'' (Greek word meaning village). This inhabitant is a young woman of 21 years old named Adara is a research student, which was the field she chose in her 20s. Her family consists of a 15-year-old younger sister and her parents, her family would be described as family type 2. When they began to create new rules for citizens, they imposed a birth control in which, depending on their ability to raise children, they are given a maximum number of children they can have. In order to obtain this result, reasoning tests are done in addition to the position they hold. Surely for people in the early 2000's this would seem too abusive, but since this was implemented, society itself began to move forward knowing what its limits are. In order to obtain a better order, the family nucleus was classified: family type 2, family type 1, couples who decide not to have children, and finally, people who do not get married and dedicate themselves to making contributions to society.

 

In itself everything seems too cold and structured, but now there is more sensitivity for the arts and philosophy, in fact, it is a requirement to have a fondness for these, knowing that the purest part of the human being which is to express himself in an aesthetic way and cause a feeling to another person who is watching, listening, etc. will endure.

A new model of life was imposed where having a daily and organized routine made people more prosperous, around 2020 people became more depressed, suffered from anxiety and other mental discomforts that resulted in more problems in people's lives, and that was because they lacked a structured routine that made them feel full and happy with themselves, so little by little the concept of: fix your room and then the world was developed. This model helped them to free themselves from the system, then from the crowd and finally from the vices.

Continuing with the example of daily life, Adara wakes up at 6 a.m., her room is not very big because it is not very big. Her room is not very big because she and her family have a minimalist style, there is only a bed closet placed horizontally to the wall, and a mattress with a rosewood cover, although it is winter season in her city, she does not have to use much clothing to get warm, when they began to rebuild the buildings they used a type of ecological block using plastic bottles, this besides being a good building material that does not need sand, creates an acoustic and thermal environment for the person (Levinton, 2019), also the profiles of the glasses are the same as the previous construction, being these of 6 lines projecting type where it also soundproofs the room, but when it is opened, the soft autumn breeze enters the bedroom ventilating it in a functional way. Between the walls, aerogel was used, a very light acoustic insulator that helps to have a comfortable life with the family without knowing what is happening in the house next door (UMACON, 2017).

 

After arranging her room (as it is the custom of the first action to arrange the bed, so that the day is tidy) she goes to the kitchen, it is very common at this time that the family meets in the kitchen either to talk or to prepare breakfast, on this day it is the turn of Adara and her sister Apolline, both with names of Greek etymology. In this society there is a Greek aesthetic style either in the way of thinking or naming things, due to the fact that their society was always full of thinkers as well as their art. One of the purposes of the leaders is to generate the empathy that was once lost, and this is achieved by spending as much time as possible among the family becoming a small community, hence the gratitude of children to parents when they grow old and take care of them because they know that in some way they owe it to the people who raised them, now the family grows and does not follow the typical way of getting married and go to another place, on the contrary, they seek a closeness so as the parents were a support to the children, they are in the same way.

 

This family is governed by being matriarch, just as in ancient Greece women were revered because they knew that they were a support for society. The mother of the family, Eudora is a seamstress, while her father, Leander is an engineer. Eudora works in the city center mending some garments, but she knows that her greatest contribution is good parenting to ensure a good future for her daughters and for society.

 

The kitchen is designed so that two people can be working and not collide even though it is small, what matters most are the storage spaces so that everything remains tidy. The refrigerator is a very classic white with minimal measures only to keep the right and necessary, if you follow its path is the washer with workspace, all this place with a large window that overlooks the laundry, this area is like a balcony to have the possibility to enter enough air and sun, continuing is the kitchen, and then the work counter where there is several storage and also the dining room for four people linked to the kitchen counter. This family does not like to invite friends to their home, so they do not need a large dining room for their possible visitors.

 

Adara, when she woke up in the morning and before going to the kitchen she went up to the terrace of the building where there is a community garden of all the people who live there, this is their main food supply since the diet of the people is mostly vegetarian. Here you can find a variety of vegetables, legumes, small fruits and also medicinal and aromatic plants. As usual Adara went up with her basket and cut some aromatic leaves for an infusion, as this place is everyone's responsibility, everyone is also entitled to take just enough. Up there, where the wind blows stronger and you can see how the rays of sunlight begin to come out of the mountain, you feel a deep peace, you can only listen to the birds and the silence, breathing in this place is too relaxing, the pure air seeps into your lungs feeding them with oxygen.

If you stand on the edge you can see a large green ocean surrounding the building, it should be noted that this place is purely residential and there is no other, hence its great height, but you are grateful for that, this place is the only one that has a view as impressive as that, down almost to the edge of the ground you can see the train passing through the woods, when it was built, they specified not to cut a single branch, so when you pass through there you feel like you are floating in the forest.

But there is no more time to admire the view, it's time to move on. When Adara arrives in the kitchen, her sister has already boiled the water for the infusion and is preparing toast with the homemade bread she usually prepares on weekends. Between conversations they prepare and serve breakfast together with their parents, when they finish they clean up the kitchen and go to their rooms to get ready for their day.

 

The four of them are waiting for the train to leave, the first to go is Apolline, who is attending high school, the next ones are her parents who are heading downtown to their respective jobs, on the other hand, Adara has to wait for the last one as she is going to the outskirts of the city to the research faculty. She sits on one of the white chairs while listening to music coming from the same train. She has been interested in this field since she was a child so it was no surprise that she wanted to choose Research. They recently started a research project on the chaos that took place over 50 years ago, where society itself collapsed, so she has been researching everything related to the topic, and she reviews the information while looking out the window at the forest around her.

 

                  Fig. 3. Futuristic train       Source: Author

 

The university he attends is located a few kilometers from the city since the campus it occupies is large enough to house another city. In itself it has all the careers that a university can have, besides having a prestigious recognition of medicine being the pride of the inhabitants. Here they have as a concept that wisdom and knowledge should not be charged, what they do, you must repay this knowledge with work towards the institution, which could be said to be internships for Adara, who is already heading to the place, she has to do the research for which she read and collected information.

 

Lecture time has begun and the classroom is half full, the teacher who is taking a stylus puts it on his tablet and instantly the blackboard in front is filled with the word ''chaos''.

 

Continuing with the theme of the previous class, we know that human beings had their greatest decline in the pandemic era. They took that time as a pretext to go out to ''have fun'', where society was completely derailed, of course we must not generalize, few people took it as the emergency it was and took good care of themselves walking between the thin line of order and chaos, thanks to them we have what we have now- Adara's pencil moved quickly knowing that this was surely going to enter in some exam or work.

He considered the university as the highest step he had had to pass, he did not consider himself totally intelligent, in fact, he was an average person, the most he could perceive was not to make a mistake at some point in his life, but he knew that sooner or later it would happen.

 

There are theories that say that if the human being at that time had not been so libertine, his future could have been different. One of those examples is the liberation of gender, leaving aside what his path or responsibilities were. In another example we have corruption, and not only political, the thirst for power always ends up corrupting the soul, practically eliminates it and ends with the humanity that man should have, his ability to think of the rest is annulled.

 

Of course there was a large group that opposed the idea of leading the organized life we have, they broke away from society in an unhealthy free will that led to their own extinction, that is what we call evolution, only the fittest survive, not the strongest or those who do what they ''want'' - He always used to be very direct about his opinion this professor, but he had researched so much on the subject that anyone could listen to him for hours, because he always brought out something surprising that no one knew.

 

The class went on without any news, but it still seemed incredible to Adara that society could have had so many relapses and still keep rising, in her opinion because of the geniuses and leaders who always try to make the world a better place.

 

 

 

                                                                                                         

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

The House

 

Class time has begun and the classroom is half full, the teacher who is taking a stylus puts it on his tablet and instantly the blackboard in front is filled with the word ''chaos''. It is already six o'clock in the evening and our protagonist returns home the same way she left. One by one the lights of the train's route turn on as it passes and turn off when it is gone, looking from the outskirts like a firefly traveling through the leaves and branches. By the time she reaches her destination she just wants to take a bath and go to sleep, that day especially has been exhausting.

 

The place where she lives is not very big, but in her opinion, when a person begins to covet too much, that is when the soul begins to corrupt, as her teacher used to say. She stopped for a moment in front of her building to admire it, it worked with solar energy thanks to the panels that were on the roof, it had also placed that its foundations were thermoactive, that is to say that the energy was also collected from the ground and used throughout the building (MAZARIEGOS, et al., 2009).

 

It had reached a point where all resources were beginning to run out, for example, oil, now the only thing he knows about it is in his books. He knew that they had also polluted the ocean to a great extent and many living beings had died because of that.

 

Always everywhere they talked about the bad decisions that people made in the past and they kept stressing to him with the justification that we should not forget the mistakes of others in order not to make the same ones.

 

All the plants that embraced the construction made it look like another tree maintaining a symmetry with the environment of the whole place, not to mention the vegetable garden on the roof that looked like a floating garden.

 

This project had been worldwide in trying to give a dignified life to the people so that they would not fall back into excesses, which was what the high command feared the most.

 

He took the elevator and went up to the 9th floor, which was where his house was located, on the same floor there were also 4 more families, he had always known them, so he could trust any of them, something that in other times would not have been possible due to the selfishness that inhabited people.

 

The metal box opens on its floor and comes out, that had also been reused to avoid polluting with debris, because also the construction material is a pollutant, after all, that is why one should be aware of the value of the objects, because everything has an effort to get it.

He opens the door and finds his family in front of the TV in the living room, while he greets them he looks towards the study that is next to it, it has a bookcase because they like to read, he knows that although his family is humble it has nothing to do with not having a good book or a place to study, for them wisdom is the most valuable thing a person can have, that is why they have worked hard to bring up their two daughters.

 

 

Fig. 4. Schematic floor plan of the house    Source: Author

 

 

It is time to sleep, but he must finish his homework, so when he has already cleaned up he takes his books and goes to the study next to his family. This has a large window that when the sun touches it, the space is usually illuminated up to the kitchen, it is a nice place, in fact, there is room for four people, to be able to do everything they need there.

 

The floor is the same as it used to be in the previous construction, which is floating floor, for her it is very warm and a very nice color that matches the space of the house itself. She knows that, if she goes out to the laundry room, besides finding the typical implements, such as a tank, a washing machine and a dryer, she will find a small balcony that lets you see the horizon and that can also be seen if you stand behind the kitchen sink because there is also a large window that lets you see the landscape. Between the front walls there are vines that have grown during the time they were abandoned and when they started the renovations they did not remove them claiming that nature should not be destroyed.

 

Tired Adara turns off the lights in the study and the living room, her family went to sleep a while ago and she should do the same, she walks down the hallway that divides the bedrooms from the living room and goes into her bedroom tired of the day she had and gathering strength for the next one to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

As a conclusion, this has been a personal thought about the future, maybe too utopian, but always thought about the chaos in which humanity currently lives. On the other hand, I faithfully believe in the reuse of spaces for a beneficial impact. Every day space is shrinking and spaces are losing their usefulness which is to be a habitat and it is also becoming too consumerist without the value that architecture should have, because it is an art and should be treated as such.

I wanted to show this story from the point of view of a person in his daily life, within the thoughts of an ordinary person who has been instructed by this ideal that I have for society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

ACCASoftware. (19 de Marzo de 2019). BibLus. Obtenido de Innovación tecnológica en construcción: 10 tecnologías que revolucionarán el mundo de la construcción en el

2019: http://biblus.accasoftware.com/es/innovacion-tecnologica-en-construccion-10- tecnologias-que-revolucionaran-el-mundo-de-la-construccion-en-el-2019/

 

Diseclar. (19 de Noviembre de 2014). Plástico reciclado para construcción de muebles, pisos y tejados en Colombia. (Colombia.Inn, Entrevistador) Cali, Colombia.

 

Levinton, C. H. (14 de Mayo de 2019). Ladrillos sustentables a partir de plástico, la novedad en la que trabaja la FADU. (T. C.-C. Co., Entrevistador)

 

MAZARIEGOS, A., ANTÓN, L. C., VALLE, R., URCHUEGUIA, J., QUILIS, S., MARTÍNEZ, S., & MAGRANER, T. (2009). Pilotes y pantallas termoactivas. Proceso. Ingenieria Civil, 15.

 

Place!, S. (29 de Julio de 2015). Sora's Pictures of Various Cool Stuff. Obtenido de Mega

Structures: http://greatpictures99.blogspot.com/2015/07/mega-structures.html

 

Taberna, F. (22 de Diciembre de 2014). eldiario.es. Obtenido de Bien Común o Identidad: https://www.eldiario.es/navarra/contrapunto/bien-comun- identidad_132_4449273.html

 

UMACON. (8 de Febrero de 2017). UMACON. Obtenido de 6 innovaciones tecnológicas para la Construcción. ¿Las conocías?: http://www.umacon.com/noticia.php/es/ultimas- tecnologias-en-el-sector-de-la-construccion/429