Publish at May 18 2010 Updated January 23 2024
The Cités Végétales exhibition, held in Lyon in the spring of 2010, introduced a wide audience to the work of Belgian architect Luc Schuiten, who has been working on the future of our cities for over 40 years. The website dedicated to this exhibition now enables an even wider audience to share in moments of dream and reflection.
Luc Schuiten takes us by the hand to lead us into his universe, where wonder, utopia and the symbiosis of human endeavor and the natural environment are intertwined. Of course, as Schuiten himself says, this is an artist's vision, but it's also a vision firmly rooted in reality, incorporating two fundamental elements of architecture: utopia and time.
Luc Schuiten imagines the city as it evolves, in the year 2150, respecting the long-term nature of architecture, whose works are inscribed in landscapes for centuries, even millennia.
Schuiten is thinking about what a city of the future might look like, against a backdrop of dwindling natural resources, particularly oil. The site opens with a magnificent vision of Lyon's Part-Dieu district at night, showing the pencil tower enveloped in giant feulles. Schuiten had already carried out the exercise with other cities such as Nantes and Brussels, where he lives.
In imagining the cities of tomorrow, Schuiten draws powerful inspiration from nature. He is an adept of biomimicry, a fast-growing science that takes advantage of natural elements and organizations to create new objects, materials and ecosystems.
But Schuiten is not just a gentle dreamer. He puts his capacity for imagination at the service of feasible projects. All it takes is the will to make it happen... "In 1960, sending a rocket to the moon was a completely mad utopia. But we put in the energy and resources to make it happen. Living in a living environment is a much less unreasonable utopia than sending a rocket to the moon", says the visionary architect.
Schuiten invites us to go further, to join him in his utopia, which should be seen as one of the possible futures. An excellent 64-page educational dossier, which can be downloaded free of charge from the exhibition website, enables young people and adults alike to get involved in imagining the city of tomorrow. Nine detailed fact sheets address themes such as the harmonious integration of housing into its landscape, mobility (magnificent models of human-powered vehicles, solar-powered vehicles and intelligent networks), biomimicry in architecture, the evolution of a street... Not forgetting the individual himself: we are invited to write our subjective biography, mentioning the moments and encounters that have counted in our lives, and our dream biography, going beyond the present. Luc Schuiten himself saw himself accidentally killed while testing a flapping-wing ornithoplane, a lighter-than-air aerial vehicle that we leave you the pleasure of discovering in this dossier.
A visit to the exhibition, whether real or virtual, and a stroll through the educational dossier are a breath of fresh air and a powerful stimulus to creativity. Real space, dreamed space - aren't they ultimately the same thing, in different eras, if we give ourselves the means? Schuiten's message is very clear:
"Reality is what we manage to make of the world. In the light of the scientific information we have access to, I'm obviously worried, and I'm even afraid of what might happen. It's not up to me to illustrate the predicted catastrophes, I'm simply exploring another possible path, following the line of an ideal plot that leads me to elaborations. I'm suggesting what our world might look like, if people were able to control their own destiny. For that to happen, they would have to want to and organize themselves.
Do you want it?
CItés végétales, Luc Schuiten's website
Illustrations: works by L. Schuiten, taken from the teaching pack
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