The future, according to a new book by curator, writer and critic Beatrice Galilee and Phaidon, Radical Architecture of the Future, is already here. Seeking to chart a course for how architecture in the 21st century will confront growing environmental, economic, social, ethical and cultural challenges, Galilee looks not to high-concept models or glossy renders of imagined futures, but rather 79 completed projects that are already responding in innovative, intelligent and often challenging ways to the matters at hand.

Across five chapters – Visionaries, Insiders, Radicals, Breakthroughs, Masterminds – Galilee showcases the work of artists, architects, photographers, writers and academics in projects that range from a short sci-fi film shot entirely on drones, to Adjaye Associates’ National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed as a narrative-led space that embeds history and collective memory into the museum experience. Elsewhere a research project by the Office for Political Innovation uncovers how the dating app Grindr could provide clues about future gentrification in cities, while a virtual reality film renders a patient’s experience inside a treatment room at Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas. 

It’s a lot to take in, but the overarching investigation that ties everything together is the who, where, what and how of the ways humans occupy space, and how this can be both critiqued and improved. “I use architecture as a means to allow me to go beyond the physical form and into the complex and contradictory histories, from the personal to public, the humble to grandiose,” says Galilee in her introduction, and it’s this line of investigation that ultimately what makes the selection of projects so compelling – even the interior of a Japanese train carriage becomes a conduit for exploring the intersections of private and public space.   

Looking forward, Galilee predicts a fundamental reappraisal of the way architecture – and architects – serve the public. “When compiling this array of diverse projects, one thing that became clear is that the terms under which architecture exists today — permanent, patriarchal, capitalistic, upholding a Western canon — have changed. The biggest civil rights movement of a generation, Black Lives Matter, which took place over the summer of 2020 has precipitated much-needed reflection on the role of architects in manifesting an unjust social order of largely white male privilege, as well as the discipline’s explicit contribution to the planet’s ecological catastrophe,” she writes.

Images:
Lead – Plasencia Auditorium and Congress Center, SelgasCano, Plasencia, Spain, 2017. © Iwan Baan
1 – Color(ed) Theory, Amanda Williams, Chicago, IL, USA, 2014–16. © Amanda Williams
2 – THREAD: Artists’ Residency and Cultural Center, Toshiko Mori, Sinthian, Senegal, 2015. © Iwan Baan. Courtesy of Toshiko MoriArchitect 
3 – New Andean Architecture, Freddy Mamani, El Alto, Bolivia, 2005–. © Peter Granser. From the book El Alto published by EditionTaube
4 – Ocho Quebradas House, Elemental, Los Vilos, Chile, 2013. © Cristobal Palma
5 – Art Biotop Water Garden, Junya Ishigami + Associates, Nasu, Japan, 2018. © junya.ishigami + associates
Below – A Dead Forest for the Trojan Women, Stefano Boeri Architetti, Syracuse, Italy, 2019. Photograph by Stefano Boeri Architetti, Un Bosco Morto, Le TroianeSiracusa