We are suspended between utopia and dystopia, which are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. Design and architecture no longer have to choose between hope and catastrophe, but must learn to dwell within this tension. Dystopia is already here, invisible and heavy, disguised as progress. The exhibition Datapolis reminds us, for instance, that the cloud is not ethereal, but a “mining city” hungry for energy. The progress that promises freedom, in truth, measures and monitors us. Yet within this fracture, redemption seeps in, the imaginable utopia of continuous resilience and the pursuit of harmony.
This is what the Sun Tower by OPEN Architecture reveals, turning architecture into a physical calendar to reestablish our bond with the cosmos. In this context, design becomes synonymous with respect and adaptation. From organic architectures like the Richard Gilder Center in New York, shaped by geology, to the alpine essentiality of the project by Slik Architekten with interiors by Park in Andermatt that honor the landscape, design seeks a lasting equilibrium.
At the same time, the office transforms into a flexible organism, as shown in this issue’s Album, adapting to those who inhabit it, not the other way around. Utopia, therefore, is not Thomas More’s non-place, but the right place we
manage to design today. Our task, as members of the entire design chain, is to find beauty within this difficulty, making this zone of high creative tension visible, livable, and profoundly human.