With artworks and projects by artists, collectives, labs as well as studios (research, architecture, etc.) like Aida Makoto, Memo Akten, Bjarke Ingels Group, Dijiro Moroshi, Patricia Piccinini, Rafel-Lozano Hemmer, Yuima Nakazato, Daan Roosegaarde and Osamu Tezuka, among others, the exhibition is divided into five sections tackling specific issues: New Possibilities of Cities, Toward Neo-Metabolism Architecture, Lifestyle and Design Innovations, Human Augmentation and its Ethical Issues, and Society and Humans in Transformation.
In the first section, the projects and artworks explore urban design and planning, cities and how we’re building them in unconventional areas – like the desert or the sea. With new technological improvements and research, architecture studios are going back to 1960s Metabolism movement (a unique architectural movement and theory developed in Japan by Kisho Kurosawa and Fumihiko Maki, among others) to get inspired to build cities that are sustainable and environmentally-sound. Still focusing on architecture, the second section introduces and discusses “possibilities of today’s architecture as exemplified by the development of environmentally-friendly organic building materials and some new construction methods”, the exhibition text explains, such as 3D printers, robotics, or drones.
Moving to human lifestyle, the third section explores how technical innovations like 3D printing have altered – and will keep altering – the way we eat, dress and live. On Human Augmentation and Its Ethical Issues (fourth section), the exhibition moves to more philosophical and moral questions about our species. As advances in robotics and biotechnology help expand human capacity while making it possible to overcome incurable diseases, we must ask: where are the limits of body and even genetic modification and manipulation? To conclude the exhibition, the section Society and Humans in Transformation focuses on hypothetical questions about our society that make us rethink the definition of concepts such as ‘human’, ‘life’ and ‘happiness’.
