The City Beyond The City

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: The City Beyond The City represents a possible future for the urban fabric of Rio through a short fiction and a collection of digital mappings and images. It is intentionally provocative, using words and images to reveal the shortcomings of traditional design and planning in the complex processes that underpin the evolution of the megapolis. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The project engages with a growing discourse surrounding the creative agency of designers in the context of powerful digital tools. It considers how highly-sophisticated digital simulations might serve as conceptual 'props' in a design fiction, rather than as formal solutions to defined design problems. The project demonstrates the use of such 'props' and the narrative as tools to critique our understanding of the built environment and to imagine possible futures. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The project was one of 125 entries submitted to the Rio Cityvision ideas competition and received an honourable mention and the second highest cumulative score from an exceptional jury panel composed of Aleandro Zaera-Polo, Jeffrey Inaba, Jeroen Koolhaas and Hernan Diaz Alonso. The project subsequently received extensive online media coverage in Archdaily and Archinect. It was exhibited at the OUTDOOR festival in Rome, under the title 'Sick & Wonder / Best Act' at the Ara Pacis Museum (September 2013). It was further exhibited at Studio-X in Rio (November 2013).