Buzz
Envision yourself sketching the metropolis of tomorrow. How would it appear?
While many might settle for sketching a handful of airborne vehicles or perhaps a futuristic hoverboard reminiscent of Back to the Future, most of us aren’t architects. Over time, numerous architects have taken the opportunity to envision their ideal future societies. The outcomes span from awe-inspiring to utterly bizarre.
10. Dynamic Skyscrapers
Have you ever stared sadly out your apartment window, yearning to relocate? Polish architects Damian and Rafal Przybyla clearly have. But instead of opting for something mundane like hiring movers, they’ve devised the most daring solution imaginable: motorizing the entire structure.
Designed in 2012 for the renowned eVolo Skyscraper Competition, their “Migrant Skyscraper” is both groundbreaking and audacious. Encased within a massive tire, the building features a surrounding green area hiding a biofuel engine. When civil unrest or an overly noisy street party arises, residents can simply activate the engine and roll away in their colossal wheel to a safer spot.
Tailored for those in conflict-prone areas, these skyscrapers are entirely self-sustaining. Each building includes space for livestock and crops, and water is recycled to sustain residents during extended travels. This design also minimizes civilian casualties in the event of conflicts like the one in Syria.
9. Aerial Farms
You might be familiar with vertical farming. Rather than expanding agriculture horizontally, this approach focuses on building upward, creating towering skyscraper farms that dominate urban skylines. Vincent Callebaut Architects aims to take this concept further. In 2010, they proposed farms housed within massive, self-sustaining airships.
Dubbed “Hydrogenase,” these farms would function as self-reliant airborne communities. A third of their massive structure would be devoted to cultivating algae. Another section would feature seaweed beds designed to absorb CO2 and generate sufficient hydrogen gas to keep the airships aloft. Within this environment, a small human population would thrive, living in carbon-neutral tranquility high above the Earth.
From the ground, the Hydrogenase would resemble enormous green zeppelins tilted on their sides. Beneath them, aquatic versions would populate the oceans, capable of merging with their airborne counterparts to form a unified structure. With adequate funding, the architects believe these could become a reality by 2030.
8. A Tower That Grows and Consumes Pollution
Amid the ongoing focus on climate change, it’s rare to find anyone who disputes the excessive levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. But how do we address this issue? Canadian architects YuHao Liu and Rui Wu believe they’ve found a solution. In 2014, they introduced a concept for a tower that extracts carbon from the air and uses it to expand its own structure.
While it may sound like science fiction, their idea is rooted in practical science. Given the high costs of carbon removal from industrial sites, experts are exploring methods to convert it into a viable construction material. Liu and Wu’s innovative leap is the idea that this material could autonomously build itself. Starting with a basic framework, they envision a tower that gathers and stores this carbon-based material, with natural elements like wind and rain determining its form and growth direction.
The outcome would be a tower that appears to evolve and adapt to its environment. Much like rocks sculpted by millennia of wind erosion, the tower would become a carbon-based sculpture—a functional yet artistically unique method of cleansing our atmosphere.
7. Floating Iceberg Habitats
Antarctica—the planet’s coldest, windiest, highest, and driest continent—has never seen permanent human settlement. This creates a dilemma for researchers aiming to study its pristine environment. Is it acceptable to leave any mark of human presence? A few years ago, David Garcia Studio (now MAP Architects) proposed an ingenious solution: carving out an iceberg to create a research base that would eventually melt away without a trace.
Their vision involved a massive iceberg, comparable in size to Monaco’s 2.5 square kilometers (1 mi), with a depth of at least 25 meters (80 ft). Once located, this colossal ice structure would be excavated by machinery already in Antarctica, forming a spacious, hollowed-out chamber beneath the surface. Two entry ramps would connect to a central tunnel, branching into 18 distinct caves resembling a snowflake’s arms. These spaces would include areas for sleeping, cooking, showering, an auditorium, a hospital, and waste storage. Up to 100 people could reside within this iceberg, shielded from Antarctica’s brutal winters by layers of snow resembling an igloo.
According to their plans, the base would remain functional for 7 to 10 years before melting away, leaving no environmental footprint. The concept of these living icebergs has garnered significant global interest due to its innovative design.
6. Structures That Disappear
In architecture, what’s considered groundbreaking today might be reviled tomorrow. In the 1940s, brutalism was seen as futuristic, but today, it’s widely disliked. A branch of hypothetical architecture suggests solving this issue by designing buildings that are invisible.
We’re speaking literally. In a concept by architects stpmj for a rural barn, every surface would consist of highly reflective angled mirrors. With no visible seams, it would resemble a distortion in reality, a peculiar space where light bends in unusual ways. Others have pursued more advanced methods. In 2013, South Korea approved its Infinity Tower, a skyscraper clad in LED screens that would display its surroundings so flawlessly that the structure would seem to disappear when activated.
The use of highly reflective glass in architecture isn’t novel, and many existing structures already appear almost invisible on sunny days. However, there’s growing interest in pushing this concept further. If the Infinity Tower is constructed and succeeds, we might witness a future where entire sections of a city can vanish with the press of a button.
5. Cities on Water
If you’ve watched Star Wars, you likely recall the floating “Cloud City” from The Empire Strikes Back. What you might not know is that it was inspired by a real architectural idea. In the mid-20th century, polymath Buckminster Fuller was tasked by a wealthy Japanese patron to design a city that could float on Tokyo Bay. “Bucky” took it a step further, envisioning a city that could hover in the sky.
Dubbed “Spherical Tensegrity Atmospheric Research Stations,” or “Cloud Nines,” Fuller’s concept straddled the line between brilliance and madness. Utilizing the same ultralight material he proposed for his geodesic domes, Fuller designed a sphere 1 kilometer (0.5 mi) wide. His calculations showed that this structure would weigh far less than the air it contained. By heating the internal air slightly using solar panels or human activity, a mere 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 °F) difference from the external temperature would cause the sphere to rise like a helium balloon.
Fuller envisioned anchoring his Cloud Nines to mountains with cables or letting them drift freely in the atmosphere, offering inhabitants breathtaking views of the world. Though never constructed, his designs left a lasting impact on science fiction writers.
4. Towers That Absorb Sound and Generate Energy
While some people enjoy the hustle and bustle of city life, others find the constant noise deeply unsettling. If you fall into the latter category, there’s good news. In 2013, a team of French architects designed a tower capable of absorbing urban noise. Their vision: transforming these sounds into energy to sustain our cities.
Positioned near busy streets, their “Soundscraper” would feature an elastic exterior designed to capture vibrations. These vibrations would be harnessed in specialized cells that convert kinetic energy into electricity. The generated power would then be fed into the city’s grid. The team calculated that a single tower could supply 10 percent of Los Angeles’ energy needs.
Standing next to one of these Soundscrapers would feel like the world’s noise is muted. Traffic sounds would fade, and the tower itself would constantly vibrate, visibly absorbing kinetic energy.
3. A Portable Solar Network
Occasionally, the fusion of architecture, engineering, and imagination yields truly extraordinary outcomes. One of the most remarkable is the concept of the Shkadov Thruster.
A space-based megastructure, the Shkadov Thruster would be far simpler to construct compared to a Dyson Swarm or a Matrioshka brain, and arguably even more impressive. This massive, arc-shaped mirror would float in space, its concave side directed toward the Sun. Positioned where the Sun’s gravity balances the outward pressure of its radiation, the Shkadov Thruster could enable us to relocate our entire solar system.
The mechanism involves solar radiation reflecting off the curved mirror, exerting a slight push on the Sun. According to Popular Mechanics, this would generate a minimal net thrust, sufficient to propel the Sun and its orbiting bodies through the galaxy. However, constructing such a colossal engine would likely require dismantling Mercury entirely.
While a Shkadov Thruster wouldn’t produce noticeable effects for millions of years, it would eventually accelerate our solar system enough to enable deep space exploration. Over billions of years, it could build enough momentum to exit the Milky Way entirely, embarking on interstellar adventures.
Unlike some projects on this list, the technology for a Shkadov Thruster already exists. While the project’s scale remains a barrier, it’s entirely plausible that humanity could one day navigate the universe at will.
2. A Computer That Devours Stars
Alternatively, our future descendants might abandon the idea of conquering the solar system, as the concept of a Dyson Swarm could be adapted to create something far more enticing: a colossal supercomputer capable of providing every human with a personalized utopia to inhabit eternally.
Referred to as a “Matrioshka brain,” this star-sized supercomputer might explain why we’ve yet to encounter intelligent life. Similar to a Dyson Swarm, it would encase a star, harnessing its energy. However, instead of using this energy for physical purposes, it would create a virtual paradise where humanity could upload itself. Picture The Matrix, but instead of fighting, Neo spends his days in a breathtaking landscape, fulfilling every desire. Life in a Matrioshka brain would be an eternal, blissful existence—free from aging, death, or suffering—a nonjudgmental heaven for all.
Experts who ponder such concepts suggest that a Matrioshka brain wouldn’t require immense size. Future space architects could construct one around a red dwarf, which possesses only 7.5 to 50 percent of our Sun’s mass, yet still sustain their virtual utopia for an astonishing 10 trillion years.
1. A Swarm of Space Mirrors That Steal the Sun’s Energy
After exploring seven examples of towers and living icebergs, it’s time to venture beyond Earth, soaring above the stratosphere like a free-floating Cloud Nine. Picture a society so advanced that it requires every possible ounce of energy to sustain itself. The ultimate solution might involve enveloping the Sun in a massive, energy-capturing sphere.
Initially proposed by Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, a Dyson Sphere would envelop the Sun in a shell of solar panels facing inward, capturing every bit of its immense energy. However, as Popular Mechanics notes, such a structure would be highly unstable and likely to collapse. An alternative, more feasible concept is the Dyson Swarm.
Similar to the Sphere, the Swarm would consist of billions of advanced solar panels. However, unlike the Sphere, the Swarm wouldn’t be stationary. Instead, its mirrors would form a dense, orbiting cloud around the Sun, resembling bees circling a hive. Together, these panels would absorb nearly all of the Sun’s energy.
The energy output from such a structure would be staggering. It could fuel a vast interstellar empire using only a fraction of the collected energy. (This would be particularly useful, as constructing it might require dismantling Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.) Some physicists are so certain that a Swarm is the next step for advanced civilizations that they’re scanning the skies for signs of them. Discovering one would confirm that we’re not alone in the universe.
