Future is now, and more...

Our invitation took us to the "stalls". Behind there were "distinguished" characters uncomfortable for not having received the leading role of the first rows, which some friend wondered who they would be for, a doubt that obviously did clear up fast, showing the wide pool of guests participating in a marathon morning, which despite the 8 hours span including two breaks, except for a few moments, was quite agile.

The presentation was hold by the mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, who was followed by Sir Norman Foster. They made mutual allegations of gratitude, which we have already commented, and which gave rise to the body of the Forum, structured in three sections.


Cities

Starting with a new* intervention, Norman Foster conference advanced part of what would be the line of argument of all sessions. A generalist discourse away from sophisticated erudition, full of data on how growth of cities will make 70% of the population live in large cities in 2050. Norman Foster acknowledged that the magnitude of the city, its exponential growth, is one of the major contemporary problems, induced by congestion, energy consumption, garbage production and pollution, but also remarked that the good news is that the solution is in the cities itself. They are centers of opportunity and freedom, predicting even that in a very close future the domain of the car will be gone, solution lies in a better organization, in the optimization of resources.

Reflecting part of his working philosophy, Norman Foster also laid out that the future consist in developing common synergies, optimizing cross knowledge in face off continuous dispersion of genius and intelligence. Something that he has been applying in his own office almost since forever.

Then followed an interview with Francine Lacqua, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, to Michael Bloomberg, philanthropist, entrepreneur and three-time mayor of New York. An interesting conservative perspective on the transformation of the city, affirming that the problems "come from the cities" but also the solutions. Its vision as a developer of buildings is to maintain the exterior image of the same according to the environment (something that was not very clear how it is done) proposing a completely modern interior. The format did not allow time for a broader analysis, but it would have been interesting to see what happens to these interventions when there is commodification, which empty the city of activities and real inhabitants.
 
The first session ended with a discussion table coordinated by Francine Lacqua with Michael Bloomberg, Maya Lin architect and artist, Richard Burdett, professor of urban studies at the London School of Economics, and Norman Foster.

A first position was the recognition by Richard Burdett that the fundamental aspects that identify good cities, health, safety, ... should always go behind democratic participation in the management of cities, something that at different times entered In constant collision with an overly pragmatic Michael Bloomberg.

Foster insisted on how the transport revolution has improved mobility in cities and has made it possible to recover areas of the city for pedestrians. The improvement in mobility has also enabled an improvement in education.

He continued to insist that the solution to our urban problems is that all disciplines, working together, will achieve better results than continuing to increase the expenditure of money on individual intelligences. We have to take advantage of the existing intelligence to be more efficient.

And accordingly they highlighted how education, training of new architects, is not responding to those demands. Education is compartmentalized and needs to be changed in order to respond to current changes, changes that were previously produced in generations and now in only a decade.

For her part, Maya Lin highlighted that "with the excessive density of cities we face a problem of dehumanization. We need to find out how we can connect one person to another. Bringing people together in an intimate way because cities are not just infrastructures.We have to involve people in these changes. "

Foster was asked if it was more difficult to be trained now as an architect than when he was trained, he responded saying that it is different. "It is necessary to reinvent ourselves and respond to political demands." And he commented that design and politics is something that in Spain has always been more common for architects, remembering as an example the process of construction of the Bilbao metro.

A good start and perhaps the most interesting table in the morning.


Technology and Design

The second session, which started after the first break, was dedicated to technology with an exhibition of Matthias Kohler's work, who made a very focused tour of technological advances and new robotic systems, with projects already known as Flight Assembled Architecture/Architectures volantes, although it is always interesting to see them all together, there was some doubt about its application in the middle of the French countryside.

Then came the interview which was expected as the most interesting in the morning and ended up being somewhat disappointing. Gillian Tett, Editor of The Financial Times in the USA, interviewed Jonathan Ive, Apple's Design Manager, presented as "the king of cool", among his main statements, he highlighted the importance of persevering in ideas, the luck of being surprised by them and the need to treat them with the care that deserves something that is at the same time as powerful as  fragile.

However, However, Jonathan Ive did not seem comfortable in the interview, or at least seemed to be more concerned about not revealing anything about his next design. An interview little vivid, to the question that interested him, how to choose a personal object which one would he choose? Jonathan Ive answered a soap dispenser.

The table that followed the interview seemed to be impregnated with the same dynamic. The expected Neri Oxman wanted to present a video about one of his latest projects, Vespers: Series II. Funeral masks, but in the section dedicated to technology, technology failed, video, images, were not loaded, the speech was fragmented.

The co-founder of the MIT Media Lab Design Laboratory, Nicholas Negroponte, insisted that nowadays "very small, atomic things" can be done and that there will come a time where we could do what nature does: "create buildings from a seed".It is the end of construction as we know it."

At the table of technology, everyone became philosophical, skeptical about the importance of technology, about the transcendence or not of it in our lives, about resistance or not about technology, with somewhat diffuse ideas halfway between pilgrims and interesting. They expressed the need for cars to be self-driven in horizontal mobility just as it already is in vertical mobility with lifts.

The decontextualization was great and Patricia Urquiola wanted to take the banner of that line proving to be very far from having interest on technology but more for wielding a speech somewhat resistant and skeptical.She acknowledged that there is not a single future but many, but more to defend a more nineteenth-century position than open, an argument as starry as the model used, patatas and huevos fritos -potatoes and fried eggs.


Infrastructure

The third part was dedicated to the importance of infrastructures. The conference was given by Alejandro Aravena, who obviously is not an infrastructure specialist, and although his examples were somewhat casuistic in an artificially casual and overly argumentative exhibition, who stated "That people moving to the cities is a good and a bad news. It is good because cities concentrate opportunities, ideas and knowledge. And it is bad because the scale of that migration process has to respond to this phenomenon and the inequalities it produces." However, it is worth mentioning the reference to Trump when Aravena, Pritzker 2016 prize, said that there are many infrastructures in which to invest in the world to do it "on stupid walls".

The conference was followed by the interview of Christiane Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent, who interviewed Henk Ovink, the special envoy for International Water Affairs of the Netherlands.

Almost to finish the Forum, the table of infrastructures, which was lengthened in excess and seemed never to end, partly because it was almost at the end of the session and partly because of its diffuse content was formed by Jonathan Ledgard, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Mariana Mazzucato, Henk Ovink and Janette Sadik-Khan.

By the way, although almost without time, and asking to Fern·ndez Galiano for his opinion on the great number of infrastructures developed in Spain, Galiano used again the example of the work of "Madrid River", undoubtedly a work that is changing positively Madrid, but at a great cost. What was not so predictable was that he defended it with the euphemistic argument that it has been a "community effort" that has allowed to unite different neighborhoods, an argument that left astonished a big part of the audience that does know the consequences of the project. An argument as unreal as far from the problems of citizens, so distant as a result of the imposition on citizens, generating a large mortgage to the city council of Madrid which has prevented for years not only to respond but to cut aid to basic social demands, such as scholarship aids, dining aids, or public housing. A project that has generated a strong gentrification...

The Forum ended up regaining pace. Olafur Eliasson, whose work explores the relationship between man, nature and technology, claimed the power of art to "change behaviors" and set the example of the huge ice blocks from Greenland, which he planted in the center of Paris during the last climate conference to raise awareness about the gravity of the thaw.

"Sometimes physical knowledge is more direct than intellectual knowledge," said the Danish, famous for its facilities of light.
 
As a final culmination, the protagonist of this interesting and enriching event, Norman Foster, spoke gratefully and excitedly when the whole auditorium,full to the brim and standing up, recognized him during a long and warm applause the creation of his Foundation in Madrid and also His 82nd birthday.