14 Cities

Dan Hill has been blogging his entry for the Now+When exhibition at the Australian Pavilion for the 2010 Venice Biennale. In full-flight Marco Polo mode, his entry, (foolishly!) overlooked by the selection panel, imagines 14 future cities in Australia. Each is a delight, familiar and exciting, positing tangibly fantastic places like the Darwin Special Economic Zone and The City of Glasses:

Yet on other side of the glass, Sydney in 2025 is quite different. In fact, there are so many Sydneys in 2025 as to render the idea of one Sydney ridiculous. The city is experienced as an immersive projection, with data overlaid onto the physical fabric to the extent that only the most desirable built elements remain visible at all. All other items are cloaked by the glasses, just as all urban noise is filtered by the headphones. These remove unwelcome noise whilst heightening others, all set against a soundtrack of music, displaced ambient sounds, and a stream of commentary from other users.

Investment in the visual design layers of physical structures had plummeted as people began to inhabit other spaces in these places, overlaying their own architectures.

You can find posts on all of the 14 cities here.