Atlantis 2040

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GOALS

My main goal when creating images of NYC of 2040 was to create attractive and imagination arousing vision. At the same time I asked myself: ‘what can I offer to people from the future to make their lives better, considering the fact that man is moving further away from the nature he comes from, being in conflict with her, occupying larger and larger areas for development and arable fields. Currently, cultivated fields occupy an area the size of South America. This foreign to nature, artificial environment has been created and developed for several thousand years. Process of transition from nomadism to settlement and food production began about 10,000 BC. Agriculture has led us to the place where we are now, place where industrialized agriculture can produce more than enough food to meet the needs of the world population (assuming equal availability and no waste), which currently stands at around 7.6 billion. Despite the important role agriculture has played in human history, has created many problems over the years.
Cutting down forests, creating space for arable land, man has largely deformed the environment. The heavily reduced number of forests reduced carbon absorption capacity of our planet, at the same time we extract it from the ground and burn it, releasing quickly into the carbon cycle resources removed from it by nature for tens and hundreds of millions of years. With industrialization, development of communication and food preservation technology, distance between source and recipient has increased dramatically, and ties between cities and food production has weakened. For many years there was a conviction that food production and the idea of clean, hygienic and modern cities are mutually exclusive. Local production has disappeared and agriculture has become oriented towards global markets. Food is often transported to consumers from thousands of kilometers away, generating large amounts of CO2. Pesticides and fertilizers that can cause water and soil pollution are another environmental risk. In addition, agriculture is estimated to account for 70% of the world’s drinking water consumption

SOLUTION

What is the solution to make life of citizens better and reduce the ecological footprint of human activity? The answer can be network of vertical farms that refers to the concept of agrourbanism (including the Garden City of Ebenezer Howard), whose main postulate was to bring together the natural and urban environment in order to create an eco-city. The project assumes creating a network of farms producing food on the existing urban green as well as degraded areas.
The essence of this project is the production of food based on a closed- loop production, analogical to cycles occurring within the biosphere, which rely on the circulation of elements. These cycles have no beginning and no end, all elements are in constant motion, changes their form, but their sum is unchanged in time, because in nature there is no waste. Just like the cycles that we can observe in nature, the closed-loop of food production should re-use all raw materials, including municipal waste. All farms forming a coherent production network have been connected by a monorail suspended above the street level, which, alongside passenger transport, provides freight transport. Good communication makes raw materials, products and waste constantly in motion, and farms complement each other, creating one dynamically functioning organism.
Designed production facilities are the basic source of supply of agricultural products for citizens. We already know the most important technologies for the success of this vision. We know the hydroponic and aeroponic method needed to grow plants in multi-storey structures. According to estimates, one unit of internal surface supported by appropriate technologies is able to produce as much food as 10-20 outdoor units cultivated in a traditional way. In addition to economic and pro-environmental functions, agritecture is an undeniable social value. Public gardens will encourage the creation of local communities with strong ties. Positive reorganization of social life will help to unlock the potential of the inhabitants. The level of education will increase, and consumers will turn into co-creators.

FADE INTO THE HOPE MORNING

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PERSONAL DIARY BY JOEL WILLIAMS
June 18th, 2044. Before leaving.
Hudson Yards, New York.

The day started by letting me see a pale but visible sun; I already want to walk through the Metropolis and see under the light of the rays the happy face it will make.
I will take advantage of this “outside day” by buying a NS2 from Ellie, there are more purchases ahead and I have to replace my mask that now seems completely obsolete, like the many I have discarded…
I call my atte

DIGITAL CHRONICLE.
Hudson Yard, New York. June 18th, 2054.
By Greta Thunberg

The change is articulated in two variants: the first one, the appearance of “uncertainty”; For society as we knew it, a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect detonated it, which meant for our planet the decrease in the rotation of its winds, accelerating climate change, concentrating enormous amounts of pollution, which had been generated through years by humanity and coupled with toxic air clouds, affecting agriculture, living beings, worsening respiratory diseases and thereby affecting millions of people in the world.
The second variant, that I consider the most important “the action”. Due to the multiple problems resulting from this abrupt climate change (in my opinion, a consequence of our inaction in the past), today and thanks to the efforts of all people, the “REINICENT” program is launched, which involves the construction of powerful air in the architecture of the Metropolis and the erection of new hybrid buildings capable of symbiosis with the environment, generating its own oxygen and giving space to self-consumption agriculture, thanks to its structure and technology implemented in these buildings.
We also have NS3s, prepared since their launch to improve people’s quality of life by optimizing a functional society, which have been the tool to maintain the infrastructure of millions of people.
Even with all of this, it is clear that we still have a long way to go, but there is a very close light for all of us, for all of humanity …

PERSONAL DIARY BY ELLIE WILLIAMS
June 18th, 2054. The end and the beginning.

I haven’t done this in a while…
But to this day, for many years, I feel really free. With great nostalgia I remember him, because in a day like today he gave me my first NS2, I remember well the emotion and happiness I felt, ironic, it would be the only thing I would interact with for a long time, and now I give one to my daughter; But things are very different, we are different, after difficult times then came years of reflection on past and future actions, so many things to change but we are already one step further. Life as we knew it change from being able to go out a little we never went out, from being able to see people to only seeing automata, from consuming the unnecessary to fighting for the necessary, from generating waste without control, to controlling waste to procure the environment , and all this as we knew it came to an end once again…
Today I came out and glimpsed the result of what we call SIMBIOTEC (Symbiosis between Environment, Technology and Humanity),
It is the new beginning…
The intense green of the trees touches my pupils, The air with its purity breezes fill me, Now I have faith, in what I never had, the hope of a better tomorrow …

Final – Sunken city

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There are two worlds. After sea has risen, technology enabled us to build new, safe city environment above the ground, using massive platforms. Whole system of the city is driven by AI, and it takes care of everything. We let it take over, and many of us became obsolent. New challenge in this world is to find your calling. The Individual cult from 20 century took a hit. As it turns out, we are not so special, we are just another species.

The new world on platforms- modern, technology driven world, where human input is minimal. There are people living, but they are connected to technology in a degree that obscure real human interaction. They became soulles bodies who live in a VR world. Everyone is alone. Algorhytms can guide them throuhg their lives with ease, so they let AI to dictate their every move.

The old world – After flooding, swamp like environment is a home for many people who didnt make it to new world…mostly janitors who clean the water. After Few years from floods, This world became jungle like place, and is important source of oxygen after many of the land forest were destroyed…

New world doesnt care for the old one, yet it could not exist without it.

Story told in my entry images is about a man called Oliver, who is a janitor in the old world. His dream was to make it to the new world and make his life better.
He idolizes the world up there, and is obsessed with the idea that the life there is so easy. But people from swamp, arent allowed up.
Luckily, one day, package drone used in the city crashed in the water. Oliver finds it and decide to return it to the city…That’s his way through Vessel, the only way up in NY.

Vessel, structure that used to be a sign of advancement, art and technology is now nothing more than a reminder of the past….For Oliver though, it was much more, it was a gate to the future, connecting the two worlds.

When he finaly reaches his life goal and gets to the city, he was amazed by the technology. He starts his new life, better one.
He couldn’t comprehend the complexity of this environment, he is a simple folk after all. The reality is, no one could. Many tried, chasing the technology advancement, but we couldn’t compete with AI.

“We stayed behind, and we shouldn’t chase for something that we cannot reach. We do things we are not built for. This world is twisted, upside down logic, where we left the things we were good at and emotions are not present. ” – last note in diary , 05.17.2041 a.d.

Irony in the story is that Oliver was chasing for something he wanted, yet it wasnt something he actualy needed.

Image 1 : Desire
“There are two worlds we are living in, i can recall the old days, now it seems like a dream. I am stuck in this swamp. I wonder what the world up there is like. I heard there are still a few of us. it must be awesome. “

Oliver spends a lot of time thinking about the “above” world. He is new era janitor, cleaning up waters under the platforms.
One day he will leave this place and visit the better one up there.

Image 2 – Struggle
Oliver found a way up through the Vessel, one of few things left to remind the old city. Oliver struggles to authorize himself, until he finds a broken drone who must have fallen from the city. He comes to return it.

“It was not easy to persuade watchers, but i found a package drone, that is my way up.”

Image 3 – Summit
Oliver reach the top! He finally did it. It seem very strange to him, because he doesn’t know how the “new stuff” works. He realizes that he doesn’t belong in this place.
Multiple mental states of Oliver captured in one picture, showing the stages from amazement, realization to regret and enlightement.

In between the GAP

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Imagine the concept will be built (Yay!!) and would have to complete by 2040. If we break the 20 years period into 4, we could have a moment every 5 years to capture each milestone for the project.

From one to four, these images, namely: the gallery, the construct, the deadline and the awaken, will lead you by 5 years-step to each future stage of an imaginable-process in order to give birth the ARM concept.

From the very first time of publishing initial ideas of the design, to the middle of the construction process, then the big-deadline-night when the last puzzle is assembled until the early morning that opening-sign is used to welcome its very first explorers!

I hope you will enjoy the journey as I did and I look forward to the near future, even the physical structure won’t exist, the message of a better day is still worth spreading.

You and I, we might not be sure about how the far future could look like, but I do believe that in the next 20 years or so, what humanity really need is connections, physically and mentally.

As in the meantime, we are being separated from each other for a global health crisis; unintentionally, we have to widen the distance between our loved ones and us. And when I say loved ones it does cover not only the persons that you want to meet but the things that you enjoy to do. So I guess soon we will get through this and rising again, but the question is How do we fill in the gap that we will be facing? Do we really need to push our buildings higher or bigger in the coming years? What could become a linking factor that fills the void between towers and towers, windows and windows, eyes and eyes?

The proposal for my entry is “the ARM”.

If we take Hudson Yards as a frontline in terms of recovering post-crisis problems, we could see the Edge (10 & 30 Hudson Yards), the Equinox ( 15 Hudson Yards), the 35, the 55 and the 50 Hudson Yards proudly stand beside each other, but without a connection between their massive structure. On the city skyline, visually “the ARM” will unite all these giants as they are hugging each other and, physically mirroring the city’s famous “High-line” from the bottom to the top of those towers, closing the loop of urban connection network where it usually ends when we reach to the roof level.

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Thank you!
Very best wishes to all of us!

Duy Phan

New Stories

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2040 population all around the globe is decreasing, many people have found in robots a way to improve life, public areas are now obliged to be greener, and buildings are just getting reaconditioned for a new life style.

I took the movie “I robot” as reference, same cities, same jobs, same people, but new ways to live the cities, do the jobs and share with people.

I tried to show ordinary people, living a new future.

2040: The Lessons We Have Learned

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Hey everybody! I want to thank Ronen Bekerman, Tomorrow, and all the judges for organizing this competition again. I had a blast working on this project and I’m really excited to showcase the images I created for it!

I’ve titled my collection “2040: The Lessons We Have Learned”. It wasn’t until a worldwide pandemic affected me personally, that I knew where I wanted to go with this project. I was laid off from my job due to economic issues but was lucky enough to get called to a position selling beer to-go for a local craft brewery. After a month of our taproom being closed due to quarantine, we reopened for service. It was ultimately my observations of the general public that sparked the idea for “The Lessons We’ve Learned”. The way we interact with each other has changed and I was inspired to see how that will impact us in the future. New York has been hit especially hard by Covid-19 and we keep seeing images of deserted streets and hearing news of lock-down and infection rates. I needed to show a bright future for New York City with people interacting with each other and their city. By 2040 we have learned from the events of 2020 and we implemented measures to help curb future health crises. With this in mind, I’ve shown an active city with bustling crowds and recreational activity. I placed the new automated city sanitation robots and revolutionary no-contact drone delivery in most scenes. The scenes are lively and bright suggesting better days on the horizon. I’ve done my best to give you a thriving, optimistic city twenty years in the future improved by the lessons we have learned from today.

“The Lessons We Have Learned” is also a reference to my experience working on this competition. Scale-wise, this is the largest project I’ve worked on and there were some hurdles I had to navigate. With dozens of background buildings and hundreds of assets, I had to find a way to keep myself on track and efficient. Rigid asset organization became essential to keep my view-port running smoothly and make multi matting easier. Proxying everything helped conserve RAM during rendering. I also installed an additional 64GB of RAM to my machine to cope with memory availability during render, this allowed me to efficiently work in Photoshop while rendering frames in Max. I wanted to make a fully 3D scene because I hope to come back to this project later and play with weather conditions, animations, and new views. While I have tinkered on original residential projects, I’ve definitely never designed a skyscraper from scratch. I spent a lot of time looking at photos of the existing/planned buildings for Hudson Yards and other large scale towers. Some of my buildings are completely original concepts, and some take cues from other modern architecture. I didn’t expect to have so much fun sketching out concept buildings!

I knew from the beginning that I would be creating a series of skyscrapers in the Hudson Yards neighborhood to fill out the empty blocks on the west side. We were provided with a good conceptual site plan so I used that to layout my buildings. I didn’t want to interfere with the subway depot that is currently there, so I lifted the neighborhood onto an elevated platform. I also added subway terminals, a large ramp, stairs, and sidewalk level elevators to make Hudson Yards easily accessible. I designed the new buildings so that they are distinctive, but fit in with the existing architecture and currently planned structures to make this neighborhood stand out even from a distance.

I’m proud of the work that I’ve done in the competition this year, and I hope everybody enjoys it!