With Projects by : Constantinos A. Doxiadis / Stefania Strouza & The New Raw / Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke avec ARTEKLAB, Geraldine Juárez, Darlene Farris-LaBar et Antonio Esparza / Design Earth / Heba Amin / Aristide Antonas / Zissis Kotionis / Zenovia Toloudi – Studio Z / Liam Young / Point Supreme / Takis Ch. Zenetos / Kyriaki Goni / Loukia Alavanou / Petros Moris / Lina Theodorou / AREA – Architecture Research Athens / James Bridle / Adam Harvey / !Mediengruppe Bitnik / Lydia Kallipoliti & Andreas Theodoridis avec Xueping Li, Erica Vinson, Dakota Pace et Seraphim Le / Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos / Pinar Yoldas

The future never felt closer than it does today. A series of environmental, technological and societal changes happening at an accelerating pace are affecting today’s world and humans’ role within it. The Earth resembles a city which keeps on sprawling outwards while other areas are abandoned due to climate change and extreme socio-political conditions. Artificial ecologies promise to offer solutions to the problems of the ever-growing global population. Life in the urban environment is rapidly restructured thanks to the use of ‘smart’ machines-at-work processing human behavior. As diverse images, once belonging to the future, become more and more part of the present, an urge to engage with this contradictory upcoming reality emerges.

The Tomorrows exhibition unfolds the multiple aspects the future presents today through the works of artists, architects, and designers. Dealing with the future of course is not new in these fields. Renowned are the visionary architectural proposals of the 60s which addressed the promises of the new networks, and the possibilities of overcoming environmental problems, thanks to the technological advance. The speculative scenarios, and long research projects of the time –such as the Electronic Urbanism of Takis Ch. Zenetos featured at this show– aimed to imagine and influence changes towards a desirable future. Nowadays, the proposals from the fields of art, design, and architecture differ. Starting from the contradictions of tomorrow’s possible worlds, they underline the need to allow room for images of different cultures and futures, taking in mind the particularities, conditions and needs of different geographical areas.

The Mediterranean region provides the ground for critical reflection for the works of this exhibition. Affected by the financial crisis, the climate change and mass population movements, it is discussed as an area where new forms of co-existence may emerge and new bonds with the living environment can be built. Speculating about the techno-natural ecologies and the socioeconomic conditions that may appear within its territory, the projects on show offer the possibility to understand the scalability of future-oriented phenomena, and to realise the need for change.

The starting and reference point for the exhibition is the Ecumenopolis (1959-1974) of Constantinos Doxiadis, the city that by the 22nd century would cover the whole of the inhabited planet. The development of it according to the visionary city planner, lied in the relation and balance between five fundamental elements, i.e. nature, anthropos (the human), society, shells and networks. These five elements inform the main points of exploration of this exhibition, and formulate the five main thematic areas that the participants tackle. Taking into consideration the challenges of the present, the terms of Doxiadis are tweaked and redefined in order to return to one key and central question: Which future is, at the end, the one desired, and what can be done for its formation?