Real Time : Exhibitions

CHORA/Unit 8: Smart Cities Climate Bank

3-16 March 2012, Central House | Private view 2 March 2012, 6.30pm

Private View: 2 March 6.30pm
Exhibition: 3 – 16 March 2012

Smart Cities are the new answer to the ever-increasing threat of climate change. Or so we are told by a range of multinational companies entering the field of urban planning with solutions ranging from smart grids to smart governance. But what is a Smart City? And how does it connect the dangers and the potential of globalism with technological innovation and cultural imagination? The second skin of the earth is the interface between humanity and nature. Energy, water and food are exchanged across this interface with greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. What is the role of architecture and design within this interface, and how do Smart Cities create new values, new currencies, in our relationship to a changing climate? London Metropolitan University’s CHORA Unit, Diploma Unit 8, is addressing these questions through global research in the ‘sphere exercise’, and through research on smart materials in the ‘cube exercise’. These two research strands are joined in a design for a Smart City in Tempelhof Freiheit, the new name of the now decommissioned inner-city airport of Berlin. On show in this exhibition in the former bank on the corner of Central House are the products of a fruitful cooperation with Metropolitan Works and Tempelhof Freiheit, in the form of models, drawings and projections.