1931 was a good year for vivid imagination in Tokyo. It was the year that kicked off future-proofing in that city, now the most congested urban space in the world.
Japanese minds were still reeling from a devastating 1923 earthquake. There was a demand for original thinking to prevent the city from ever suffering such a catastrophe again.
Since then, an extraordinary collection of ‘way out’ designs have been proposed for new forms of architecture that would be proof against a range of environmental disasters. ‘Way out’ included ‘way down’ — life in the world’s deepest basement. And it included ‘way up’ in the form of a 420 story skyscraper, among other astonishing designs.
While we are dusting off some of these astonishing proposals (with a possible view to future-proofing cities against climate change?) a more modern perspective may well demand that affordability issues be simultaneously addressed.
Test your own imagination against that of Tokyo future-proofers in this article from The Guardian: Unbuilt Tokyo: ‘Depthscrapers’ And A Million-Person Pyramid
