Machinic Utopias, Automated Futures

Abstract

‘Machinic Utopias, Automated Futures’ speculates on the role of designers as active agents addressing the potential implications of automated technologies on urban space in the specific context of the horticultural production center in the Westland. Successive expansions of greenhouses and their typological and technological transformations have resulted in an unprecedented productive cluster that conditions both the spatial character and structure of Westland and its social dynamics. Shortages of high-skilled labor, international competition, and pressures to reduce production costs have prompted growers to invest in automated technologies and machinery. While mostly concealed inside greenhouses and overlooked by municipal visions, this project portrays how these technologies have spatial implications on the surrounding social and built environment, and on the future of work, that need to be addressed by designers in order to conduce the Westland to sustainable modes of urbanization. The project shifts from the socio-economic debate on automation to highlight the spatial implications of this phenomenon. In this regard, it documents emergent technologies and production processes in the horticulture productive cluster and depicts successive accretions in greenhouse sizes that are analogous to radical technological shifts and changes in production patterns. With the help of scenarios, the project formulated possible futures for Westland. An overall strategy consisted of shifting productive premises from one part of the cluster to another. Productive premises were merged with existing urban components to create mixed-use sustainable urban typologies afforded by automated technologies. The project culminated in a design for two pilot projects - Maasdijk and Honderland- and assumed automation as a platform that forced new spatial conditions. It engaged with the emergent phenomenon of automation to stir development in Westland and conduce the area to sustainable modes of urbanization.