Imagine a world in which nature is intertwined with the industrial: giant lotus flowers replace concrete skyscrapers; an urban forest forms a city con

Inside the Imaginarium of a Solarpunk Architect

submited by
Style Pass
2021-07-18 11:00:10

Imagine a world in which nature is intertwined with the industrial: giant lotus flowers replace concrete skyscrapers; an urban forest forms a city constantly in shift through a tree’s life cycle. This is the imaginarium of Belgian architect Luc Schuiten. To discover his work is to fall under the spell of a colourful cosmos, where architectural blueprints are swapped for visionary storyboards that invite the viewer to dive into his utopian dreamscape.

We like to think of Luc Schuiten as the godfather of solarpunk, a derivative of the more familiar 1980s science fiction genres known as cyberpunk and steampunk. While steampunk imagines a retro future with steam as the main energy source and cyberpunk imagines a techno future (and how things can go wrong), solarpunk on the other hand, is an art movement that imagines how things can get better. And in Luc’s world, the future is bright, renewable, and oh so green…

The Solarpunk ideology found its roots on the internet in around 2008, envisioning how our world could look if humanity succeeded in solving major modern contemporary challenges such as climate change and pollution. But since the 1950s, Luc (now 77 years old) has been designing for the future urban landscape based on his concept of “archiborescence,” blending organic and manufactured elements for homes, commercial buildings and even entire cities of tomorrow. Whether or not it was his intention, Schuiten’s work, and particularly his illustrative style, has influenced an entirely new art and media movement that encourages sci-fi culture to redirect its energy towards manifesting a more utopian vs dystopian planet. The solarpunk aesthetic is all about embracing renewable energies with visuals that include environmental elements such as wind turbines, vertical gardens, waterfalls and psychedelic nature-inspired forms. Luc Schuiten has been painting that picture for decades in the hopes of one day making it our reality.

Leave a Comment