Green Awards: Architecture for Life After

Dear FuturArc readers,

Ouroboros is an ancient emblem symbolising the cycle of Life. Everything in the natural world is born, lives and dies. While most humans spend the majority of their lives wrapped up with birth and living, they are less inclined to delve into the topic of death or dying. Yet we all know that this cycle is inevitable—there is no birth without death, no death without birth.

When setting the theme for FuturArc Prize 2024, we wanted to look deeper into this topic and its implications on the future of architectural solutions along with the environmental, social and urban impacts.

In present times, there is nowhere that has not been affected by the severity of changes in Earth’s climate—we have been dealt with the hottest day ever recorded in history;¹ people are dying of extreme heat;² and the fate of small island nations³ are hanging by a thread.

Thus, the premise called forth by the 2024 competition cycle based on the scenarios of Climate Destruction and Endings have been revealed to be most apt, as agreed by the jury panel too. The FuturArc Interview features excerpts from the jury meeting held earlier this year, highlighting the jurors’ in-depth perspectives on the topics and awarded entries.

The following pages also showcase articles from the fraternity that advocate matters closely related to these topics: Marek Kozlowski and his colleagues have written a paper on the Sri Aman Master Plan, first of its kind in Malaysia, that seeks to create climate-resilient environments by developing blue-green networks; teamSTAR from Japan gave a new interpretation to an ossuary hall; and Nipun Prabhakar collected photos and stories in India to make his case for a circular system of reusing C&D waste informally.

Going back to where I have started, Ouroboros is also the title of FuturArc Prize 2024’s First Place entry. It has been an intense process putting together this edition’s Main Feature dedicated to presenting a summary of the winning and merit entries.

We hope this issue gives you pause to reflect on the themes that underlie the awarded entries and the stories. After all, destruction and endings are everyday events that happen more commonly than our minds are wont to believe.

¹ https://apnews.com/article/hottest-day-ever-climate-change-weather-heat-extreme-global-warming-8e2b0b7fa0360ecb931ca333a832c694
² https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-07-08/how-many-people-have-died-from-extreme-heat-officials-struggle-to-track
³ https://earth.org/tuvalus-sinking-reality-how-climate-change-is-threatening-a-small-island-nation/