Currently, half of the world’s 6.8 billion humans live in cities. By 2050, 75% of our projected population of 9.1 billion will be urbanized. As a result of these shifts, the world’s urban population will—in the next forty years—double. In architectural terms, then, half the fabric of the world’s mid-century cities has yet to be built. And yet to simply expand the fabric of our current cities according to current paradigms is likely impossible, and certainly unsustainable. In the face of accelerating shifts in climate and resource availability, this enormous experiment in global urbanization must result in built fabric that is sustainable, safe, resilient and robust. The effects on our own profession can and should be profound; a new focus on architectural fundamentals, as well as an extension into newly adjacent fields; biology, ecology, information science and computing.
 
My own work of the past several years has endeavored to chart and shape these transformations, focusing on the crucial at the intersection of architectural and urban scales As well as its fundamentally urban character, this work can be characterized by an effort to connect the critical tools and theoretical reflections that characterized architectural discussions in the 1980s and 1990s to the transformative technologies that have shaped the profession in the first decade of this century. In the last few years, the output of these efforts have taken several specific, inter-related forms – history, criticism, urban proposals, open-source software, and architectural installations.
 
Viewed through a narrow lens, this breadth of work stretches, and often breaks, disciplinary boundaries. Yet the related threads of my own work are also not so far removed from the connections outlined by architect Leon Battista Alberti in the 15th century as the basis for the architectural profession; critical writing, speculative designs, built work, and technical improvements to the discipline.

Nicholas de Monchaux, Installation of San Francisco Local Code case study, SFMOMA, 2012

350 of 1300 digitally-developed designs for public vacant land in San Francisco are shown as models, constructed from reclaimed lumber, plastic, and fur.



Photo: courtesy Michael Millman


Nicholas de Monchaux, Installation of San Francisco Local Code case study, SFMOMA, 2012

350 of 1300 digitally-developed designs for public vacant land in San Francisco are shown as models, constructed from reclaimed lumber, plastic, and fur.



Photo: courtesy Michael Millman


Nicholas de Monchaux, exhibit design for the retrospective Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, 2013

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Photo: courtesy Michelle Litvin

Nicholas de Monchaux, exhibit design for the retrospective Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, 2013

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Photo: courtesy Michelle Litvin

From Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011, fashioningapollo.com)

Astronaut Charles Conrad, Jr. (facing camera) simulates picking up lunar samples, while Astronaut Alan L. Bean, simulates their photographic documentation, five weeks before their launch in Apollo 12, October 6, 1969
Credit
NASA Image S69-55368

Courtesy Johnson Space Center
BIO

Nicholas de Monchaux is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011), an architectural and urban history of the Apollo Spacesuit, winner of the Eugene Emme award from the American Astronautical Society and shortlisted for the Art Book Prize. The work of his Oakland-based design practice has been exhibited widely, including at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas, the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, and San Francisco’s SFMOMA. Prior to his independent practice, he worked in the offices of Michael Hopkins & Partners in London, and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro in New York. de Monchaux has received design awards and fellowships from Parsons, the International Union of Architects, Pamphlet Architecture and the Van Alen Institute. His research in design theory and technology has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Hellman Family fund, the Macdowell Colony, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Smithsonian Institution. 

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