read the fascinating interview of JG Ballard here (by HUO) for his takes about architecture and the city, how we’ve been too trapped in nostalgia, and how not to fear the unruly uncertainty of the future:

<imagination and reality>

‘I lived in Shanghai until I was 15, went through the war and acquired a special “language”—a set of images and rhythms, dreams and expectations that are probably the basic operating formulas that govern my life to this day. Shanghai was almost a twenty-first century city—huge disparities of wealth and poverty, a multi-lingual media city with dozens of radio stations, dominated by advertising, befouled by disease and pollution, driven by money, populated by twenty different nations, the largest and most dynamic city of the Pacific Rim, an important political battleground. In short, a portent of the world we inhabit today. The significant thing for me was that all this was turned upside down by war. Friends suddenly vanished, leaving empty houses like the Marie Celeste, and everywhere I saw the strange surrealist spectacles that war produces. It taught me many lessons, above all that the unrestricted imagination was the best guide to reality.’

<we are what our city is>

‘The “urbanization,” which has replaced the city of old, is where most people live, and its contours shape their minds. Patterns of urban life are constantly shifting, and constitute a script that we all have to perform. We’re allowed a certain freedom to improvise, but our roles are written by the city. ‘

<architecture for advanced human beings>

‘The Heathrow Hilton designed by Michael Manser is my favourite building in London. It’s part space-age hangar and part high-tech medical centre. It’s clearly a machine, and the spirit of Le Corbusier lives on in its minimal functionalism. It’s a white cathedral, almost a place of worship, the closest to a religious building that you can find in an airport. Inside, it’s a highly theatrical space, dominated by its immense atrium. The building, in effect, is an atrium with a few rooms attached. Most hotels are residential structures, but rightly, the Heathrow Hilton plays down this role, accepting the total transience that is its essence, and instead turns itself into a huge departure lounge, as befits an airport annex. Sitting in its atrium one becomes, briefly, a more advanced kind of human being. Within this remarkable building, one feels no emotions and could never fall in love, or need to. The National Gallery or the Louvre are the complete opposite, and people there are always falling in love.’

<too much present, too little hope>

‘People today are rightly sceptical about any proclaimed intentions to build heaven on earth. We now live in the present, unconsciously uneasy at the future, and this short-term viewpoint does have dangers. We know that, as human beings, we are all deeply flawed and dangerous, but this self-knowledge can act as a brake on hope and idealism.

<Utopian utopia>

‘There were times in its history when the United States came close to suggesting what a Utopian utopian project might be, but the less appealing sides to American life now seem to be in the ascendant—there’s a self-infantilizing strain that gives America the look of Peter Pan’s Never-never-never land. However, the future may well be a marriage between Microsoft and the Disney Company—an infantilized entertainment culture imposed on us by the most advanced communications technology. What I fear for my grandchildren is a benign dystopia of ever-present surveillance cameras watching us for our own good, a situation in which we will acquiesce, all too well aware of our attraction to danger.’

<Ambiguity>

‘I hope everything I have written is ambiguous, reflecting the paradoxical faces that make up human nature.’