Editorial

Simulation is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Professorship for Theory of Urbanization and Urban Environments at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, following its symposium “On Simulation: A Cultural Technique for Uncertain Urban Futures” at the Zurich Architecture Center ZAZ Bellerive. It features contributions by Marco Caracciolo, Anne Dippel, Andri Gerber, Orit Halpern, Peter Krapp, Dario Negueruela del Castillo, and Joshua Silver.

As tools of computation and simulation used by climatologists and planners are becoming more and more sophisticated, urban futures are increasingly uncertain. In this context, the relations between urban and cultural production and the transforming tools and methods for forecasting and simulating the climate reposition the role of architecture and art in envisioning the future.

According to Jean Baudrillard, the simulation of reality might contain more truth than reality itself.1 Focusing on simulation therefore opens up new insights into our uncertain urban and climatic future. Originating from the Latin “simulō” or “imitate,” the term designates a representation of an event, process, or activity, often for planning or training purposes. Over the past one hundred years, humans have conducted an experiment, a “real-life” simulation on the planet—a complex system where various worlds (physical, biological, human) and various scales (in time and space) interact—by releasing increasing quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.2 Climate change is the catastrophic response of this complex system to the experiment. 

In the early 1960s, simulation technologies started being used to anticipate the environmental and microclimatic effects of architectural and urban design solutions as part of a new “ecological design” movement that sought to rethink the existing city. Back then, scientific knowledge on urban climates was primarily generated through conducting simulations and other experiments on physical models (such as wind tunnels).3 However, in the 1980s and ’90s, developments in computation and the introduction of digital simulations allowed the creation of 3D models that  facilitate the coordination and planning of buildings prior to their construction.4 And more recently, advances in Building Integrated Modeling and machine learning have integrated continuous simulation and testing into the design process at virtually all scales. 

Some suggest that the escalation of the climate emergency necessitates the expansion and investment into these new scientific and technological frontiers. However, the price of giving agency to these technologies is rarely questioned by their developers. And regardless, cultural production and critique have been shaped by urban climatology’s findings and methods, with climate fiction (cli-fi) and ecocriticism becoming established ways of reacting and engaging with the climate crisis. Architecture and urban design have, in turn, adopted speculative methods from these cultural practices to imagine and plan for multiple scenarios and futures. In this sense, architecture and urban design are turning towards the future as never before. Yet there is a dearth of reflection on this turn, and on the significance of simulation technologies and climate speculation for architectural production.

The future of urban and cultural production is fundamentally entangled with the transforming tools and methods for forecasting and simulating climatic futures. Simulation is therefore the medium through which architecture stands to contribute meaningfully to designing such futures.