Luc Schuiten. Metamorfosia

And, indeed, every stroke, every fragment, every detail of his work shows how architecture could reconcile itself with nature. His designs, which are inspired by the creative force of the living world, offer an original type of arborescent architecture: archiborescence. And suddenly, the idea of observing nature in order to design a type of habitat which would provide a new, serene and sustainable lifestyle is more than just a pipe dream. Luc Schuiten’s utopias never lead us astray in vague and fanciful futures. On the contrary, his utopian images allow us to envisage other, positive possibilities. The lack of positive images of our future is a real danger, Luc Schuiten explains. By showing the worst, we risk finding our intelligence and capacity for imagination and action in a state of paralysis.

His dreams and architect’s ideas fill his sketchbooks, unfurl in vast ethereal designs and hover above the arborescent cities. Like a chess player, Luc Schuiten enjoys envisaging the stages in the development of our cities and painstakingly reproducing their metamorphoses so as to encourage us, in turn, to use our imagination and look towards un autre possible (another way of doing things).