Omid Kamvari: 21st Century Middle Eastern city

In recent times it seems that we have become victims of cities rather than wilful participants in their growth and design. Architecture has a responsibility to record social and cultural changes, and can be described as the manifestation of our cultural ambitions. In a globalised, flat world where information boundaries and borders are disappearing, this has resulted in the disappearance of the vernacular and identity from our urban centres.

Humans are social creatures and enjoy interaction; the city balances the environment, society and economy to create conditions for such interactions to take place. The success of this has resulted in an influx of people towards urban centres. With predictions stating that by 2050, 75 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban centres, we need to critically look at the way in which we imagine and plan the cities of the future and look at rebalancing the scales.

This talk, which is part of our Architecture Asia series, will discuss the role of architecture in the 21st century city, and how moving from the current exclusive model of city planning to an inclusive one will bring us closer to rebalancing social, environmental and economic concerns.