What is your city's future?
In the last 30 years many world class cities have built extravagant museums and performing arts centers generating years of worldwide attention. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek has noted the contradiction in such projects, stating they are “islands with the presence of meaning, as such, in the flow of our meaningless daily existence.” He thinks these projects fail because they try to impose themselves as a kind of ground-zero of meaning in our lives: if the old values are dead and art and technology are the replacement, this is the thing to be worshipped, an object with a kind of virtual meaning.
What is your city’s future?
The creation of such extravagant projects hardly affects the day-to-day lives of most city residents. Real meaning in civic life deteriorates as the gap between rich and poor increases, social media inflames cultural differences, and operating procedures are unable to provide services that uplift and inspire. Animate thinks great design and urban mobility facilitate social life to be not merely functional, but beautiful. Recalling Walter Benjamin’s words about the Garnier opera palace in Paris: “the true focus of the opera is not the performance hall but the wide oval staircase on which high society ladies display their fashion and gentlemen meet for a casual smoke.” This social life was the true focus of opera life, “what it was really about.”
The infiniteTransit flyway is Animate’s vision to use design for what life is really about. infiniteTransit is a well-designed travel system to:
• get people and things swiftly around a metropolis,
• build stronger local interactions,
• use sustainable funding,
• provide more entrepreneurial opportunities, and
• strengthen the civic pride of place.
Great design has always been a holistic solution to complex real-world challenges. With infiniteTransit, benefactors, government officials, NGOs and corporations can contribute to a significantly better future for your city. These five interwoven goals can be achieved by building the infiniteTransit Flyway.
Animate’s years of research into complex adaptive systems and cultural evolution, is the origin of insights into how new spaces will be used fruitfully in the future. Familiar departments of 'Architecture, Interiors, Planning' are altered to reflect Animate’s human focus and behavioral approach. Architecture, Objects and Spatial Studies are areas of focus that grow by incorporating Animate’s research into practice. Research in each area is interwoven becoming our method to create evidence-based, high-performance design solutions.
