Part of the "De-Activated City" series.

URBAN ANIMAL FARM

Factory farming has been for many years a highly criticised practice, made more prevalent in recent years with documentaries and exposés into the underbelly of the food industry. Questionable standards and especially the impact of devastating environmental damage caused by factory farming is also compounded by animal mistreatment. In particular, the practice of breeding animals crowded together using growth hormones, often in very tiny spaces is a perfect storm of poor living conditions and poorer hygiene for the livestock – both as a consequence to their wellbeing and a hotbed for disease – an inevitable trickle-down effect to their consumers. Moreover, intensive farming has resulted in growing land consumption due to the space needed for agriculture at the cost of Earth’s wilderness. For a profit, this often takes shape through the decimation of several ecosystems such as the practice of deforestation and habitat loss. After the increased presence protests made by environmental associations and activists around the world, a novel radical policy is finally launched. URBAN ANIMAL FARM consists in the implementation of open-air local farms on the rooftops of many iconic urban public buildings, reclaiming their deactivated surfaces with the aim of encouraging a “zero-mile” production based on the enhancement of the local resources of each city. Do you consider it a sustainable future?

HOLOGRAM CITY (Bologna, Covid-57)

In 2020 the global pandemic caused by the spread of COVID-19 radically changed our social habits, forcing citizens across the globe to stay in quarantine and depriving them of their freedom, with the aim of contrasting the spread of the virus. 37 years later, in 2057, the spread of COVID-57, a novel global pandemic, once again hits the planet forcing the governments to re-activate their measures of lock-down. In response to this renewed global threat the Municipality of Bologna, together with other European cities launches an experimental program called “Hologram City”. The program consists in the spread of special flying drones which are able to project on-air the holograms of the quarantined citizens. Through this transported presence, each citizen can connect to his personal drone from his computer at home and – after being scanned – is now able to virtually move around the city through the avatar-hologram projected by their personal flying drone. In this way, according to its designers, people have the tools to gather and claim back the public space of which they have been deprived. What is clear in this context is that the technology of holograms, initially popularized by 80’s Sci-Fi masterpieces such as Blade Runner and Star Wars, has reached its highest potential, finally crossing the line from imagined speculation to utilitarian construct, becoming reality.