Future Fiction
a fictional future of an apian pandemic

Pittsburgh, PA
Magazine and Map made in collaboration with Louis Suarez
Triptych made in collaboration with Emmanuel Nwandu

Future Fiction

Future Fiction is a studio heavily focusing on narratives and aesthetics. How can a fictional scenario be portrayed as non-fiction? Much like how all architecture starts as a fictional thought and becomes embodied into a real and physical form, Future Fiction is about taking a fictional concept and embodying it into a physical instance through imagery and narrative.

The Narrative

This is project is very much a story as much as it is a spatial exercise. It is about setting up a scenario and letting it play out. Analyzing how various underlying systems shift and adapt to a progression of events happening above ground. Seeing what a community, or two communities, sees through a limited frame and understanding the results of the loss of the full narrative: This is a historical documentation of the rise and fall of the Frick Wall, focusing on the themes of control, propaganda, and frailty. The exploration investigates how a society reacts to the spread of an alien phenomenon.

The overflowing growth of the flora around Frick Park startled the city of Pittsburgh, starting the construction of the Frick Wall. To reduce the austere view of the wall, faux house facades were built onto it, feigning the existence of a new neighborhood. In response, the ‘infected inhabitants’ of the Frick Reservation rediscovered and repurposed the coal mines of olden Pittsburgh as a new Underground Railroad to escape the confines of the barrier. On one side of the wall exists an extremely systematized Pittsburgh and the other, a chaotic outburst of greenery. The elevation-section drawing displays the timeline of how the wall was risen over time, where the axonometric drawings illustrate the eventual fall of the wall.

The narrative focuses on the communication of two opposing sides, through the changes both in the visible realm and the unseen infrastructure. The axonometric drawings, as well as the renders, highlights a certain society’s opposition to a foreign phenomenon and the fragility of a physical wall.