From Utopia to Futurescapes: Futures Literacy for Next Generations of Architects and Designers

The future is the first fundamental projection for architecture. Architecture has a duration in time, which often goes beyond the very life of its designer, so it is in itself a time machine, which must inexorably come to terms with projections of the future. Through a review of utopias in the field of architectural design over the last few centuries, this paper intends to explore utopian aspirations for the future spatial ideal of architectural education and the dialectic of its need to be 'realized'. The findings indicate that the futurescapes of architectural education requires cross-fertilization through interdisciplinarity, which emerges from the bottom up, generating contributing scenarios from the community; the adaptability of scenarios that are dynamic and in turn can generate variables in constant transformation; the temporal stratigraphy of the built environment, involving the coexistence of artifacts from different eras within the same space, and the need for reconciliation and sustainability; as well as the need for interdisciplinarity and "out of the box" thinking that contributes to a greater awareness of non-traditional approaches. From the perspective of design education, the futurescapes, through experimentation in literature research and educational practice, it is evident that in the educational practice of fostering the next generation of architects and designers, they need to be capable of more than assessing issues from the perspective of design and community, not only to face current challenges but also to design the future they desire for themselves and the communities in which people live.