Futuri urbani: la cupola, la crosta e la città multilivello / Urban futures: the dome, the crust and the multilevel city

The exploration of extra-planetary or imaginary worlds has a long tradition in architectural and urban visions (Eaton, 2002; Rosenau, 1974). These often exist within a dystopian-utopian spectrum and with varying degrees of spatial definition and socio-cultural characteristics. Flexible frameworks in urban imaginaries, being more reflexive and open than blueprints (Pinder, 2005), offer a range of speculative possibilities emerging from a single construct, prescribing conditions, principles and processes. In contrast, blueprints are often descriptive, detailing urban forms and the social relations they would deterministically generate or support. If dystopian worlds are presented as warnings against undesirable futures, utopian and eutopian worlds – as an achievable and practical utopia, rather than an idealised or unrealistic one – lean on normative assertions, of what should be (Lemes de Oliveira & Mahmoud, 2024). Extra-planetary explorations in urban planning, design and architecture fluctuate between the sadness of outer-world planning and construction as a consequence of the failure to protect our own planet and the excitement of a new frontier – a space of hope (Lemes de Oliveira, 2024; McPhearson et al., 2016). The work of the Archigram group is a prominent example of how looking outward to space can lead to a rethinking of established urban development patterns and consequential innovations in design on Earth. Archigram’s explorations are steeped in the space race of the 1960s and sought to question and reframe the underlying premisses of the relationships between architecture, environment, buildings and technology (Chalk et al., 2018). This chapter focuses on three concepts present in their work that bear significant relevance to contemporary challenges: the dome, the crust and the multilevel city.