Laboratory for visionary architecture

What if research, science and architecture were merged? This question drives the ideas of architects Chris Bosse, Alexander Rieck, and Tobias Wallisser from LAVA, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture. The 2020 Expo in Dubai marked the unveiling of LAVA’s German Pavilion, which became a fertile starting point for this book. Rather than looking back on 15 years of major global work, this book looks to the future - of architecture and life on earth. The four key themes explored in the pavilion - future cities, biodiversity, energy transition, and the social impact of architecture - are joined by two further urgent topics: new digital processes and the evolution of the workplace. These six ideas become the lens through which LAVA’s founders, as well as visionaries from architecture and adjacent disciplines, ask questions about the built environment and its future. We hear from Maria Aiolova, Raoul Bunschoten, Giovanna Carnevali, Marjan Colletti, Caia Hagel, Amy Frearson, Riya Patel, Gilles Retsin, Georg Vrachliotis, André Wilkens, and many others. Each theme is presented through a series of thought-provoking essays, features, interviews, and LAVA projects, underpinned by the curiosity of the authors who unravel these themes, each with the same question: what if?