future(s):

Architecture provides a physical and inspirational framework for our futures. The architecture we construct today affords future lives as well as present lives. It becomes a structural model of our futures. Doctors cure patients, help restore and maintain health for the individual. Teachers nurture the minds of the students and equip them for life's challenges. In contrast to most service professionals who provide for a generation, architectures design buildings and cities that last into many future generations. Therefore, the work of architecture must remain time relevant into the long term future and architects must be strategic planners for the future, in addition to being inventive and creative designers of the present.

There are many historically significant examples of architects heroically assuming this responsibility. However, the planning process and design tools of the past have not allowed this to be accomplished effectively as we depend almost entirely on our past experience to gauge our design endeavors. It is an analogy to driving a car forward using only the rear view mirrors. Futuristic architectural design to this day exists largely in the realm of artistic expressions without much knowledge of what the future holds. Consequently it is a hit or miss approach short on real future applicability and usefulness. The challenges we faced are there are multiple possible futures and the future is not predictable.

To improve our current design process for a better aim at a probable future, the development of the strategic planning aspect of the architectural design process began about a decade ago in a collaborative design teaching studio involving faculty and students in futures study and architecture. A social science approach of interactive future scenarios projection was used along with computational design methodologies to provide a logic base of a probable futures for design planning. 

This experimental design planning process as applied, refined and documented on varied project settings including university campus designs and urban design. This information on a new design approach for the probable future is to assist professional architects and planners, project owners as well as students who engaged in the design of large scale design and planning projects.