Piling up the now

摘要

All architects and designers (even those working with Prince Charles) are futurists, in as much as they're generating the shape of things to come before they exist. And they're not the only ones: sci-fi film makers have been conjuring the future city at least since Metropolis was released in 1927. Sure, all that art deco, streaming masses, and multi-layered transportation in Fritz Lang's masterpiece looked rather like contemporaneous New York on steroids, but urbanis-tically, it was saying 'the future is now, just piled up more'. The same seems to be the case in the latest credible celluloid crystal ball, Spike Jonze's film Her. The near-future Los Angeles has contemporary skyscrapers, just more of them. Indeed, supplies of suitable LA high-rise ran low and they threw in a load from Pudong, Shanghai, even shooting there.