Time November 2/November 9, 2020THE GREAT RESET
A WORLD IN TROUBLE
Masterplanet envisions how humans can live sustainably and safely on
earth when there are 10 billion of us, a number we are expected to hit
around 2050. The proposal calls for rapid cuts to emissions of greenhouse
gases and better management of natural resources.Expanding cities Megacity population estimates in 2050New
York City
24.8mMexico City
24.3m Lagos32.6mTokyo
32.6mNew Delhi
36.2mMumbai
42.4midea of architecture as provocation is
something that builds on Bjarke’s skill
for presentation, his ability to synthe-
size big ideas for a broad audience.”
As if to prove this point, BIG tells
TIME it envisages Ingels hosting a 10-
part documentary series, in the vein of
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, explaining the 10
sections of Masterplanet to the public.
“He has to say that he wants this
to actually be realized,” Heathcote
adds. “I’m sure he does. He would
like to be, I’m sure, the man who
saves the world.”
A mAster plAn presumes authority.
From the 17th century to the 20th,
master plans were a key tool for Eu-
ropean colonizers to create settle-
ments in their empires in the Amer-
icas, Africa and Asia. More recently,
within the U.S., master plans were at
the heart of the midcentury projects
for urban renewal, which resulted in
the displacement of low-income res-
idents and minority communities.
For climate-justice activists, the idea
of a 46-year-old white European man
even suggesting a master plan for the
planet is troubling.
“We are in the situation that we
are in right now because of mas-
ter plans coming out of Europe that
have been responsible for extraction
[of resources], enslavement and colo-
nialism,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre,
executive director of the New Yo r k
City–based climate- justice orga-
nizing group Uprose. For her, the
Master planet idea is “brimming with
hubris” and an “outdated approach”
to solving the climate crisis.
Yeampierre argues that people
from the Global South and commu-
nities of color in the Global North,
who will be disproportionately im-
pacted by the physical and economic
harms of climate change, should not
just be consulted on plans to address
climate change but should also be
the ones to originate them. “So far
we have moved the dial on address-
ing climate change slowly, because
deference has always been given to
people with privilege as the drivers
of solutions.”
Ingels, whose firm has mostly
worked in Europe and the U.S. and has mostly white male part-
ners, says he’s aware that attempting this project will attract “all
kinds of criticism.” He’s keen to stress that BIG “has no author-
ity whatsoever over the planet.” He doesn’t want his firm to be in
charge of redesigning the earth but “to get the ball rolling and see
if we can get more people involved.” “We believe it could be a use-
ful tool to accumulate initiatives in a practical, pragmatic way. And
instead of complaining about why no one is doing it, we thought,
O.K., let’s just start doing it. It’ll only have an impact if enough rel-
evant entities think it’s useful and want to contribute and collabo-
rate and criticize.”
Billy Fleming, director of the McHarg Center at the University of
Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, who leads projects
to redesign urban space to improve sustainability and quality of life,
says the central goal of Masterplanet—to create a unified plan for a
sustainable planet—is not a bad one. “I think a plan created through
consensus is something that folks involved in the U.N. Environmen-
tal Programme would like to get to and never do, for all kinds of rea-
sons.” But BIG is not an appropriate body to lead such action, he
says. “Making images of the future can and often does prefigure it.
And doing that comes with a real responsibility to the people whose
lives will be transformed by the future these images can prefigure.
And as a design firm that—in Bjarke’s telling in [public speeches]—
is very disinterested in any kind of political questions, they’re not
accountable to anyone or any community.”
Ingels’ approach to politics has sometimes made him an uncom-
fortable ally for progressives. In January, while on a research trip to
Brazil for luxury- ecotourism firm Nomade, Ingels posed for a photo
during a meeting with the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Social media filled with criticism of Ingels for working with a man who
has rolled back protections for Indigenous communities and fiercely
encouraged deforestation in the Amazon. In a statement, Ingels called
the criticism “an oversimplification of a complex world.” “As much as
I would enjoy working in a bubble where everybody agrees with me,
the places that can really benefit from our involvement are the places
that are further from the ideals that we already hold.”