Along a few months around the start of the 2020s, the sudden Covid19 pandemic induced a startling paradox effect. It slowed down our everyday life to an almost numbing stop, and yet, simultaneously, it accelerated a globalized human society into an unexpected future.
Who would have believed that, within days, thousands of planes would be grounded and the unstoppable march of globalization and economic growth would be brought to an abrupt halt? Who would have ever imagined that, within weeks, governments around the world would be ready to deactivate an economic system that was apparently invincible? Who would have believed that, in the name of saving human lives or just plainly averting the scandalous exposure of broken-down public health systems, political elites were actually ready to hastily, if temporarily, sacrifice capitalism?
Simultaneously, however, while we were still locked down in our domiciles, an invisible and anxious acceleration made it seem like, suddenly, everything had to change, both nature and form. Within days and weeks, while we were frozen in place, the design world responded with countless, often foolish proposals to alter cityscapes, building typologies, everyday objects, 3D printing protocols. From one day to the other, while masks became an instant fashion item, social distance was a new metrics by which to conceptualize space. From one day to another, anything, from street markets to airplane seats, was clumsily but sophisticatedly revised. Every tech-savvy design and architecture studio distributed open-source plans for easy-to-assemble, home-printed protection gear. But if this acceleration was reactive and hysterical, another subtler mode of acceleration disclosed deeper historical dilemmas.
As in a moment of convergence of different tensions, and even if in the middle of a stop-motion suspension, we were all swiftly moved forward to a future we were somehow trying to postpone. We were crushingly confronted with a move we had already theoretically discerned, but not yet entirely conceived and absorbed: as the economy slowed down, we were suddenly thrown into the potential alternate reality of a climate crisis-driven “great transition.”