The New York Times, Tuesday February 8, 2035

“2035…finally our Generation lost. Sustainability was considered a joke and now we have no more opportunities to live as our Fathers did. No more Fresh air, no more healthy food….Cities sunk and sunlight has become dangerous rather than life-giving. Traditionalism, the loss of trust on progress, finally has become the most powerful Religion in XXI Century Architecture, a dangerous religion for our souls which have turned our contemporary cities into an old William Blake tale. Thus in Berlin the Smithsons Hauptstadt has been totally destroyed, in London the built Exodus of R. Koolhaas has become a platform for single house farms, Tange Tokyo Bay and Kurokawa Helix City have been transformed into small Italian style towns., Finally, Architects focused their attention on Manhattan, New York. It was decided to demolish the Continuous Monument designed by Superstudio Group in 1969 and to reuse a part of its Superstructure to build a second level city, more traditionalist, more liveable, to be designed in the right human scale. No ideas came out from the most important architecture firms, not a single one. In a NY municipality meeting, out of the blue, an Outlet contractor who worked in Disney raised his hand: ”Why don’t we build Venice again as they already did more than 100 years ago on Coney Island? The real Venice has already sunk….but we can all live in the Doge’s city, which was my wife’s dream, and get the millions of tourists who usually visited it before.” Already other cities have attempted to use the image of Venice, but only New York nowhas the copyright. Indeed, a new Venice is now over our heads, the same size as the old one. Its new name is Bauci after one of the Invisible Cities narrated by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. Should our future be safe now with a new Invisible City?….”