La Citta Ideale 2033; Drawing Visions of Future Cities Through Personal Constructs Guillermo Aranda-Mena (Ph.D.)

"This project is to present visual narratives of what I envision as future cities and thriving urban environments with specific characteristics such as walking neighbourhoods for liveability; blue zones for longevity; biophilia for wellbeing;3rd places for social innovation; urban farms for rich gastronomy and nutrition; knowledge districts for employment and intellectual development; integrated systems for mobility; and housing cooperatives for affordability, to mention a few of what I see as key attributes to improve the fabric of our cities.

La Citta Ideale 2033, is a vision for the ideal city, not a renaissance utopia, nor a western postmodernity but an environment drawn from my very own personal lived experiences in a wide range of sensorial realities informing my subconscious imagination.For over 30 years I have been a global flaneur since the 1990’s I have been exploring worlds far away from my native Mexico. I have lived, or deeply experienced, cities, towns and urban environments across 5 continents, this first hand experience provides an objective record to draw from.

For this exhibition I am bringing my creative mind, skilled hand and academic knowledge in order to represent visionary scenarios of future cities. All of which I will attempt to extract from my subconscious utilising a psychological technique within Personal Construct Psychology by George A. Kelly (1955)"

Artist Bio:

Guillermo is a Mexican-Australian artist, academic and architect. Widely published and internationally acclaimed academic pushing the boundaries at the intersection of environmental psychology, building innovation and heritage management.

After completing his studies in Architecture in Mexico and Spain (1992-96), Guillermo travelled extensively across Europe and conducted a Doctoral investigation on Environmental Psychology at University of Reading in the UK (1997-2003) and since then, Guillermo has taught and carried out research in his chosen field. He has taught or been a researcher in residence at leading universities such as TU Delft and TU Twente in the Netherlands; Stanford University in the USA; ETH and NWFH in Switzerland; and Aalborg, Lund and Malmo in Scandinavia.

He is an Associate Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne (2004- ) and Visiting Professor of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, UNESCO Chair in Mantova (2012- ). He is also Guest Professor at Malmo and Lund Universities in Sweden (2020- ), where he will be teaching a the end of October and beginning of November.