Coming up with design concepts for new planets could help solve the problems affecting humanity on Earth, according to architect Winy Maas.
Issues such as climate change and habitat destruction can only be solved by thinking about Earth as a holistic design challenge, Maas said.
Coming up with alternative planets could help provide insights and solutions that could be applied here, he said during a recent live interview with Dezeen conducted as part of Virtual Design Festival.
Top image: a vision of a future green world prepared by MVRDV. This image: the Green Dip concept applied to Beijing
"It would be wonderful to design more planets and to compare them because there are different dreams," said the Dutch architect, who is co-founder of Rotterdam studio MVRDV. "It would be very useful in that way to fantasise on that because it would mirror what we should do now."
Maas added that the planet needed to be managed in the same way that landscapes are managed in countries like the Netherlands.
"Managing the planet is probably a very human activity," he said. "Managing nature is part of our urbanism."
Maas suggested turning cities like Hong Kong into havens for nature by covering buildings in vegetation
Population grown means that systems need to be put in place to determine where people will live, where food will be grown and which areas will be set aside for wildlife, he said.
"We will be with 11 billion people soon," he said. ...