Audi 2012 Annual Report Download - page 66

communicate with one another in the
future. This intelligent networking
can bring the fun back into everyday
mobility.
Mark Wigley believes that this digi-
tal world presents the opportunity to
establish new trends and lifestyles.
“Today anyone wanting to learn, to
progress, to shape things has to share
and cooperate. These are megatrends,
and one could even say that the city is
a machine for both. In the city of the
future, we therefore have to consider
buildings and cars to be shared parts
of the infrastructure, perhaps even the
most important elements of a new,
dynamic system.” Dynamic in this case
means variable, diverse and shared. A
system for sharing, in which no longer
ownership but rather intelligent and
convenient access is the key.
This is also the philosophy followed
by the team from Höweler + Yoon Archi-
tecture in winning the 2012 Audi Urban
Future Award. They studied the region
between Boston and Washington – a
chain of cities along the American East
Coast with 50 million residents and
New York at its center, connected pri-
marily by the I-95 highway. “One of the
architects’ ideas was ‘Last Mile Car’ –
a car sharing system for the last five
to ten kilometers to home,” explains
Stadler. “The idea behind it is that
people would only use their cars for
the last part of the trip, thus avoiding
“In the city of the future, we have to
consider buildings and vehicles as part of the
basic infrastructure.” Prof. Mark Wigley
city trac.” In other words, the car
would only be used in the outskirts of
cities. Other mobility systems would
be used in the crowded urban center.
To do this, the infrastructure has to be
intelligently networked, with optimized
connections, individual destinations
and also a high level of convenience.
Initial proposals have been defined,
but the questions regarding the future
of urban mobility have by no means
been answered. A huge task for the
automobile industry, architecture
and science. “That’s why Columbia
University is so interested in working
with Audi to find the answers,” says
the dean, who is looking forward to
continuing the dialogue and the start
of joint projects. “I find this symbiosis
of a carmaker’s technical expertise and
the philosophical contemplation of a
university to be extremely exciting.”
Together with Columbia University,
Audi is taking up the challenge of re-
shaping a world in transition. “We still
don’t know exactly what this future
will look like,” says Stadler, “but I am
certain that we will experience cities as
an intelligent, connected and learning
system.” «
Dialogue on the future: video
of the discussion between Rupert
Stadler and Mark Wigley.
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