Cities of the future

Urban areas house more than half the world's population and cities are often alluring playgrounds for the individual, but CineMuseSpace shows a different side, shining a spotlight on homogeneity within domestic spaces in our cities. Pyramid Schemes, a video essay by Lek, scrutinises cultural and political ideologies through the visual language of architecture, and speculates on architecture's role as a mode of communication where culture and politics are inextricably linked to its development and realisation.

In a society obsessed with the visual, there's an increasing tendency to evaluate architecture through its image alone. Perfect renderings printed on glossy billboards have not only colonised global cities, but are also used to approve, evaluate and sell new construction projects. These digitally constructed, imagined landscapes become real before reality; their shiny presence merges with the existing urban environment, masking the raw construction sites they overlook and forming a representation of a future city in citizens' minds.