From Squiggles to Spectacle

David Gensler knows pretty much all there is to know about building stuff. For ten years up until last year, he was co-CEO of Gensler, the world’s largest design firm, with revenues upward of $1 billion annually.

But those stats don’t tell the incredible story of Gensler’s impact on the global landscape. They’ve designed schools in New Jersey and corporate headquarters in Osaka; Presbyterian churches in Chicago and the new domestic airport terminal in Chennai; Facebook global HQ in California and “the world’s most beautiful skyscraper” in Shanghai. For the 34th year running, they topped Interior Design magazine’s ‘Top 100 Giants’ list. If architecture and design are acknowledged as influencing culture, Gensler – and David as a core member of this colossus – have shaped more of our modern world than we know.

That’s why his take on urbanisation is so critical. And in an intimate conversation at Algebra, David spoke of the staggering urbanisation of the past five decades and its impact on our physical landscape.

There were shock figures in store: 3 billion people moved to cities in the past 50 years – while the first 3 billion took 5,000 years to get there. He outlined key concerns of cities of the future: “walkability” and public spaces for people to bump serendipitously into one another prime among them. He also spoke of ways in which different countries are handling the challenges of megapolises and new cutting-edge technologies like 3D printing of houses.

His own personal goal, he said, was to figure a way to “turn the river back”: reverse the flow of migration and use architecture and technology to make the rural attractive again, creating productive communities and stimulating spaces that offer alternatives to the bland behemoths we now inhabit.

For anyone living in our burgeoning, behemoth cities – and trying to shape a coherent vision of the future – this is an important conversation.

Watch the full session above.