The night is shrouded in the bustling city with tall buildings, and the moist air is filled with mysterious fog.
Towering skyscrapers and neon lights illuminate the city. Under the lights,
High-density buildings lie on dirty and muddy streets.
In recent years,
has presented science fiction aesthetics from " Blade Runner 2049",
to the RPG game "Cyberpunk 2077" is popular all over the world,
" Cyberpunk wind" seems to be attracting more and more attention from young people.
"Cyberpunk 2077" game screenshot
Today,
We will enter the world of cyberpunk,
Explore the unique aesthetics of cyberpunk architecture.
1
Origin and expression
The literary budding of cyberpunk originated from the legendary figure of American science fiction literature Philip K. Dick's "Handml 1 Will Bionic Man Dream of Electronic Sheep ", humans copy themselves and enslave bionic Man in a collapsed environment. There was no visual effect of cyberpunk at that time, but the game between natural people and bionic people, the thinking of human nature and ethics had begun to emerge. It was 1968.
Then, in 1975, French artist Moebius and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon created the comic "Long Tomorrow". A vague future of time, in the dirty dungeon, densely packed tall buildings form a deep gap among the city dwellers. At this time, the content and vision gradually merge.
"Long Tomorrow"
The elements of cyberpunk include: towering modern giant buildings, muddy slums, dark and hazy nights, technologically-filled lights, dazzling neon lights, etc.
These elements appeared in the 1982 movie "Blade Runner". In the endless dark night with rainy and continuous rainy night, the stacked city landscape and neon elements intertwined a multicultural street life picture.
"Blade Runner" movie screenshot
This seems to have become a visual template for cyberpunk aesthetics for a long time to come. "Blade Runner" is adapted from the novel "Does Bionics Dream about Electronic Sheep", and its comic source code is hidden in "Long Tomorrow".
2
spirit kernel
In fact, cyberpunk aesthetics is the product of the times.
It is rooted in the nuclear weapon era people's fear of the technological explosion and the pessimism of the future form of mankind during the Cold War. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s to the early 1980s, the cynical era needs to have a matching visual effect.
"Ghost in the Shell" clip
Cyberpunk (Cyberpunk) consists of two parts. Among them, Cyber is the prefix of cybernetics (Cybernetics), representing the discipline of studying control and communication between animals and machines. Punk is derived from rock music , representing the rebellious youth culture. Therefore, it seems to point directly to both technology and individualism.
Therefore, "High tech, low life" seems to constitute the main content of cyberpunk. On one side is the high living density and low design level on the ground floor, and on the other side is the dazzling commercial area with a strong contrast with the slums. Fear of the population explosion and thinking about the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute the world.
"Blade Runner 2049" concept map
The concept of cyberpunk has been broken in the 1990s, and has recovered in the millennium and has slowly entered mainstream culture. Apart from the style of staggered style and the beauty of neon lights, it seems to remind people of their thinking on technology and self-cognition at all times.
When technology continues to develop until it can make decisions for humans, what are the value and meaning of human beings? As a person with subjective initiative, do you have the courage to rebel against the rigid world? Do you keep thinking in the face of the unknown scientism ? Cyberpunk reminds us that people can always cry through self-expression, interpret the social and cultural world they live in, and that beautiful expectations will never be extinguished.
3
Cyberpunk and Architecture
In the world of architecture, countless architects and artists have constantly conceived the future city from ancient times to the present. Creative concepts such as machine aesthetics, architectural telecommunications, plug-in cities, and walking cities outline beautiful blueprints such as future world architecture.
However, in the future society, the conception of a better future is difficult to separate, technology and wealth, so cyberpunk architecture comes into everyone's sight.
Other future city concepts
However, with the development of the times, today a purer and more positive cyberpunk aesthetic is separated from cyberpunk's pessimistic thoughts. Modern architecture with cyberpunk aesthetics seems to gradually escape from the dark and cruel political wealth social fog, and is more focused on its visual aesthetic expression and the thinking of coexisting modernization and tradition in the technological era.
In today's cyberpunk aesthetics in the real world, modernist architecture is the most popular. Among them, the attributes of "high-tech" are mainly reflected in the abundant light sources, electronic light, and neon elements among skyscrapers.
Cyberpunk elements in real architecture
Cyberpunk world highlights postmodern aesthetics. In the gray and hazy environment, billboards and buildings with staggered blue, blue and pink colors stand, the traffic roads are rich in levels, ground roads are intertwined with traffic lines in the air, and even shuttle through various buildings.
The architecture in the film and television works and the game world is more advanced and eye-catching, providing reference and aesthetic enjoyment for real-world architecture.
《Bioshock》
《Cyberpunk 2077》
4
Cyberpunk in China
In China, cyberpunk architecture and aesthetics seem to be more gentle.
There is no exaggeration of extreme future pessimism, no shattering of political and social forces, and no extreme opposition between high and low classes. Chinese-style cyberpunk is more of an artistic form formed based on geographical conditions and climatic characteristics, combining urban connotation and form, and has a very visual style.
In mainland China, the most cyberpunk city is Chongqing.
However, is this sense of cyberpunk just a style imitation and copy? Why is Chongqing famous for its cyberpunk feeling?
On the one hand, although other metropolises are also very short of skyscrapers, compared with plain areas, the mountainous terrain of Chongqing makes the entire city not distributed on the same plane, so the buildings are more staggered. Chongqing buildings surrounded by mountains and rivers are stacked layer by layer, giving people an indescribable sense of three-dimensionality and wrinkle.
Chongqing topographic map
Here, don’t think about taking a look at the entire city in an instant. There are often more secrets hidden behind the intertwined gaps and behind.
It is this terrain that makes Chongqing both known as "mountain city" and "river city", thus affecting Chongqing's transportation planning. Chongqing's transportation routes are often not on the same plane.
In the sky are elevated roads, cableways, bridges and open-air pedestrian streets, tunnels and highways on the ground, and a hot pot restaurant in the air-raid shelter is hidden under the ground. Chongqing's traffic never follows the gentle layout of the ground, but sometimes shuttles through the air, sometimes whistling across the mountain buildings, sometimes approaching the river, and sometimes traveling underground.
The staggered buildings, three-dimensional transportation network, and layered and varied urban spaces make the city's cyberpunk hardware foundation.
On the other hand, Chongqing is located in the subtropical monsoon climate zone. The high temperature and long rainy season combined with distinct terrain characteristics have given Chongqing the name " fog ".
Chongqing is hazy and blurred with rain and fog, and combined with the bold and wild neon colors, it looks like a cyberpunk world.
The distinctive climate characteristics give Chongqing the dark and blurred air texture, visually giving the city a cyberpunk atmosphere.
In addition, unlike "High tech, low life", the characteristics in Chongqing's cultural genes can be summarized as "modern and traditional". This contrast between modern technology and traditional aesthetics forms a unique Chinese cyberpunk aesthetic connotation.
The river is facing the shore of Chaotianmen Raffles Plaza, and behind it are traditional streets with a strong urban atmosphere; the modernization of traffic is very cool, but the mountain roads that need to climb along the steps and hills behind "Chongqing Bangbang" have not been flattened.
In short, with the extremely opposite and confrontational traditional cyberpunk, the gentle Chinese-style cyberpunk is a burst of technological beauty under the accumulation of nature and culture.
... ...
Under the visual feast,
is technology and concept.
We don’t know:
Whether the world of cyberpunk is far away,
But technology has been moving forward without interruption into our lives.
The cyberpunk
we are discussing today seems to have separated two modules.
