Urban Future Laboratory

The Urban Future Laboratory (UFLab) is a research workshop founded at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics by the Department of Urban Planning&Design, which initiates quests focusing especially on the challenges of the urban future. The world is changing at an increased pace, and the responsibility of architects and urbanists lays in helping our cities to get acquainted with their direct informal urban environment (Budapest, Hungary) and also with broader perspectives (Europe, World) and also to take adequate steps towards the future. As such, the Laboratory aims to attempt the ever-changing nature of urban environment through experimental researches. The Laboratory launches experimental research projects and examines the progress, the results, the applied tools and the relations between the applied measures of these initiatives. Nowadays the greatest challenge of the physical fabric of the cities seems to be the fast transformation of the residing society – migration, socio-cultural gaps, ageing society, the increasing and declining population of cities – with an unpredictable future of post-industrial society. The ecosystem of the Earth in relation to the society shows changes in several ways – such as climate changes, increased pollution, land depletion, decrease of food production, energy state – that require researches of the future tenses. After learning and understanding the processes taking place in the urban space together with their importance, in collaboration with students and international research networks the Laboratory aims to carry out micro-researches that transmit our receptiveness to new ideas regarding the future and the changing society, besides that it seeks for architectural, technical, etc. solutions that can be connected to particular national initiatives or to visible theoretical hypotheses.