What I think may happen is that there will be a second Roaring Twenties once COVID-19 is contained with a booming economy across the world, particularly the United States. I see a revival in the Art Deco style, which would be used in the same way as the original 1920's-1940's Art Deco in things like cars, ships, architecture, and household products, but done totally new. Flappers could be seen again, but all this would be done in an entirely new way. I could see a Stock Market Crash in about 2029, leading to another Great Depression. In around 2028-2032, I could see a race for the tallest building in the world in a neo Art Deco style that would look totally new. Potential cities for such a race include Gwadar, Pakistan, Djibouti City, Doha, Mumbai, Karachi, Dubai, Lagos, Accra, or Bangalore. I could see building race with the two buildings inspired by the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in a modernized form. Also, such a Depression could last until 2040, but there could easily be an emphasis on streamlining in the 2030's. This would be seen in all aspects of life and design. Also, I could see rivalries with ships inspired along the lines of a modernized RMS Queen Mary or SS Normandie. Kind of echoes what happened after the 1918 Spanish Flu and history repeats itself. What are your thoughts about this?

A linear repeat of the 20th century decade by decade is unlikely. The cities you mention really don't make sense either - why would an anachronistic style like Art Deco be considered futuristic in such places? Gwadar...are you serious? There aren't even 500K people there.

Aaron747 wrote:

A linear repeat of the 20th century decade by decade is unlikely. The cities you mention really don't make sense either - why would an anachronistic style like Art Deco be considered futuristic in such places? Gwadar...are you serious? There aren't even 500K people there.

Gwadar is aiming to become the next Dubai though.

I mean I would say the club scene is exploding right now. Every midwest college town, Miami especially, even LA with their hard shutdown has a bunch underground clubs

I pretty-much agree with Aaron747 on all points. Art Deco has already had its day and is unlikely to come back in any serious form. If it did, it would only ever be considered pastiche and no doubt derided by purists. We don't even have an end date for the pandemic and the bill hasn't hit the floor yet: it looks like we will be living with Covid for years, in some shape or form, so talk of a post-pandemic boom may be premature (I hope I'm wrong here, but I'm a natural pessimist). Architecture hasn't changed much in the last 20 years, so I don't expect any new -- or retro -- style taking off. All I would venture to predict here is that buildings, particularly skyscrapers, will adopt even more interesting and sometimes fantastical shapes, as they have been doing (thanks to CAD) the last couple of decades.

As regards clothes, major changes in style seem to have been consigned to the dustbin. Fashion is more evolutionary than revolutionary now. Just look at the styles here from 2000. None of these clothes would seem out of place in 2021, and certainly not in the same way that clothes from 1950 would have looked in 1970, or 1970s clothes in 1990:
https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spr ... dy-to-wear

And I don't see Gwadar becoming much more than a large industrial and port city.

There is also over the next 20 years the expected and profound changes from the Global Climate Crises as well as from the Pandemic. Buildings will have to be constructed to deal with those affects, form will follow function. I don't see profound change in clothing but maybe being more acknowledging that most people are overweight, and with women to not show much skin or tight fitting clothing.

None of those cities will hit the big time until they get an old cruise ship to be a hotel and museum. People will just flock there then.

As the angry old men (both sexes, and some young angry old men) in the US and the UK die off it will be interesting to see what constituency conservatives corral and what issues they will use to do it. Likely just how disastrous climate change will be will become clearer, and probably not as political. It would be good to see what are now lower paid service jobs gain prestige and middle class wages, looking after old people and children, keeping the world neat and tidy are surely as important as all those factory jobs which hopefully will be replaced - maybe by looking after the robots that look after robots LOL.

On the negative side, if we don't figure out how to struggle for win-win international relations, maybe we all deserve to enter the fossil world, and leave it a better place - God will have to try harder and do better next time.

ltbewr wrote:

There is also over the next 20 years the expected and profound changes from the Global Climate Crises as well as from the Pandemic. Buildings will have to be constructed to deal with those affects, form will follow function. I don't see profound change in clothing but maybe being more acknowledging that most people are overweight, and with women to not show much skin or tight fitting clothing.

In the 1920's, buildings also had to deal with changes from the effects of the Spanish Flu.

ArchGuy1 wrote:

ltbewr wrote:

There is also over the next 20 years the expected and profound changes from the Global Climate Crises as well as from the Pandemic. Buildings will have to be constructed to deal with those affects, form will follow function. I don't see profound change in clothing but maybe being more acknowledging that most people are overweight, and with women to not show much skin or tight fitting clothing.

In the 1920's, buildings also had to deal with changes from the effects of the Spanish Flu.

Changes from climate change are incomparable to flu prevention measures 100+ years ago.

In Pakistan right now there are riots, with Muslim Pakistanis killing other Muslim Pakistanis over something the French president said 6 months ago. I think building a skyscraper isn't really what's needed...

Has Dubai's relative success anything to do with the Burj Khalifa ? I'm not convinced.

Aaron747 wrote:

A linear repeat of the 20th century decade by decade is unlikely. The cities you mention really don't make sense either - why would an anachronistic style like Art Deco be considered futuristic in such places? Gwadar...are you serious? There aren't even 500K people there.

Agreed with this. Why would would the 2020-2040 range just be a complete reflection of the 1920-1940s? Right down to the styles.m? I’d love to see a modern twist on Art Deco, but it would look so old and out of place.

I mean...ship building rivalries? Everyone travels by air and we really don't even have aircraft building rivalries anymore. They mostly exist side by side.

Same with buildings. People aren’t rushing out to buy the paper and see which skyscraper is taller today. To most people the completion of a skyscraper gets a dull reaction of “oh yea I think I read about that awhile ago”

Revolutionary vs evolutionary as it was said, is the best way to put it. The world changes fast, but it’s slower to make giant leaps and changes in how we do things.

Things like satellite WiFi that are usable across the globe will make a huge impact, but it’s an improvement and evolution, so not as noticeable as complete introduction, like the television, for example.

Access to the internet all over the world is a much bigger revolution than the TV, because the user now controls the media he consumes.

Also we Germans haven't started a World War for quite some time.
For gender reasons I expect future buildings to resemble vulvas rather than phalluses.

A lot of stuff has been in some kind of post modernistic stand still for a couple of decades or more. Electrification of the transport sector, IOT and general connectiveness will see a whole lot of things change, maybe even some ingetesting developments in nano technology and material science and energy storage too, and thus might lead us in to a new sort of modernism.

Society needs to solve the problem of populism and propaganda running rampant in social media and society in general, only gaining those at the top of capitalism, nationalism and religion, holding the general populace back and away from happiness.
Depending on that, we are either entering a new dark age, or humanitys finest hour, albeit with the dark cloud of global warming hanging over us.

Sokes wrote:

Also we Germans haven't started a World War for quite some time.

At least 75 years overdue!!!

On the downside, I see society becoming increasingly polarised, with the left and right even more entrenched -- fuelled by social media -- resulting in an even more fractured society and increasing mental health issues.

Braybuddy wrote:

On the downside, I see society becoming increasingly polarised, with the left and right even more entrenched -- fuelled by social media -- resulting in an even more fractured society and increasing mental health issues.

You see clearly - a lot of people still have not copped on to what a massive threat to stability this actually is. And a lot of it is being pushed by two non-western powers that are seeking to change the world order in the next 25 years.

Aaron747 wrote:

And a lot of it is being pushed by two non-western powers that are seeking to change the world order in the next 25 years.

One is China. But who is the other?

Sokes wrote:

One is China. But who is the other?

Isn't that obvious? There aren't many large rogue nations out there . . .

I hope this isn't too negative but... we are such a selfish race, intolerant of those who are different from us. We can't have rational debate and take to war so often.

This has been the case throughout history, but now we have the technology so that a single crazy man could start the apocalypse, and the population so that combined, we'll get there anyway.

frmrCapCadet wrote:

As the angry old men (both sexes, and some young angry old men) in the US and the UK die off

Oi... I have a good 30 or 40 years left I'll have you know!

Sokes wrote:

One is China. But who is the other?

Braybuddy wrote:

Isn't that obvious? There aren't many large rogue nations out there . . .

I thought I knew the answer, but I always thought that the US was part of the west?