Artist Statement

The Question

What would it mean to design a city as if it were a living organism, not a machine?

This is the question at the heart of Hamilton 2092. Not: how do we optimize a city? Not: how do we make it smarter, faster, more efficient? But: what happens when we stop treating cities as infrastructure to be managed and start treating them as ecosystems to be cultivated? As living systems that breathe, adapt, remember, and respond?

The difference matters. Machines are designed to be controlled. Organisms are designed to evolve.

“The city cannot survive, let alone thrive, without the complex web of ecological relationships that sustain it.”

Why Hamilton, Why 2092

I came to Hamilton from Medellín, Colombia: another city built on a mountain, another city that knows what it means to be underestimated. My family’s story is one of border crossings, geographic, linguistic, disciplinary. That trajectory shaped everything about how I see cities: not as fixed objects but as processes in motion, always becoming.

Hamilton is a city in transition. Once the Steel Capital of Canada, it carries the scars and the pride of industrial labor. It sits on the western shore of Lake Ontario, at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, a geological boundary that has shaped human settlement here for millennia. The city is rebuilding itself, and the question of what it is becoming remains genuinely open.

2092 is not an arbitrary date. It marks the Tenth Generation since Canadian Confederation in 1867: 225 years. In the framework of the Seven Generations Principle drawn from Haudenosaunee governance philosophy, each generation inherits obligations from those who came before and holds responsibilities to those who follow. The Tenth Generation is the horizon: the point at which the consequences of today’s decisions will have fully unfolded.

The Weight of History

Hamilton carries a particular gravity: a city that was once destined for something else entirely. In the mid-19th century, when Queen Victoria selected the permanent capital of the Province of Canada, Hamilton was a serious contender. Its central location, industrial prowess, and growing population made it a logical choice. But Ottawa was chosen instead in 1857, selected for its position between French and English Canada, its political neutrality, and perhaps because it was less tainted by the industrial wealth that already defined Hamilton.

This near-miss with capital status shaped Hamilton’s trajectory. While Ottawa became the seat of government, Hamilton became the seat of industry. The city’s location along the Niagara Escarpment provided abundant limestone for steel production. The Great Lakes and the Welland Canal offered transportation for raw materials and finished goods. By the early 20th century, Hamilton was the Steel Capital of Canada, home to Stelco and Dofasco, whose mills lined the waterfront and whose smokestacks defined the skyline.

“The city that might have governed Canada instead came to power it, through steel, through hydroelectric energy, through the labor of generations.”

This industrial heritage is inseparable from stories of corruption and labor struggle. The 1919 Hamilton General Strike, the 1946 Stelco Strike (12,000 workers off the job for 81 days, establishing the eight-hour day and union security), the ongoing battles for fair wages and safe conditions, the political machines that grew fat on industrial wealth: all of it is part of Hamilton’s DNA. The city was built on extraction: of limestone, of labor, of the natural world. The waterfront that once teemed with shipping traffic became a sacrifice zone, poisoned by decades of industrial runoff.

Yet Hamilton’s history is also one of invention and resilience. The first commercial telephone exchange in the British Empire opened here in 1878. Sir Allan MacNab’s vision shaped the city’s early infrastructure. The hydroelectric potential of the escarpment powered not just mills but dreams of a different future. The same working-class communities that fought the hardest against industrial exploitation also built the strongest mutual aid networks.

When I imagine Hamilton in 2092, I am not erasing this history. I am honoring its contradictions. The Orenda Energy Fountain that now powers the city sits on the same waterfront where Stelco’s mills once stood. The MELA pods that filter the air occupy the same land that was poisoned by a century of steel production. The Tenth Generation has learned what the First through Ninth could not: that extraction is not endless, that labor deserves dignity, that the city and the natural world are not separate.

Hamilton 2092 is a love letter to the city that might have been the capital, became the steel town, and is now becoming something else entirely. It is a recognition that futures are built on foundations: not by denying the past, but by transforming its energy into something new.

Methodology

This project draws on five interlocking methodological frameworks. Each is summarized below; the full treatment lives in 00.8 Methodology.

• Discursive Design (Tharp & Tharp), objects as vehicles for argument, not utility.
• The Futures Cone (Dunne & Raby), a map from probable through plausible to preferable futures.
• Research through Design, knowledge produced through making, not only analysis.
• Indigenous Stewardship Principles, Seven Generations and reciprocal relation to land, held at a respectful distance.
• Diegetic Prototyping, artifacts presented as if recovered from the fictional world, not about it.

The Three Provotypes

Three physical artifacts accompany this project.

The Multi-Lens

A wearable optical device that reveals the city’s invisible layers: mycelial networks beneath the streets, electromagnetic fields generated by biosynthetic infrastructure, atmospheric composition in real time. What would you see if you could see everything the city is doing?

The Orenda Coil

A hand-held resonance instrument that attunes the user to the vibrational frequencies of urban infrastructure: the hum of living buildings, the pulse of water systems, the slow breath of soil networks. What would it feel like to listen to a city that is alive?

The OrgoBots

A swarm of semi-autonomous bio-fabricated repair units that maintain the city’s physical fabric through collective behavior modeled on mycelial growth patterns. What would it mean if the city could heal itself?

A Personal Note

I am Colombian by birth, Canadian by choice, Hamiltonian by circumstance. My family came to this country carrying the knowledge that home is something you build, not something you find. That understanding shapes everything in this project: the conviction that cities are not given to us but made by us, and that making them well requires imagination, honesty, and care.

Hamilton took a chance on a kid from Medellín. This project is, among other things, a way of saying thank you. The future is not finished. It is still ours to shape.

Inspirations & References

This project stands on the work of thinkers who have insisted that other ways of being in the world are possible:

• Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013): For the understanding that reciprocity, not extraction, is the basis of a sustainable relationship with the living world.
• Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (2016): For the insistence that we must learn to live with complexity, uncertainty, and entanglement rather than seeking mastery and control.
• adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (2017): For the principle that the patterns of the small shape the patterns of the large, and that justice begins in how we organize.
• Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything (2013): For the framework that design can be a space for debate, not just a process of problem-solving.
• Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons (2013): For the vision of knowledge-making as a communal, fugitive practice that resists institutional capture.
• Bruce and Stephanie Tharp, Discursive Design (2018): For the theoretical foundation that design objects can be vehicles for critical inquiry and public discourse.

The methodological foundations, the note on Indigenous knowledge, and the structural framing devices of this project (letter form, unresolved question, extraction) continue in 00.8 Methodology.

Alejandro Hernandez Guzman
Hamilton, 2026