From Garden to City: Musings on the Theology and Architecture of the Future

I’m a backpacker by trade. It doesn’t take much to learn how to build a fire or assemble a tent, but the better I get at the hard and soft skills of camping, the more I enjoy the outdoors and can help others do the same.

This enjoyment is why I wonder about the geographical movement from the garden of Eden in the book of Genesis to the city of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. As a wilderness guy, I have a hard time getting on board with the idea of a city replacing Eden. New York City is fun for a day, maybe two, but forever? I’ll need an aesthetic reboot before I can embrace this trajectory.

Something would have to be done with the natural world as well. Unattended sidewalk cracks and pictures like the one above remind us that flora is no respecter of urban development.

Green for green

We love green. And I don’t mean environmentalism green – though many of us love that kind, too. We love bananas and mimosa blooms and cold waterfalls in mid-summer. A friend visited from China this week, and after five years there the item he continues to miss most is a yard. We want leaves and a brook and the whisper of pine boughs overhead, and the no-two-alike shape of everything wild.

I can only handle so much straight-edged geometry, asphalt and loud. Of course, I’m sure the city referred to in Revelation is nothing like the present day NYC. It’s just difficult to imagine a desirable kind of city with more allure than the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.

On the other hand, I’m quite fond of thunderstorm-resilient lodging and a climate-controlled office environment. A choice of restaurants for this or that special occasion is also a great touch. Kind of hard to get when surrounded by pine boughs.

I realize I need both. I need the garden and the city – the wild and the cultivated. Perhaps what I want is a better mix.

Pisa on purpose

The Capital Gate Tower in Abu Dhabi hints at this mix. While it doesn’t say pine bough, this 35-story feat of engineering wizardry is so unnaturally man-made that it begins to look like the weather-tested cyprus trunks I see on mountain ridges. Not only is it a testimony to our God-given creativity, it also leaves the block and cube world of cityscapes behind.

Yet I want to go farther. I’ve had a Lilypad concept image in my favorites for some time. It awakens my imagination and helps me think about population issues and environmental stewardship. It’s a bit beachy for my taste, but if someone can envision a place like this that holds 50,000 people, I’m sure they can design a mountainscape version, too.

We’re heading toward a city. Religious orientation or not, none of us can deny it. Perhaps the biblical city I imagine lies completely outside of my imagination. If the wild can sweep me away, and yet we’re promised something better in the form of a city, than that city must be quite remarkable. And very unlike anything I know today.

• How do you imagine a major city 100 years from now?
• How do you imagine the New Jerusalem described in Revelation 21? Could it look like the Lilypad? Will it be something entirely new in structure such as the Apostle John imagined it, or a product of our own designs? If the latter, what implications does this have, for example, on the artist or the architect?

Photo by William Self. Used with permission. Post written by Sam Van Eman.