The Lifted City

This project began with a question about the relationship between AI and humans.
In the film Surrogates (2009), people live through robot bodies to stay safe and perfect.
It made me wonder “If AI makes life easier, do we lose something human in return?”
Later, after watching The Creator (2023), my view changed completely.
AI doesn’t have to control or replace us it can become a partner that helps us sense and understand the environment together.
That idea became the starting point for this project.

The story takes place in Scarborough, South Bay, in the year 2056. This town, famous for seaside tourism, is facing serious challenges rising sea levels, cliff erosion, and seasonal unemployment.About 47% of local jobs depend on tourism, so even small environmental changes affect the whole city.

Instead of creating a city that defends itself from danger,this project imagines a city that can adapt and move with the environment.AI reads the air pressure and creates energy. The city’s surface reacts to that energy. And citizens decide when and how the city should move. Together, they form a living cycle climate pressure, mechanical reaction, and human decision a kind of urban life mechanism.

Scarborough already has a strong identity of vertical movement. The Cliff Lift, built in 1875, was the first passenger funicular in Britain. It connected the beach, the cliffs, and the town and gave Scarborough the nickname “The Lifted City.”

At the centre of this history stands the Scarborough Spa,where a large chess grid marks the town’s long connection with the Scarborough Chess Congress a famous annual tournament that’s been held here since 1977.

In this project, that chessboard becomes more than decoration.It becomes a model for how the city could work a surface made of many movable decks, like chess squares.
AI suggests possible moves by sending energy signals,and people decide which areas to lift or activate. Each move changes the city’s shape, turning Scarborough into a living chess surface a place where AI and humans think and act together.

In this way, Scarborough is no longer a city that just resists the future.
It becomes a city that learns, plays, and adapts.