First-off, happy New Year of the Rooster to our readers. Secondly, how about we kick-off the first post for 2017 with an idea spotted on designboom of the Masters Thesis of Eric Wong – entitled ‘Cohesion’ – calling for a new idea of what it means to be united (as opposed to what could be a year marked by ‘apartness’) in the words of the commissioners of the piece: The Rockefeller Foundation’s call for “capital cities, to build greater resilience and a more inclusive economy.”)?

Wong’s vision, expressed in a series of incredibly dense scenes, is to build around a new central city – based on the geographic centre of the Isles, the Isle of Man (no coincidence, surely?)

In his argument the realignment of industry, political power, democracy and ideologies are forced by this re-centering into a revitalised notion of what the country can do together. It’s pretty nationalistic stuff and normally the typology of heritage Britain rather than visions of and for the future. Some might find that slightly anachronistic but there’s no denying the symbolic potential to draw the future back in a way that helps us find better connections; and Wong’s Cohesion.

It’s stirring stuff and expressed vividly in collision of visual languages – part architectural diagram-cum-render, part W. Heath Robinson – that positively hum with energy and potential.

Quite a plan, really.