A calendar is an artificially designed system for organizing time in accord with celestial relationships, i.e. sun and moon. It is a map showing the days, weeks, and months of a particular year, or even a “plan” giving particular seasonal information based on the relative position of earth compared to the sun. Seasons are subdivisions or even “walls” defined by solar “locations” with following order; vernal equinox (spring) ; summer solstice (summer); autumnal equinox(autumn); winter solstice(winter). The Gregorian calendar is the most widespread design that subdivides the year into 365 days, which allows globally, societies to synchronize, live and work together in accord. The days and months could be compared to walls and partitions of a building. One might argue that the calendar is also a spatial; therefore an architectural work. A calendar is an architectural medium to design our time, customs and habits therefore our lives. It dictates our lifestyles i.e. working 9-5 Mon-Friday. Inevitably, through climate change, these walls and partitions will also change.

The existing seasonal division or one might call “walls” have governed our social norms, like an architectural work does. For example, the school year starts in the fall and goes through spring, rather than the beginning of the calendar year. The reason dates back to the outdated agricultural living styles, which had everything to do with climate. In the face of climate change and more severe winters and summers, the seasons will start to be misaligned with standards of social activities, like work, school, and recreation. For instance schools might have to split the “summer vacation” into 2 smaller ones based on the permissibility of the climate, or we might have to work more hours, even on weekends, in softer seasons to catch-up with the work hours lost due to the intense weather conditions in core seasons, which in result changes the week/weekend/month compositions. Or maybe, we would have to wake up at different times every day to be able to maximize outdoor thermal comfort, already adding another layer to our calendar. These examples show a necessity for new ideas and rules regarding our calendar and time planning.

Most impacted are outdoor sports and recreational activities in urban open spaces such as parks, squares and plazas. Perhaps in the future, we will no longer go to parks in the summer because of the scorching heat waves. Maybe there will no longer be snow or ice in the winter for skating or sledding, thus maybe we must create these exterior conditions artificially. Maybe winters will have severe periods when no one will go out at all. Maybe if we are to gather for a barbeque outdoors in a park it must be at 5 AM in summer months; or if the society needs to protest or gather outdoors for certain reasons such as a rock concert, this can only happen during certain permissible seasons. Therefore we will have to plan our activities much more sensitive to the seasonal changes and temperature. The simplistic view of time, seasons and calendars that allows almost all activity year round is outdated. We might start treating almost everything temporally as if we were going skiing in winter months i.e. jogging outdoors might just be a 2 months activity rather than year-round. These changes in seasons will affect how we plan, program and live our life, we might even develop a new “human” culture, thus we will need a new calendar and time planning strategies and layers.

These major changes in our lifestyle are most reflected architecturally in changes necessary for our future urban open spaces, If the urban open space use is diminished in such a dramatic way we might even risk the functionality of the whole city; the whole socity. If we are to not compromise our living styles dramatically as both individuals and society, as described and exemplified above, we should make infrastructural interventions. Through these infrastructural interventions the new calendar layers and seasons will become an integral part of cities and space use culture in general. It would add another urban architectural calendar layer to the cityscape. The urban open spaces will move and change according to this new calendar.  This infrastructure would be synchronized with the changes in seasons, climate; therefore the celestial relationships. All the solar events mentioned above(equinoxes and solstices), will dictate the movement and stages of this infrastructure; it will eclipse. The solar events will determine the forms and functions of the infrastructure. For example, if we deploy mentioned infrastructures we might be able to have a picnic at 2 PM in summer again, the only compromise would be that it would be dependent on infrastructure.