Historical evolutions and processes of cultural and economic globalisation have brought out relevant and frightening risks on a global scale: from urbicide and violence to climate change and increase in natural disasters and the enormous widening of economic and social inequalities. Humanity as a whole is today facing epochal challenges that require radical metamorphosis of inhabited spaces. Cities Under Pressure illustrates a new design paradigm, an open intervention system that seeks the establishment of a dynamic equilibrium to be triggered and continuously renegotiated. Cities Under Pressure imagines and define new urban environments that abandon rigid design scheme in favour of growing evolutionary mechanisms capable of embodying the ongoing sustainable transition and guarantee a resilient and peaceful future.