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Click for full image.
Environmentalists are aware of the damage inflicted on people and
the environment by our globalized corporate culture. Some have even
been driven to a neo-Luddite rejection of all mechanical devices
and processes, regardless of how, why, by whom and for whom they
are used. But not all applications of the machine model are evil,
and not all aspects of nature are benign.
Technological advance in itself is good in so far as it frees
people from the necessity to perform meaningless tasks. The trouble
is, we are enmeshed in an economic system where that rarely happens.
Suppose the socioeconomic structure was deconstructed in such
a way that people were left really free to do whatever they wanted
to do for the fulfilment of their own powers, creative urges, whatever
contributed to their growth? Can we imagine a world where this would
be true — a world of radical freedom where no coercion or repression
would exist — not even economic coercion?
Visualize: human society living at peace with itself and organically
integrated with the other life forms in some kind of fugitive equilibrium.
Visualize this as the theater of life where the human actors play
all day the roles they have written for themselves — growing
each day in the fulfilment of their own unique powers. Literally,
this would be a place in the sun.
This theater would have clearly defined boundaries and would be
an autonomous political unit big enough to avoid the personal intrusions
and surveillance of the village and small enough that its self government
could take place by face to face democracy unfiltered by representation.
Every theater has a stage for its actors, terraced seating for an
audience, and a backstage area with all kinds of props, mechanical
and electrical aids and backup resources; in short, a structure
— an infrastructure. This 'back of house' part would be the
inheritor of everything we include in the Gross National Product
except, now, the Gross International Product (though I doubt if
there would still be nations at that point in time). It would be
fully automated, globally networked, self managed, self evolving,
self repairing and completely uninhabited. It would be the perfected
mega machine whose contact with the organic world would be limited
to the millions of individual work and play stations that would
be plugged into it at the interface with the theaters of life. The
other interface would be towards the sky, where solar and other
plentiful sources of clean power would be introduced into the system.
It would be unseen, unheard and generally not understood by human
society, yet humanity would completely control its operation.
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Everyone from janitor to CEO would have long since been replaced
by robots.
We already have efficient global networks like the internet, the
telephone service and the postal service. In this future projection,
production and distribution of goods and services would also be
internationalized and networked. The combined system would generate,
process and deliver goods, services and information to and between
the individuals living in the communes. The present trend toward
privatization of public utilities is not sustainable. Rather, private
corporations will need to turn into non profit public utilities
in order to survive full automation. This is so because the system
will slowly starve itself of the consumers that are its life blood
as its struggles to replace human producers with machines.
What kind of architectural forms would emerge from this marriage
of the local habitat with its global artificial back up? What kind
of urban tissue?
Click for full image.
If we consider a section of ideally flat prairie landscape it is
obvious that it receives all the sunlight available over every square
foot of its surface. The availability varies with time of day, time
of year, weather and latitude. If we place a building on this site
there is a loss of land area exposed to sunlight, proportional to
its footprint and its shadow. But if we think of the skin of this
building as a potential solar collection surface the loss of solar
reception is compensated to a certain degree. The degree of compensation
depends on the form of the building. A high rise 'bar' building
oriented the wrong way could place nearly 50% of its surface permanently
in shade and would cast shadows of the same order of size. By contrast,
a pyramid, regardless of its orientation and proportions receives
solar rays on all exposed surfaces to a greater or lesser degree.
Since these surfaces add up to more than the area of its base and
since the shadows cast are negligible our building does not reduce
the amount of sunlight received at all. Moreover, if we consider
the pyramid as a natural light receptor (adding diffuse sky radiation
to direct sunlight) then it comprises a volume that has more illuminated
surfaces than the land it is built on, while still casting no significant
shadow. In other words, built form, correctly configured, can absorb
more photons than the land it occupies.
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