Earth Stations
This visionary - as yet unrealised - Earth Station architecture by AMDL circle is otherworldly and magnificent.
The Earth Stations are imaginary buildings in which architectural knowledge is driven to the maximum technological, aesthetic and functional potential, seeking to attain a sustainable vision of the future where wellbeing, health and happiness are within everyone's reach.
Wellbeing, health and happiness are within everyone’s reach. I love that vision. That is a future world I would like to live in.
This vision - The Crown - would be a library. A place “of interaction in which people can experience unscheduled moments for learning, joy and reflection.”
Just looking at this brings me joy. AMDL say:
“Our reflection on the future of architecture is based on a sense of great responsibility and the adoption of a firm stance against the distorted development that has brought the Earth to the limits of survival.”
While as yet unrealised projects these Earth Stations inspires their other architectural projects. They have a unique approach in bringing together architecture, design, graphics and art.
As well as these Interactor Stations they have envisaged Education Stations, Many Hands Stations (spaces for coming together constructed with the techniques of craftmanship of local communities) and Happy Stations (spaces to foster the happy and peaceful coexistence of a community).
Closer than we think
As a child I had a green cloth coloured book that was full of visions of the future. I believe the illustrator was Arthur Radebaugh.
From 1958 to 1962, illustrator and futurist Arthur Radebaugh thrilled newspaper readers in America with his weekly syndicated visions of the future, in a Sunday strip enticingly called “Closer Than We Think”.
Radebaugh was a commercial illustrator in Detroit when he began experimenting with imagery—fantastical skyscrapers and futuristic, streamlined cars—that he later described as “halfway between science fiction and designs for modern living.”
This was the image I particularly remember: the driverless car. A reality not so far away.
But his other colourful prescient images went further: Robot factories, wrist watch TV, electric cars. All things which came to be.
I also grew up watching BBC’s Tomorrow’s World a 1970s programme about contemporary developments in science and technology. It included first glimpses of a mobile phone and touchscreen technology. If you had told me as a child I could watch TV on my phone I would have thought the future had really arrived. It would have been like magic, and yet it more often than not it brings me agitation and irritation and generates craving.
Japan, of course, has excelled at future technology and is at the cutting edge of its potential. From robot hotels to regenerative medicine, Japan often leads the way.
What kind of future do we want?
Then there is deepfake AI technology. A deepfake is typically a medium in which the face or body of a person is digitally altered to make them look like someone else. In deepfaked audio, the voice of a specific person is synthesised, to produce an audio clip that appears to show them saying something they never actually said. All this stuff is powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence.The first Deep Fake film is currently in production. But it has also been used maliciously. The Guardian have recently been running an in-depth investigation into a hacking and disinformation firm involved in meddling with elections.
Don’t get me wrong. Technology has great uses, I wouldn’t be writing this and reaching you without it, but I do reflect on how it can help and how it can hinder.
If we are lost in an augmented, AI world, divorced from nature, each other, uncertain what is real then I am doubtful about what the future holds. But if, as in the Earth Stations we see design that brings people together, supports connection, enhances lives, enriches direct experience then I’m interested.
In his speech Buddhist tehnology: brining a new consciousness to our tehcnological future and the Centre for New Economics, Arthur Zajonc said:
Where is beauty? Where is art? Where is love? If they cannot find their way back to the centre in a manner that is fitting for our future, then I don’t think there is any hope for technology.
Design and technology can be put to wise use, to help connect and care for people. I want a future world where there is beauty, art and love. I want us to create conditions where people thrive, feel greater connection and compassion for each other. And by looking at the vision of AMDL circle’s Earth Stations, I see that others do too.
Gratitude
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