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Auroville

Auroville was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa, a yoga leader known as The Mother. She was a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, a yoga guru who believed that human evolution had not finished. The Mother believed that this experimental community would evolve humans by bringing a more advanced consciousness called the supramental. It was designed by the French architect Roger Anger and houses around 2,000 people in communes, with names like Grace, Serenity, Fertile, Certitude and Transformation. The buildings are a combination of modern western and traditional Indian elements and are set in a rural landscape of narrow lanes, deep red earth and lush greenery. The residents sustain themselves by involving themselves in agriculture, handicrafts, alternative technology, educational and development projects including Aurolec, a computer software company.

The Matrimandir is a huge spherical structure surrounded by twelve pedestals. "Inside, a spiraling wooden ramp leads upwards to a spherical, air-conditioned meditation room of polished white marble. At its centre, there is a 70cm crystal ball in a gold mount. It is fueled by solar panels and is surrounded by gardens. Radiating from this centre are four "zones" as indicated by The Mother: the "Residential Zone", "Industrial Zone", "Cultural Zone" and "International Zone". Around the city area proper a so-called "Green Belt" has formed through rigorous and steady rehabilitation of the land, which includes farms and forestries. Auroville is populated by futuristic-style buildings. Some public drinking fountains feature "dynamised" water, which has been "made healthier" by having the water listen to Bach and Mozart. School classrooms are held under the shade of a tree and attendance is not mandatory.

Life in the Void

Nosy by Christian Moeller
Augmented space represents a real challenge and opportunity for architecture. Although architects and designers have embraced digital media, it's largely played out in 2d, via the screen as something that only represents the real volume. Going beyond surface, architects should now focus their attention on immaterial architectures to seed data flows in physical space. I propose that sculpting digitally augmented space should be viewed as an architectural priority. e.g., architects and designers can begin to express the 'void' as substance rather than empty space, an invisible architecture that triggers physiological states of human experience and enhancement.

Augmented sculpture

Augmented Sculpture by Pablo Valbuena
Pablo Valbuena's project focuses on the temporary quality of space, investigating space-time not only as a three dimensional environment, but as space in transformation. For this purpose two layers are produced that explore different aspects of the space-time reality. On the one hand the physical layer, which controls the real space and shapes the volumetric base that serves as support for the next level. The second level is a virtual projected layer that allows controlling the transformation and sequentiality of space-time. The blending of both levels gives the impression of physical geometry suitable of being transformed. The orverlapping produces an euclidean three-dimensional space augmented by a transformable layer that I can control, resulting in the capacity through the installation of altering multiple dimensions of space-time. These ideas come to life in an abstract and geometric envelope, enhanced with synesthetic audio elements and establishing a dialogue with the observer.

Google Wireless

Google announced over xmas it will create a totally open, neutral network that anyone can use with any compatible wireless device. This changes things big time. First, the 700mhz spectrum allows for very high bandwidth, at least 100mb/s. Secondly, it has long range, at least 30 miles. Combine this with Google's continuing acquisition of "dark fiber" they have the ability to offer nationwide, high-bandwidth, wireless access to anyone with any conceivable device. Add to this new ubiquitous, wireless reality with movements like Open Social OpenID, and within the next decade, we will no longer need telephone numbers, email addresses, and seperate webspace identities (facebook, myspace, etc.). You essentially are who you say you are wherever you go as you intereact across the digital landscape. As you interact with people and networks through your user-defined openID they in turn do the same with you. If someone wants to contact you, rather than call using a telephone number they simply contact you from their contact list. This "contact" could be voice, visual, text, multimedia, file exchange, data exchange, fax, document, anything.

Freeway Lounge

Los Angeles Gas Station by Office dA
As humans we are continuallly redesigning and reconstructing our environments and bodies. Laser surgery, pacemakers, prosthesis and genetically modified foods and vaccines have defined us as pre-cyborgian even though we still have our animal bodies. Although we still feel connected to nature, we are beginning to question what it is to be human. In reality we live and work in totally artificial environments that protect us from the natural world. The Compact City is today's sustainable European town-planning concept that prescibes regenerating cities without buidling anew, i.e. small over sprall). This approach means that cities now offer less of the elements we really need for our long term health and wellbeing.

Reflecting much of Howard's Garden City approach, anti-urban concepts like new urbanism are alive and well due to the fact that many of us still like living in the country. Apart from the pollution, noise and crime however, cities are physically and mentally stimulating places to be. Architects need to embrace the Compact City in terms of its urban transportation flows to really add long-term value; increasingly more of our lives will be spent on roads, freeways and gas stations. SUV's or 4X4's have created nomadic extensions to the traditional home. Life on the freeway now is so commonplace we don't even think about it, until harsh climatic conditions reminds us of how fragile we really are. Mr Numan could have been right, 'in my car it's the safest of all'...

Haus Rucker Co

In 1968 Haus Rucker Co created this device consisting of a pulsating bubble inside a large inflatable capsule, which was supported by a waist-high metal frame. At its core was a bed with ample room for two people to recline and take it easy. A repeat pattern of inflation and deflation created a soft, pulsating rhythm, to which the inhabitants were supposed to adapt and relax.

Other devices included a collection of bizarre helmets with colored visors, flashing lights and stereo headphones. These plastic headpieces, with the names 'Flyhead', 'Viewatomizer', 'Drizzler' and 'Environment Transformer' (all 1968), were said to isolate the wearer from the outside world. The helmets placed a buffer between the real world and the senses of the person inside.

Retreat Pods

Photo by George Bryant, Daily Telegraph Magazine 1972.
Making a guest appearance in A Clockwork Orange, the Retreat pod is a piece of equipment, according to artist Martin Dean, in which one can contrive to cut oneself off from the world. There is adequate air-conditioning. To counter possible claustrophobia the door stays shut by its own weight, so no catches are needed. The interior of the Pod is lit by hundreds of tiny orange neon bulbs from Philips, which look like glow-worms.

Arcosanti

Construction of intentional community Arcosanti began in Arizona around the early 1970's, proposing an 'arcology' aimed at fostering the human creative spirit. Soleri's variation on a de Chardinian idea well reflects our digital age, although modifications are needed. It's clear our world will increasingly organize itself around virtual attractors; memes, decentralized networks, etc. In this kind of reality, visions are not only tools of navigation, but seeds for a future increasingly infected by the strange logic of the virtual. Even if Arcosanti ends up a dusty old ruin of visionary imagination, we may still see some new wireless versions in the near future. The digital economy is giving birth to several brilliant and wealthy young minds who may well take on such ideas in real terms. Instead of 60's isolationist theories, the 'arcotechs' of tomorrow will collide with cyberspace, ensuring continual flows of cash, culture and creativity power the communities living and working in transhumanist comfort.

Maria Montessori

"Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society." Maria Montessori

During the early 1900’s Maria Montessori (1870-1952) developed a new teaching method for the children of Rome. In schools known as Casa Dei Bambini (The Children’s House) she successfully applied her teaching philosophy that has since spread far and wide across the world, with increasing popularity. The "prepared environment" concept facilitates maximum independent learning and exploration by the child. In the prepared environment, there is a variety of activity as well as a great deal of movement. In a preschool classroom, for example, a three-year-old may be washing clothes by hand while a four-year-old nearby is composing words and phrases with letters known as the movable alphabet, and a five-year-old is performing multiplication using a specially designed set of beads. In an elementary classroom, a small group of six to nine-year-old children may be using a timeline to learn about extinct animals while another child chooses to work alone, analyzing a poem using special grammar symbols. Sometimes an entire class may be involved in a group activity, such as storytelling, singing, or movement. In the calm, ordered space of the Montessori prepared environment, children work on activities of their own choice at their own pace. They experience a blend of freedom and self-discipline in a place especially designed to meet their developmental needs.

Anthroposophy

The Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner 1919-28
The anthroposophical movement originated by Rudolf Steiner arose from the dissatisfaction with an increasingly rationalistic, technological bias in approaches to society and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Seeking to return modern culture to a holistic attitude toward human creativity and the environment, Steiner was particularly interested in the challenge of architecture at once the shaper of the physical context and one of the preeminent forms of artistic endeavor. Architecture was essential in creating the anthroposophical community at Dornach, not simply to erect buildings but to express the principles of anthroposophy. Steiner was the designer of the Goetheanum, the central structure of his Dornach ensemble. Steiner believed Goethe was the supreme embodiment of the union of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of humanity.

Steiner’s approach to integrative architecture arose from a rejection of urban architecture during the late industrial period, with its pastiche of decorative elements masking a box frame. In this he was not alone. European architecture at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrated numerous attempts to restore elements of craftsmanship and non-standardized design in modern architecture. From John Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts Movement (and its successor Charles Rennie Mackintosh) to the organic elements of Art Nouveau and Jugendstil design to the idiosyncratic exuberance of Antonio Gaudi, many architects and designers used sinuosity of form as a liberation from the predictable and from the prison of the urban grid. Steiner conceived of the liberation of form as part of a much broader quest that would define the spiritual essence in modern existence. Free form and organic motifs in architecture were intended to contribute to an environment of healing in a technological age. Architecture was both context and catalyst for a higher state of human development.