SENSUAL ATTRACTION, AN INTERACTIVE DEMOCRACY
Brussels 2002
Belgium
ASSOCIATED PARTNER : Joël Claisse Architectures, Brussels
PROGRAM : Virtual N.A.T.O.
SITUATION : Grand-Place of Brussels
CLIENT : Prisme Editions for “Change, Brussels Capital of Europe”, 2004
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIES : Airprint, Daniel Philippe
2036, the Internet is 50 years old ! Democracy has spread in real time and knowledge is within everyone’s reach. Lies by the State and condoned genocide are no longer possible. We are moving towards world peace. Information and communication technologies have considerably modified the layout of public spaces, the consumer society of the 20th century and citizen movements. The economy of this cyberdemocracy is no longer based on money, but on the intangible exchange of information.
BUT WHAT IS A HUMAN BEING ?
All concepts of frontiers have been abolished, and Man has become his own territory. Therefore, the haptic space is only an extension of his body. A nomadic autobionic mutant, he is seeking to eliminate any material interference between him and the world, to rationalise energy consumption and limit loneliness. The search for happiness via hedonistic pleasure remains the key value. Clothes have become the main interface between the real and virtual worlds. Cybernetic technofibre regulates the body directly, and propels the mind into the virtual world by telepathic pulses. Chains of molecules with shape memory create the new private clothing sphere.
THE WORLD SHRINKING
Physionic ergonomy is attempting to reproduce the body in virtual space using simulation software. This modern desire for infinite freedom and easy living is the result of the omnipotence of the city-world. There is no point in moving to trade, money has been abolished. The polycentric society has turned manual workers into decision-makers! In fact, the autonomous individual is on the way to replacing decision-making organisations. The open-mindedness that has arisen from this knowledge society now enables the various cultural breeding grounds to be preserved, repected and incorporated across the generations, while allowing new societal rituals to be created.
INTERNET 3D
Multisensory sensors, techno-logical fabrics, textiles treated with electrical pulses, carbon or kevlar stretch fibres, micro-encapsulation, antiwave polymers, chains of molecules with shape memory, dynamic bio-design are all nex materials to be exploited for this virtual trans-nomadism! The bionic body is now replacing the computer. All the senses are orchestrated and transmitted by three-dimensional projection. The children of speed and the instantaneous, we travel at the speed of light, while we seek to immobilise light so as to make architecture produce energy sources and react to it. Photovoltaic cells, luminescent holograms, microcrystalline glass, X-rays of the electromagnetic spectrum, quantic coomputers and laboratory black holes are the means used. Now, cybernetic three-dimensionality is optimising space via the essence of the void, reducing physical contingency.
LIGHT AT OKM PER SECOND
Fundamental research has succeeded nowadays in stopping light dead, using magnetic fields. In slowing from 300 000 km/s to a complete standstill, light is lost but its passage leaves a trace, a sort of print. A high density of magnetic pulses traps the light rays and forms a black hole with a quantic memory. Through digital manipulation, this stabilised light can be parameterised according to sensory and statistical data. So, an infosphere with deformable architecture, like a muscle responding to movement of the body, develops in a three-dimensional space a new matrix of an interactive democracy.
DIGITAL LANDSCAPE AND HISTORICAL IMPULSE
In this dynamic and elusive reality, we are contemporary explorers seeking to find our bearings via landscapes – not always physical landscapes – in a situation of constant change and simultaneity between different scales. The reconquest of the historic city and the qualities of mutability and instability of its interstices fascinate us. Absence, deficiency and distorsion mean that the city is no longer a linear and homogeneous system, but a morphing of trajectories and processes of expansions, inversions and contorsions. In 2036, the urban population of an estimated 12 000 000 0000 citizens lives in a synchronous space-time continuum : architecture has finally incorporated time as a multiplicity of experiences through a typology of interconnected networks.
THE GRAND-PLACE OF NATO IN BRUSSELS
This innovative response reflects the needs of the alliance in terms of dynamism, flexibility and transparency. A modern, efficient organisation, N.A.T.O. has taken on the mission of managing crisis prevention. Our architecture for an interactive democracy proposes a project for humanity, on planetary scale, using new technologies. “Push forward communication to push back violence”, this is the eloquent slogan of a new spatialized democracy in a real/virtual dialogue. The Grand-Place in Brussels, in the heart of the capital of Europe, would be home to the headquarters of this institution, under an anamorphosis recting to the constant flows of the Internet, a real world forum. Each human being would be a player in a socio-political anti-system, and the world would move towards becoming responsible!
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