Another new project. The project is for alterations and additions to a brick cottage, the conservation area of Watsons Bay, Sydney.

Full details, and loads more images may be found on the project page.

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The Lifeboat Foundation has published a list of the Top Ten Transhuman Technologies. It is a most interesting list. It postulates that if humans are able to think of something then, it is a matter of time before the idea is realised.

“Transhumanists tend to take a longer-than-average view of technological progress, looking not just five or ten years into the future but twenty years, thirty years, and beyond. We realize that the longer you look forward, the more uncertain the predictions get, but one thing is quite certain: if a technology is physically possible and obviously useful, human (or transhuman!) ingenuity will see to it that it gets built eventually. As we gain ever greater control over the atomic structure of matter, our technological goals become increasingly ambitious, and their payoffs more and more generous.”

Making up the top ten are Cryonics, Gene Therapy, Self Replicating Machines, Molecular Manufacturing and so on. It is as you may imagine mostly interesting stuff, and at number three sits ‘Megascale Engineering’. YES.

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A world of enormous planet dwarfing structures supplying infrastructure to the exponential growth of the human and transhuman peoples. Obviously, the construction of these behemoths would require more than man power however we are told that, with the help of some good ol’ self-replicating robots

“the production of such large structures could be done largely by autonomous drones, with intelligent agents only managing the highest top-level functions and architecture. Considering that mankind’s long-term future is in space, and that space right now is pretty devoid of any structure useful or habitable to humans, we have a lot of work to do, and if you can make the projects megascale, why not?”

Indeed, why not? Tow of the references mentioned in particular, caught our eye - Globus Cassus and the Dyson Spheres. Globus Cassus - literally Hollow Sphere - is a proposal by Christian Waldvogel and formed a part of the Swiss Pavilion at the 1994 Venice Biennale.

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It takes the form of a compressed icosahedron that surrounds the point where the earth once was. The inside of the sphere forms the habitation, with two large continents facing each other across the empty centre.

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The structure is made by gradually excavating the earth’s crust, mantle and core, which are transported outwards via four symmetrically placed space elevators. The gradual excavation of the earth results in the melting of the ice caps, all water vapourises and condences on the inner surface of the sphere forming rivers and lakes (Don’t ask, okay. It just does.) leaving the inner surface of the sphere fit for human habitation. The process leaves earth as the second largest planet in the solar system.

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The Dyson Sphere (although proposed 35 years earlier) steps it up a notch to propose a network of solar powered satellites surrounding a star, capturing its entire energy output.

While Dyson only ever speculated a ring or a swarm of such satellites, others have extended the idea, speculating that such a network would eventually become so dense that it became a solid shell completely encompassing the star.

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Dyson himself was a fascinating dude. Aside from being an accomplished physicist, aside from the Dyson Sphere, he also speculated on a number of ways in which space may be occupied or made habitable. The Dyson Tree, where a genetically modified plant could be implanted on a comet, potentially producing a breathable atmosphere in the hollows of its surface being one example.

Volume 07!

It is a year since we started running Pecha Kucha in a regular fashion in Sydney. So join us next Thursday to celebrate the first anniversary. We are moving to a new venue, which should, hopefully, sort out all the AV issues of the old venue as well as provide a good venue to kick on after the talks have finished.

Thursday 27th September / Mars Lounge

Facebook Group. Facebook Event.
See you there.

Part One - South Korea

A trip to the beach rendered as an image of insane, franchise supported, congestion.

Part Two - Las Vegas

The Stratosphere. An entire tower top one stop amusement park extravaganza. Various theme park attractions are strewn around the top of tower. A serpent like rollercoaster wraps itself around the top of the tower is not mentioned in the official publicity. Perhaps no one has noticed yet?

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Besides the roller coaster, a further three rides are available.

The X-Stream that you can see above hanging off the edge of the building, the Big Shot which ‘catapults’ its occupants to a height of over 300m above ground level, and finally - Insanity: The Ride; a claw like device that spins its occupants at a high velocity 275m above the Nevada Desert.

Image taken by Flickr user: Zombie Jen

There seems to be a trend of theme-parking of landmarks globally. Earlier, we saw the Grand Canyon getting the “Sky Walk” with Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower not far behind with their very own “Sky Walk” and more recently at the Eureka Tower in Melbourne the “Sky Deck” thrill seekers step out into an opaque glass cube that soon, due to the technological leaps made in glass technology through the R&D invested in nightclub bathrooms, turns clear. I guess you then look down, astounded.

Just how perilous ‘The Edge’ is is in doubt, however, given that it is prominently advertised as being: “easily accessible by wheelchair and children 7 years or under must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.”

The attempt by these glass floor experiences to thrill is nothing compared to what’s going on at The Stratosphere. Here, without the spectacle of a sublime landscape or cityscape to stand on a glass floor over, the strategy here is too try to give the thrill seekers as much velocity as possible, before yanking them back to the relative security of a Las Vegas observation deck.

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Next Wave! We love a good surfing analogy in reference to Australian architecture. And the wave is the best of them. Particularly prevalent in Sydney architecture, the wave has a lot to answer for, has seduced the best and the worst of architects and has become the defacto and ill-advised, ‘coastal style’.

Anyway. Following on from SuperDutch and Swiss Made, Next Wave is the next in the series published by Thames and Hudson.

Next Tuesday, there will be a panel discussion featuring a bunch of the architects in the book, like David Boyle, Mark Cashman (Marsh Cashman Koolloos), Adam Haddow (SJB), Clinton Murray, Gerard Reinmuth, Richard Blythe and Scott Balmforth (Terroir) and Nick Turner.

It is on at the Museum of Sydney, Tuesday 25 September, 6-8pm