Author’s description:
ISSUE: The desire for human civilisation to thrive in space.
ANALYSIS: Currently, near future Industries and the resulting enabling legislation are the vehicles that are propelling us towards a future in space. However, we as humans have not yet evolved to thrive in these environments despite the trend that has grown from innovations in computer technology and in particular; the resulting continued infiltration of computer technologies into both our own anatomies and our built environment which has been one of the many driving factors that has given rise to the ‘post-human condition’ and the dawn of the next stage of accelerated human evolution. In general, our neighbouring celestial bodies have; no atmosphere, no breathable air, insufficient gravity, high radiation levels, insufficient light, extreme low temperatures, extreme high temperatures, no available energy source, no available food supply, no available drinking water supply and no existing supply network.
SOLUTION: Civilisation thrives in the city. Hi technology is optimised to simulate earth like conditions in space within the context of the first post-human city. Let me tell you about Platinum City. Can the traveler imagine a post scarcity world economy, where the resources of the universe have been unlocked by breathtaking feats of engineering enabled by earth shaking breakthroughs in material technologies?
Born at the advent of the worlds first post-human industry of asteroid mining, sat proudly upon the surface of the Rosetta Asteroid located in the depths of a magnificent asteroid crater at the foot of the 1,700-meter high Putoran Mountains lies Platinum City! A pop up industrial city that embodies bio-mechanical characters within its urban fabric, Platinum City exists somewhere between a pristinely manicured garden and a well-oiled machine. Through constant energetic adjustments the biomechanical and majestic regolith architectures respond to stimulus of the celestial environment and develop solutions to scenarios as they arise in real time. Through live coding of animal and machine, a reciprocal action or influence between architecture and environment exists, resulting in an earth like simulacrum. Inspired by the narrative text of Jules Verne’s pop up ‘Columbiad cannon’ manufacturing city in his novel “From the Earth to the Moon” and the recent “Space Act of 2015” that enables the legal exploitation of space resources, the design thesis extrapolates near future technologies and urban ideas in the context of Peter Baufu’s ‘Eight Great Future [post-human] Transformations Of Architecture’ into programmatic, tectonic and environmental agendas for Platinum City; the worlds first post-human city.
Platinum city is an industrial platinum mining outpost in outer space on the surface of the Ore grade A Rosetta asteroid in high lunar orbit around our moon. As part of a wider lunar network, Platinum City is one chapter in a long story of component-based cities that play a role in the mining, refining and exporting of fine asteroid platinum.