WHY MARS ARCHITECTURES
- the dictatorship of function in architecture. The power of architectural space. drawing as a way to escape the dictatorship of function.
Function has been driving architecture since people started to build at the dawn of history.
We are so used to build with a purpose that we don’t even ask ourselves why we do it. Even purposeless buildings (or parts of them) have a purpose, be that only to provide a proof of personal standing.
Architectural space is one of the most powerful expressions of art.
Because no other art form (maybe except music) physically contains you.
Because looking for a meaning and a way in a space is a built-in instinct of a wandering species. Therefore when in contact with a coherent space we immediately start to look for meanings and ways and we find great fulfillment in doing it.
Because architectural space quiet naturally offers clues about the nature of the Universe itself - even the most stupid building is still both a model of the Universe and an evident actual continuation of the Genesis/ Big Bang.
Architectural space could reach new heights as an art form if explored in full autonomy of any functional purpose?
To actually build a space whose purpose is to prove the artistic worthiness of a functionless space is contradictory, not to mention expensive.
Drawing, though evidently limited to flat 2Ds, can:
Walk you through spaces without actual need to build them;
Fruitfully excite your imagination. Precisely in the way a book excites you more than a movie – because it forces your mind to create itself a complete 3D model of a particular space out of the partial image the eyes meet. Therefore no two persons will ever see the same drawing in the same way. The viewer is an integral part of the drawing.
- Mars, the perfect place.
Because Mars is wonderful. It is empty, clean, free, windy, mysterious, red. Earth is that little dot on the sky.
It is so far as to make us almost sure we will never touch it. And it is so close, as we perceive it with its boulders and dust and sand and pale sky though the eyes of the Mars rovers, as to allow us to recognize it. To understand it as a place where, yes, we can be.
Because the functions of any Mars settlement, be it made by near-future humans or by far-future post-humans or by the famous little green local cousins of humans are so, so, so completely obscure to us – answering to an unknown society in an unknown environment - as to become totally, completely, absolutely irrelevant. Therefore we can read the architectural space of such a place as pure art.
Because a special relationship can be created with the powerful landscape, in a way we can’t do anymore but in rare isolated projects far from our schizophrenic urban conglomerates.
- The freedom to explore Mars is the freedom to explore your own inner world.
Because both are unknown, endless, full of surprises, immensely far and very close.
