What is it with architects that they feel the need to glom onto the latest buzzwords to justify their projects? A group from M.I.T.’s Senseable City Lab is looking for funding for an ambitious observation deck designed for the 2012 London Olympics. They are calling it the Cloud. It is a “lightweight transparent tower, composed of a ‘cloud’ of inflatable, light-emitting spheres . . . fed by real time information from all over the world.”
The structure is an architectural interpretation of the realtime cloud. Videos of the Olympic events, Twitter and Facebook streams, and other realtime data such as energy usage, Internet traffic, and mobile phone activity will be projected onto LED displays in the Cloud so that people in the Cloud can observe the events from high above London.
M.I.T. credits Google and the engineering firm Arup as part of the design team. Fiction author Umberto Eco is an adviser. In other words, it’s never going to be built. Not by 2012. They don’t even have building permits yet.
The drawings are nice though. Except I’m not sure what that person is doing inside one of those spheres in the bottom image. Is that some sort of realtime cage? He looks like he needs saving.
That is very cool.
It’s the Umberto Eco part that mystifies me. Eco is both the best writer in the world (The Name of the Rose) and the worst (Baudolino). I’m not sure if this will be smart and exciting or an indulgent head-trip. And why an Italian? I thought the Olympics were supposed to showcase homegrown talent. Isn’t there some smart Brit, like Will Critchlow, who can be their advisor?
how come you didn’t like Baudolino? Anyway, the whole thing is just a bubble.
Ughh…. architectural metaphors…
This is laughable.
Eco is an engaging novelist and essayist. Why would he associate his name with this festering carbuncle?
Architects would do well to stick to building efficient, affordable, aesthetically pleasing shelter. That is their raison d’etre.
Great architecture is not sculpture. Would you engage a cobbler to cut a diamond?
Why are architects always wiggling their ego-centric appendages in the domain of artists and philosophers?
An architect who is neither an artist nor a philosopher is no architect at all.
+1
Didn’t you mean to say monstrous carbuncle?
David,
Good catch. I was cribbing a bit from Prince Charles’ “monstrous carbuncle”, but felt festering was more fitting since this structure hasn’t been built yet.
Cheers,
Bob.
Having steeped to a dark hue in art school I immediately made the connection that Umberto Eco is engaged simply because he is one of the most well known, and active semoticians in the world. It seems like an idea Eco, or one who is influenced by Eco and the study of sign processes and cultural relevance, might dream up.
Whatever.
Has anyone seen the displays behind the desks at the Seattle public library? It’s a huge display of signs … in the form of catalog queries IIRC. Totally cool, kind of useless but a great signifier IMO of what we value.
“Fiction author Umberto Eco”
Fiction author? Really? That’s the best epithet you can give Eco? “Italian novelist” would be slightly less lazy.
Still, he’s not Dan fucking Brown; he’s a professor who pops up on Italian TV frequently discussing any number of things.
+1
Umberto Eco is semiotics professor. Writing about words and meanings then comes naturally but he is not a paperback hack.
It appears the first thing they need to get right is what a cloud looks like. Last I checked we called those clear spherical things bubbles…
My thoughts exactly – pretty sure we haven’t invented the “bubble” yet – no, wait, we did – and it popped…
If they can pull it off, that would be worth the trip over their all on it’s own. I wonder how they came up with that idea? =)
Hey WAIT, this is twitscoop.com
that’s a pretty nice spiral to nowhere.
architecturally, the cloud should be a real-time form generator not a static construction. this project would essentially be a very expensive interface to listen to the cloud.
now if the social and climatic conditions informed the structure for example, say if the structure could glean from the cloud how many attendees there would be and modify its spatial resources accordingly or whether it should conserve heat due to an incoming cold wave, then you might get something more representative of its inspiration.
we look for any excuse to be verbose; the project could have been just an ever-expanding hot-air balloon thereby continually increasing the surface area on which to display advertisements.
i bet umberto eco is an adviser for avoiding irrelevance and/or apocalyptic repercussions (cfr [es]: http://extempforaneo.net/wordpress/archives/517).
Interesting idea, but seems unrealistic… especially the person floating in one of the clouds…
“and other realtime data such as energy usage, Internet traffic, and mobile phone activity ”
Is it also going to post how much energy this useless thing is going to use?
From the looks of it they forgot the elevator; I dont see anyone walking up a ramp that is about 15 – 20 stories.
I especially like the 3rd picture with the artist showing a cyclist driving full speed into a group of people – what the he**? I don’t want to go take a stroll in that kind of environment.
plus, there’s a bomb on his back. whatever this thing gets named, that will be the updated idiom for “titanic”
Yeah, that railing is not going to stop the biker, or the people he hits from plummeting through this “cloud” like a metaphoric hail storm.
Sweet, I’d love to see it happen!
Just accessed the press page and the video played a Sikh prayer?
Getting something like this built in the Uk is near impossible. The amount of red tape for anything here is incredible. 2030 is more a more likely timeframe once local councils and councilors and planners have had a look at it.