‘In our minds aerial architecture was always merely a stage that is proposed today for the air-conditioning of privileged geographical spaces.’
We propose protecting a city by a roof of moving air. A central motorway leads to the airport, dividing the city in two: a residential quarter and a quarter for work, industry and mechanical devices. The roof of air simultaneously air-conditions and protects the privileged space.
A floor of transparent glass. Storage underground (kitchens, bathrooms, store-rooms and production plant).
The concept of secrecy, which is still known to us, will have vanished from this city flooded with light and completely open to the outside world. A new condition of human intimacy will exist. The inhabitants live naked. The former patriarchal family system will no longer exist. The community will be complete, free, individual, impersonal. The inhabitants’ main occupation: leisure.
The obstacles that used to be regarded in architecture as troublesome necessities will have become luxuries: fire-walls, water-walls, forms carried by the air, fire-fountains, water-fountains, swimming baths, air beds, air seats… The real goal of immaterial architecture: the air-conditioning of large geographical dwelling areas.
This air-conditioning will be achieved not so much through technological miracles as essentially through a transformation of human sensibility into a function of the cosmos. The theory of ‘immaterialization’ negates the spirit of fictitious science.
Through evolved sensibility, ‘a new dimension, guided by the spirit’, the climate and the spiritual conditions on the surfaces of our earth will in future be transformed. ‘To want means. to invent.’ To this wanting is added the will to live what one has invented, and the miracle will be accomplished in all the realms of nature. Ben-Gurion: ‘He who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.’
Originally published in Zero
vol. 3 | 1960 | Düsseldorf
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