By BEN WILKE
The unequivocal focus of space exploration is the discovery of the new. With “Other Space Odysseys” Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, and Alessandro Poli have made a collection of their own ideas regarding exactly how alternative approaches to outer space can lead to new understandings of the places which we occupy or plan for. With this exhibition and book, we find space interwoven with itself, space that represents distance, spaces obliterated into many new spaces, spaces brought closer together, and often just single exceptional spaces that stand by themselves and constitute a landscape. In the respective approaches of Lynn, Maltzan, and Poli, space is not a mere inanimate thing to be occupied or altered, but rather a concentration of cultural energies that project possibility forward while allowing us to grasp again and perhaps anew the impact of past events. “Other Space Odysseys” is the catalogue that accompanied the Canadian Centre for Architecture show by the same name. I would like to suggest that the not having been at that exhibition is preferable for the mere fact that the published taxonomy of such a wide range of approaches to the idea of space (among such a small sample of architects) allows, and in fact requires, the possibility of seeing the work again.
The book is divided roughly into thirds; each contributor discusses their respective projects from the exhibition and shares in a conversation/interview with editor Giovanna Borasi. Borasi’s framing of the issues of outer space and the exploration of such is specific. The issue is not to be merely about what was discovered away from home, but also about what was discovered back home as a result. The example of the first full color photograph of the earth from space, 22727, is referenced throughout the book as a way of linking space exploration back to the world from which that exploration is seeking to (even temporarily) escape. The framework that Borasi is interested in discussing and showcasing is not so much the science fiction fantasy of aliens and galaxy hunting as the near-future of speculation without promises. Setting aside Michael Maltzan’s JPL project (where astronomers are given a disinterested planet unto themselves) the heart of this book lies in the work of Greg Lynn and Allesandro Poli.
The interview with Lynn yields a particularly interesting term that, along with 22727, provides a certain framework within which to read this book and the work therein. The term “uncanny valley” only makes an appearance once, but the idea is littered throughout the book. In discussing the allure of space exploration, Lynn remarks that the term refers to “the nearly lifelike quality that is familiar enough to not be artificial but is still not-quite-right.” For roboticists, animators, and renderers this quality is to be avoided for the sake of normality. But for Lynn, the term can also swing away from normality toward the exotic or strange, and this is part of the draw of the extraterrestrial: just enough familiarity, yet different enough to be novel. Greg Lynn works in this way, our understanding of and allure with traditionally imagined Martians works this way, and the opening Lynn content of the book works this way.
In the second part of the book showcases a pair of projects of Allesandro Poli, one of the members of the radical architecture group Superstudio from 1970-1972. Polli’s contributions I find to be the most interesting, primarily because they seem to be both the most utilitarian and most paradoxical at the same time. Each of the projects discussed here reuse elements and contexts that are critical to explorations of space, or more particularly for Poli, the moon. The first project is a possible recoupling of the earth and the moon, called L’Architettura Interplanetaria, and is based on hypothesis that the moon was birthed from the earth as a gradually withdrawing mass billions of years ago. Poli’s proposal (1972) followed the Apollo 11 launch and subsequent landing on the Sea of Tranquility. Here, Poli suggests not only a retraction of the moon (to an orbit that would constitute the earth and moon being classified as a single body), but also an earth-moon highway that would facilitate settling the lunar surface, which would then be expanded and enlarged by none other than the capture of wandering interplanetary bodies.1 This project is clearly a reaction to the excitement and mass media coverage of the Apollo events themselves. But it is also is representative of the larger radical, social, and anti-design aims of Superstudio, whose primary motive was to reject architecture as a bourgeois models for ownership or formalization of social divisions. The Superstudio agenda was to design and plan in order to meet societal needs. As such, L’Architettura Interplanetaria is not so much a design as it is a social plan to facilitate a newly emergent need. Among the primary reactions to image 22727 was momentary pause and reflection, not merely of self, but also of a world that was for the first time seen as a whole and as a single community. The image galvanized an already growing environmental movement and set in motion further fears of resource depletion and overpopulation.
The other Poli project explores not the geographies and possible physics of space that are commandeered in L’Architettura Interplanetaria, but rather the psychology of how we occupy space during such explorations, and its analogues here on earth. In a fictional narrative between Buzz Aldrin and an Italian peasant named Zeno, Poli identifies two characters whose particular travels are as opposed as possible: Aldrin having been to the surface of the moon, and Zeno having lived his entire life in the same location, in near isolation. The psychological state of the two, however, is shared. In each case the man must operate within a protected world. For Aldrin, the isolation is the result of an extremely specific mission, complete with instruments that are custom-made just for the mission of an astronaut. In the case of Zeno, the isolation is merely the result of a life lived, and the instruments used are the result of recycling previous tools and materials for new jobs, though they are as specific and as custom-made as Aldrin’s. Here, Poli returns again to the Superstudio mantra of necessity being the mother of architecture, using Zeno as a figure who represents the reuse of material and technology in order to survive by way of necessity. The collection of objects and tools found in the life of Zeno follow as the next portion of the book. The cataloging of the objects rescales the understanding of space, psychology, and lifestyle from the typical wide lens of Superstudio down to the level of the hand-held and provides a unique look at how the occupation of isolated space can require extreme specifics in either the outer space that is intimated by the exhibit or the local space that we can occupy at home.
The projects presented occupy a wide range of strategies, from the pseudo-science fiction of the near-future offered by Lynn’s N.O.A.H.’s to the commandeering of already present potential realities suggested by the earth-moon tethering project of Poli. The projects sometimes ignore commonplace occupation and use strategies, but are just as intriguing when they capitalize or augment accepted notions of space and space usage. The editorial framing of these projects as both conceptual and formal ideas is emphasized in print form. The book stands as an inspiring collection of ideas that informs beyond the immediacy of an exhibition.
