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A fortnight ago, Ferrebeekeeper put up a review of “Requiem for a Good Machine” a science-fiction novel by friend and collaborator, Daniel Claymore. The book describes a future police officer’s attempts to solve a chain of murders (and related crimes) in Mirabilis, an ideal city built by robots to serve as a habitat for the faltering biological humans of the post-singularity age.
As of today, Claymore’s work is now on sale and you can get an e-copy (or better yet, a real copy!) of his book by going to any purveyor of fine literature. Different parts of stories stick with different people, and ever since reading Claymore’s novel, I have been thinking about the gleaming city at the heart of his work. Paradoxically, thinking about this future city is causing us to go backwards in time for the subject of this post.
Back in 2015, I built/drew the Apollo and Marsyas miniature theater, a theater for 1:18 figures (mainly the Kenner Star Wars figures…but it turns out there are lots of other little actors at this scale jockeying for position on stage too). Anyway, the fun of that project was drawing some strange background scenes (like a medieval castle, a pleasure garden, Timbuktu, a spooky cemetery, Hell, etc.). One of the backdrops I drew was a glowing city of the future filled with robots, meta-humans, droids, and transgenic chimera animals. Here it is:
My recollection of this work is that I enjoyed drawing all of the future beings (look at that quantum computer clock guy (or thing?) at the left side beneath the pink organ wall…or the purple owl woman standing above the metal dog-robot at right!) but then I got lost coloring in the asphalt and threw the whole thing aside in disgust. Looking at it afresh, however, it is better than I remember. You are getting an impossible peek into the world of the far future thanks to the one power capable of opening such a window–the imagination!
Yet, although the imagination is capable of peering through deep time, it is also fallible (just look at all of that confusing, hard-to-color future asphalt!). I was hoping to portray a city made of cities–where super-arcologies stand next to each other, rank upon rank, stretching to the horizon. I wanted an effect which was akin to the troubling urban art of George Grosz–with all of the maddened machine-people and transgenic organisms spilling out of the architecture like confetti and tainted candy pouring out of a psychedelic piñata.
The fun of painting like Grosz is creating a river of chaotic heterogeneous lunatics! But the peril of creating such an artwork is getting lost in a world of visual clutter (which is a less-flattering way of describing a river of chaotic heterogeneous lunatics). With this work I certainly experienced the fun…but I also fell prey to the peril. Even so, this glowing drawing captures some of the effect of looking into a bewilderingly complicated social ecosystem.
The dancing, crawling, and flying robots running from dome to dome in a world of strange machines may not be exactly what the future holds…but they inspire us to think about where we are going (and we need to think about that a lot harder). Maybe I need to get my fluorescent ink back out and paint some more fantastical cities glowing in the purple twilight of ages we will never get to see.
Today’s post features an excitingly strange intersection between 3 of our favorite topics here at Ferrebeekeeper: crowns, China, and cities. This is the Bund Center in the Huangpu area of Shanghai. The building was finished in 2002 by the architects of John Portman and Associates. It stands 198 meters (650 feet) tall—approximately the same height as the Sony Tower in Manhattan (which is probably now named after some other monolithic company, but which New Yorkers will instantly know as the building that looks like a Queen Anne highboy). Like most skyscrapers, the purpose of this tower is surprisingly banal—it holds a bunch of offices for paper-pushers, financiers, and cell phone makers—however the top is anything but dull! Look at that splendid daisy-style crown in glittering steel and lights. I really thought the Chinese were on to something with their lovable propensity for making amazing novelty buildings during the 90s and the aughts. The central authorities have since cracked down on that trend out of fear that too much imagination and fun would make the Chinese subjects less biddable to the whims of their new emperor erm president-for-life, but frankly we Americans have no moral authority anymore when it comes to subjects like evil autocrats and gaudy/banal towers. All of which is to say, I like the top of the Bund Center! I wish I could go to Shanghai and get a closer look at the new model for an international super-city…
Torus-shaped building by Italian architect Joseph di Pasquale in Guangzhou
There is disappointing aesthetic news from the internet today: The People’s Republic of China is trying to reign in weird architecture. A CNN article provides the basic facts, “A statement from China’s State Council Sunday, says new guidelines on urban planning will forbid the construction of ‘bizarre’ and ‘odd-shaped’ buildings that are devoid of character or cultural heritage. Instead, the directive calls for buildings that are ‘economic, green and beautiful’.”
The great teapot of Wuxi. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
Based on this language, one might hope for a future of soaring super pagodas covered with solar cells and hydroponic forests, however I think it is much more likely that we will see lots of boring giant rectangles designed by committees (like the new World Trade Center…or Freedom Tower…or whatever it ended up being called). Communist China had its own history of creating dull monoliths. This was interrupted by a spate of crazy fun building projects, but it seems like the party is cracking down on the architectural effervescence (probably as a symptom of the vast market correction now under way).
The China Central Television building in Beijing, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren.
Sheraton in Huzhou
During the last quarter century China has seen outrageous economic growth. Along with this boom, strange giant edifices popped up all along the Chinese coast like weird mushrooms from outer space. I have put pictures of some of my favorites in this article. I particularly like the Shanghai World Financial Center (which has always reminded me of a broken off piece of some cool mystery awl) and of course the many torus buildings. However the Olympic “Bird’s Nest” Stadium and the Shanghai Tower and the “Giant Pants” and the huge teakettle were all good too. There were some less famous but more charming sculpture buildings at a local level which I have also included here.
Rendering of the Shanghai World Financial Center with the Jin Mao Building at right
I did not realize how much I liked these buildings until I read the news today and found out they now belong to the past. These buildings went hand in hand with eye-popping double digit growth percentages for the Chinese GDP. I wonder if, now that the buildings are going to stop going up, the stupendous growth will cease too. Mandarins from all cultures have a way of forgetting that just as art reflects society, society reflects art too.
The Emperor Hotel in Yanjiao may legitimately be counter-revolutionary
When I was younger and happier I worked as a drudge in an Investment Bank. Actually, remove the happiness from that first sentence—the place was one of the most toxic & unpleasant environments ever. Nobody there was happy. The bank sucked away human life force…and so I destroyed it from within! It’s gone now. You’re welcome, world.
That all sounds pretty bad-ass, but unfortunately this story reads less like a John Grisham thriller and more like a Russian folktale about a slow witted bumpkin who kills a sorcerer by accident. Although I worked at the investment bank, I was in no way an investment banker (thank goodness). The bankers and analysts were all stressed-out type-A personalities who spent 14-18 hours a day currying favor and staring at columns of numbers. A great many of them were hooked on amphetamines or other drugs.
I worked as a temp in the legal department where my job was to redline legal documents–a sort of grown-up “spot-the-difference” puzzle where one compares two nearly identical legal documents to see if the opposing bank has treacherously slipped new provisions into the contract (legal jobs tend to involve this kind of drudgery). I also helped update and distribute officers and directors lists—a task which was especially onerous since the officers and directors changed with blinding speed. Also the bank was really dozens of different legal entities and shell-corporations, each of which had its own board and officers all of whom overlapped considerably. I completed these monotonous tasks in a freezing cold plastic workstation visible to everyone from all sides. My only joy was to surreptitiously cut arctic animals out of post-it notes with a pair of office scissors. I had an entire Siberian ecosystem by the time I left.
The bank was on a 30somethingeth floor of a dull 80’s skyscraper in midtown. The bankers were forever trying to modify the office to suit the whim of the latest leaders (who were always changing—see above), so what should have been a simple series of embedded corridors was instead a shifting warren of slate-green upholstery, sharp glass edges, faux mahogany, injured egos, and construction detritus. The only constant (other than cold and fear) was an arrhythmic grandfather clock, which wheezed away the interminable hours. Once I was sent to deliver a document to an obscure department on the far side of the bank. On the way back, I got lost in a newly created hallway swathed with plastic sheets and plywood. As I scurried along the passage I heard loud impatient footsteps behind me. I turned and was horrified to see the president of the bank, a cold bossy woman, walking immediately behind me. Why was she walking so fast? How could I escape her? Then it occurred to me: there should be a doorway to the kitchen/breakroom ahead. I flung open the door to escape, but the president had ceased her rapid walking and was staring directly at me, her mouth hanging open in an “O” of surprise. With a touch of élan, I opened the door wider in order to let her pass (I was surprised she knew about the shortcut through the kitchen) and then I noticed the room beyond the door had pink tiles! It was the women’s bathroom! I screamed shrilly, dropped the door, and ran away down the hall. It was not my best career moment… fortunately a new president was appointed shortly afterwards, and then another new president after him!
Anyway you want to hear about the destruction of the bank.
Above the little cubicle I was stuck in, there was a big air vent. It roared incessantly all day, continuously delivering a stream of cold stale air on my shoulders. One day, when the legal department was unexpectedly empty, I decided to try to do something about the vent. Balancing precariously on top of my workspace I reached up into the evil grate and found a tiny rusted lever which would not budge, no matter how I pulled at it. Desperate not to be caught, I swung my whole weight at the lever. There was a rusty scream, a shower of dirty particles and a great dull “BOOM”. I sprang down into my chair and looked busy, as martinets in pinstripes manifested from nowhere, but I heard an alveolar shift up inside the ducts of the skyscraper. The hateful cold air was now directed somewhere else!
My moment of triumph it was short-lived. The top boss of the legal department (famous for OCD & prickly disposition) came back to find that her fancy office was unbearably cold. A normal person would have summoned the building engineers–who probably would have traced the problem back to the closed vent. Fortunately that was not the way she did business. Her first action was to have her paralegals find the contract with the building and flag the engineering/maintenance section. Armed with contractual righteousness, she called the property firm and ordered them to raise the temperature on the floor by 15 degrees.
The legal department was on the cold dark side of the building. The important bankers and financiers were portly men with window offices on the sunny side of the skyscraper. While the rest of the bank suddenly became hot, their offices became ovens. To lower the temperature, the bankers started working their way through successive levels of workmen, technicians, and engineers (I heard the angry conversations in the lobby) only to find that the temperature had already been changed by the legal department. Both sides then began a violent squabble about the thermostat.
"...maybe I should go. You guys settle this on your own."
One day I just didn’t go back to the bank—in fact that was the only job I quit outright with no other prospects. Later on I found out that, a few months after I left, the bank was gobbled up in its entirety by a huge New York capital management firm. Perhaps it is wrong not to assume that some other factor was responsible for that place’s demise (its dysfunctional office culture or rapidly changing leadership, for example…or maybe the wave of banking mergers in the nineties) but I think anyone who has worked at an office where everyone is fighting about the temperature can correctly assign credit to me.
An artist's conception of how the under-construction Shanghai Tower will look next to the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center
I have written a post about non-human builders, unknown builders, and ambitious (but not-entirely-successful) builders. What about the great builders of the present? Sadly the west is moribund right now, suffering not just from the housing-bust hangover but from crooked financiers, incompetent politicians, social stalemate, and a dearth of ideas. This situation is probably not permanent but it makes me disinclined to write about the shabby projects going up right now. I suppose I could write about the monstrous white elephant skyscrapers of Dubai, that autocratic dystopia in a desert, or describe the towers of Singapore, the hard-headed, hard-hearted city state. But not only do I not admire those societies, they are a side show on the world stage (and a tiny sideshow at that). Right now all eyes are on China. The Middle Kingdom is sucking up the world’s energy resources and every sort of raw material at exponential rates. In return, cities are going up where no cities existed before. China is rolling out roads, airports, and railroads at a rate never before seen. An agricultural nation is turning into an urban one. And China’s greatest cities are becoming the great cities of earth, morphing overnight into forests of mega skyscrapers.
But that is not the subject of this post either. The real question about China’s rise is whether the nation will be able to harness its wealth to become a titan in scientific and technological fields the same way it is dominating manufacturing. Part of the answer to that question can be found in Guizhou province in southern China where a massive bowl shape is rising from the hills. This is the initial superstructure for the five-hundred-meter (546-yard) Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) which is due to open in 2016. FAST will then supplant the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (which was built in 1963) as the largest single-aperture telescope ever constructed. To quote ElectronicsWeekly.com:
When completed, its 500-metre diameter single dish will make it the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world. What’s more, although FAST’s dish will be fixed in its crater-like setting, a series of large motors will be able to change the shape of its reflective surface, allowing it to scan large swathes of the sky. FAST will be able to peer three times further into the universe than Arecibo. Astronomers expect it to uncover thousands of new galaxies and deep-sky objects up to 7 billion light years away.
FAST will be the planet’s eye into deep space (and just, in time: Arecibo’s budget is on the chopping block as congress pares away scientific funding). The remote location is unusually free of radio interference and the natural bowl-shaped valley it is located in should help amplify its utility. According to National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the telescope will be available to international astronomy researchers.
How the The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Project will look when complete
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