BEYOND THE HORIZON OF CONSCIOUSNESS
RUNNER-UP
Anna Eckes, Olaf Mitka / Cracow University of Technology
Kraków, Poland
BEYOND THE HORIZON OF CONSCIOUSNESS questions about our current concept of the consciousness and its relation to death. The project is an ‘uncanny' negation of Tokyo - the city which floods every ‘dark space’ with light and noise, the city that leads to shatter myth and irrationality. Space express itself through mimicry of cave, architecture that doesn’t have a plan or rooms. The site is a meadow interacting with users. The surface of rocks serves as a columbarium, a storage for modern ‘urns’ created from the separation of DNA. The bottom of cave consists of a main reflection space. Smaller, personal ones are located all the way from entrance to lake.
SITE
With the station, some of Tokyo’s tallest buildings and energetic scenery of Kabukicho neighborhood, Shinjuku perfectly sets the stage for an exploration of architecture for the dead in the realm of the living. The ‘uncanniness’ of the site is based on the discovery of the new, distorted forms of things once considered to be ‘canny’.
Instead of creating a gap between us and our spirituality, which happens so often in our contemporary world, technical progress should instead make us more sensitive and more willing to understand our own nature.
In Tokyo there are less and less of dark, unobvious spaces. The spirituality disappears in the vortex of colors, neons, lights and motion. The project relies on returning to the origin, to DNA the basic code of our lives.
With the station, some of Tokyo’s tallest buildings and energetic scenery of Kabukicho neighborhood, Shinjuku perfectly sets the stage for an exploration of architecture for the dead in the realm of the living. The ‘uncanniness’ of the site is based on the discovery of the new, distorted forms of things once considered to be ‘canny’.
Instead of creating a gap between us and our spirituality, which happens so often in our contemporary world, technical progress should instead make us more sensitive and more willing to understand our own nature.
In Tokyo there are less and less of dark, unobvious spaces. The spirituality disappears in the vortex of colors, neons, lights and motion. The project relies on returning to the origin, to DNA the basic code of our lives.
CAVE
When looking at the subject of darkness or death, we always fear of the same thing - the unknown. Uncanny arises when imagination encounters the unfamiliar data. Darkness always affects us directly, passes thought us. That is why the ego is permeable to darkness.
You may ask: is a cave in the very heart of Tokyo an absurd? Contemporary architecture has not yet developed the language to accurately describe a house of the dead - a cemetery. A city and a cemetery are considered to be two separate environments. To try to connect them we must first refer to nature. The conditions in a cave enable us to lose the differentiation between an environment and organism – our senses are muffled here.
The main reflection space is situated on the bottom of the cave. The large gathering area is located by the lake, primordial soup. This liquid is rich in organic compounds, providing favorable conditions for the emergence and growth of life forms. The organic compounds in the primordial soup, such as amino acids, may have been produced by chemical reactions that took place in the Earth's early atmosphere. The surface of rocks serves as the columbarium, astorage for modern urns. Dim light illuminates a large space, reflects on the wet rocks and illuminates the roots of a giant tree - a biocomputer.
The interior of the cave creates ideal conditions for the work of housing of the biocomputer - high humidity and low temperatures.
When looking at the subject of darkness or death, we always fear of the same thing - the unknown. Uncanny arises when imagination encounters the unfamiliar data. Darkness always affects us directly, passes thought us. That is why the ego is permeable to darkness.
You may ask: is a cave in the very heart of Tokyo an absurd? Contemporary architecture has not yet developed the language to accurately describe a house of the dead - a cemetery. A city and a cemetery are considered to be two separate environments. To try to connect them we must first refer to nature. The conditions in a cave enable us to lose the differentiation between an environment and organism – our senses are muffled here.
The main reflection space is situated on the bottom of the cave. The large gathering area is located by the lake, primordial soup. This liquid is rich in organic compounds, providing favorable conditions for the emergence and growth of life forms. The organic compounds in the primordial soup, such as amino acids, may have been produced by chemical reactions that took place in the Earth's early atmosphere. The surface of rocks serves as the columbarium, astorage for modern urns. Dim light illuminates a large space, reflects on the wet rocks and illuminates the roots of a giant tree - a biocomputer.
The interior of the cave creates ideal conditions for the work of housing of the biocomputer - high humidity and low temperatures.
BIOCOMPUTER
Doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" when defining a person as being dead. Contemporary definition of death says: ‘a person is dead when an electrical activity in his brain ceases’. Is this definition sufficient? In the conditions of rapidly evolving science and in the light of recent discoveries, we believe that a new definition of death has to be proposed: irreversible loss of every trace of consciousness.
Consciousness is an attribute of matter. It consists of hypothetical elementary particles, slippery to detect, such as gravitons entering the black hole. Our Biokomputer is a house of such particles of consciousness which left the dying body leaving only a faint trace. Last thought separated from the body.
Biokomputer’s data bank consists of digital printout of an agarose gel electrophoresis of DNA. It’s main task is a constant search of a traces of human consciousness written in our genes. It sequences DNA of the deceased, telling his consciousness to find a way of the body, to emerge and this time stay on this site of event’s horizon.
Thanks to the new branch of computing, using DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies we are able to create complex data systems.
Doctors and coroners usually turn to "brain death" or "biological death" when defining a person as being dead. Contemporary definition of death says: ‘a person is dead when an electrical activity in his brain ceases’. Is this definition sufficient? In the conditions of rapidly evolving science and in the light of recent discoveries, we believe that a new definition of death has to be proposed: irreversible loss of every trace of consciousness.
Consciousness is an attribute of matter. It consists of hypothetical elementary particles, slippery to detect, such as gravitons entering the black hole. Our Biokomputer is a house of such particles of consciousness which left the dying body leaving only a faint trace. Last thought separated from the body.
Biokomputer’s data bank consists of digital printout of an agarose gel electrophoresis of DNA. It’s main task is a constant search of a traces of human consciousness written in our genes. It sequences DNA of the deceased, telling his consciousness to find a way of the body, to emerge and this time stay on this site of event’s horizon.
Thanks to the new branch of computing, using DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies we are able to create complex data systems.
