Engines of Creation

In response to existential threats posed by climate change, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, Engines of Creation explores potential new directions that architecture might take, reacting to and against these potent forces. Located in the heart of Europe, within the neutral, yet hostile territories of the Swiss Alps, the project begins as an alternative Future of Humanity Institute. The building is anchored to Mount Titlis or The Hill of Angels as William Wordsworth called it in the 18th century in a poem with the same name, programmatically reconciling the religious and monastic past of the site with the present condition of the Alps, a landscape host of various research and technological testing grounds. At this mythical research laboratory, Citizens of Nowhere gather to shape our Post-Anthropocentric interplanetary future, the building slowly evolving over a long period of time. Various architectural components are brought to life through animation as an allegorical take on Wordsworth’s poem, projecting it into an architectural and technological possibility of an uncertain long now: a holly structure is raised in a command, dust renders needless spells from magic wand, celestial bands arrive with new ideas about humanity and angels provide sustainable energy. A radical landscape of the sublime, this is a visionary regenerative architecture born out of the merger of art, nature and technology.