K A I R O S
orbital building

This short text is a brief fragment of the book Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth - for release on November 2011. The book raises questions regarding the concept, the method of the project, some technical elements as well as many historical references.

BRIEF CONCEPT

Possibly, architecture was never applied to space projects until the year of 2011.

Coincidently, artwork of the past was attached to a single medium. It could be about painting, sculpture or installation, for example, but in different departments. Artwork – now and in the near future – tends to be a single logical structure present in different media.

Also, and very interestingly, artworks were traditionally classified as phenomena disconnected from function. Everything that was related to any kind of function was immediately discarded as a form of art. Even architecture and music were not regarded as forms of art.

But now, art happens while structure of thought in the criticism of culture, taken in its broadest sense, crossing different fields of knowledge in a transdisciplinary approach.

Thus, now it is impossible art be totally disconnected from function, of any kind – as it is impossible to be absolutely disconnected from anything.

Ancient Greeks had two words to describe the idea of time: chronos and kairos.

While chronos meant diachronic time, the passage of time through changes, kairos pointed to the old idea of deep time, which was already known in Sumeria, about five thousand years ago at least.

Sumerian peoples used the concept of deep time to describe the nature of the Universe that can be identified in a blink of eyes.

The phenomenon of psychological time is supported by changes, and we commonly call it consciousness. There is no time without consciousness, and only difference generates it.

Deep time is present in everything beyond the chronological or psychological times.

For example: when we talk about the ancient Egypt, as a whole, we are not taking something is special. Even so, we have the idea about it as a whole. It is the same about someone we know, about a specific fruit, a discovery or even about our planet.

Deep time could also be Charles Sanders Peirce's firstness, or even be called qualia – which curiously has been regularly refused by some contemporary philosophers.

When we are on the top of a mountain, or when we lose someone we love, we have it: deep time.

Now imagine looking at planet Earth, with your own eyes. In such a moment you will have in mind your entire life, the life of millions, everything condensed in that blink of eyes: deep time.

The orbital building, as a privileged observatory of Earth, opened to civil society, takes again that ancient concept of deep time, projecting a complex of human values in a large-scale spectrum.

When Earth is observed in its whole, time is deep.

Thus, the building Kairos is a reflection on the existence of human beings and also in this way, inevitably, it implicates a condition of time that transcends any specific and specialized measure.

I started designing Kairos in 2008. Everything was unchained at a lunch with a good friend in Lisbon, Portugal, who asked me what would be the next revolution in architecture.

I immediately replied: gravity!

Until now, the entire history of architecture is based on the force of gravity.

Basically, Kairos is a conceptual work that merges architecture design and art project in a same corpus – a crossing point between aesthetics, function and technology.

Being an architectural design, it presents structural developments in terms of function and technological challenges. As a visual artwork, it crosses all fields of environments and functions, projecting unexpected images that are, at the same time, abstract and figurative, linear and non-linear. As an artwork it questions and criticizes the concept of contemporary art and contemporary culture in general.

Kairos is, in fact, an orbital building – with a transdisciplinary conceptual design.

As a free observatory opened to a large number of people, dedicated to civil society, it is a place for reflection, observation and change, unleashing a process of discovery and formation of human beings – a new Paideia.

Thus, Kairos can also be taken as a new concept of hotel, under a new approach of education – now dynamic and with pleasure – giving a new dimension to the so-called space tourism.

It is a project to take to the sidereal space groups of scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, scholars, teachers and students from the most varied fields, promoting a dynamic transdisciplinary, transnational and transcultural process.

Now, imagine an orbital building around Earth, opened to civil society from all over the world; a building designed to the observation of our planet; a place for contemplation, reflection and creativity.

At the same time, imagine that such building is intensely connected with several places on Earth, through real time network telecommunication systems, like the Internet.

And a building performing an orbital path designed in way to always put it physically near to practically everywhere on Earth.

Surely, some will immediately consider such a project a utopia – however, utopias never are the impossible, but always what is surprisingly possible.

Architecture is the subtle balance between function and challenging structures of space, which will trigger new structures of thought in a nonverbal dimension.

Architecture is process.

Of course, Kairos is not about a complete architectural design – it is a draft, a preliminary study, and a concept.

The interiors are articulated by movable walls, which turn possible the easy redesign of different geometrical shapes in space.

Another very important characteristic of the building is its deprogrammable design. Because of it, all its spaces can be easily transformed according to different programs, to different functions.

Thus, a same space can be easily changed to different uses, depending on the number and quality of people.

It also is a building that can be easily expanded or reduced, with articulated sealing elements, made in flexible anti ballistic fabric, and totally structured in independent modules that can be interconnected.

Contrarily to any spacecraft of any nature made until now, Kairos is not a tubular construction.

Tubular systems used in spacecrafts were born from missile design, which gave form to the rockets, including the manned ones. It is the best aerodynamic design for elements traveling in high velocity in a dense medium like air; but surely it is not for a place where there is no air.

Differently of virtually all space constructions until now, Kairos is made of flexible anti ballistic fabric, being each module assembled in three structural curve bars.

All material is taken to space and assembled in the structural bars. The material is light and flexible until it is mounted.

The walls are made of anti ballistic fabric, in two layers, having water in between – also constituting, in this way, the water reservoir of the building.

The layer of water between the walls, beyond to be an important reservoir for the building, also is an excellent protection against cosmic rays and represents an excellent endothermic factor.

Differences of temperature in space are tremendously high, because there is no factor of diffusion, like the air. So, in the faces oriented to the Sun, temperature is extremely high, with the opposite effect on the faces in shadow.

The water layer between the fabric walls is interconnected all over the building. In this way, they constitute a system of communicating vessels, balancing the high differences of temperature. When there is no gravity, such a phenomenon of communicating vessels is negatively affected, but it remains the fact of expansion of matter under heat, and it is predicted mechanical devices to increase the water circulation inside the walls.

That layer between walls permits the access to water in any place of the building. And water seems to be the basic element of life.

The face oriented to Earth is made with transparent material, more fragile. The double walls, with water in between them, constitute the other faces. This is also a strategic design, because meteorites never travel against gravity. So, the risk of crash of meteorites against that transparent wall is eliminated. On the other hand, the design doesn't eliminate the risk of chock of debris in orbit.

The three structural bars that form each module distribute along the walls energy and information. In this way, like what happens with water, also energy and information are easily accessed in any part of the building, turning possible an efficient deprogrammable design.

The most advanced challenge to architecture is gravity. Together with hypercomunication, which includes virtual reality - gravity is the sign par excellence of a new civilizational leasp.

And gravity also conditions much of our sensory space orientation.

We have three physical reference sensory elements for spatial orientation: our ears, our stomach sensors connected to proprioception and our visual field.

And we have three main visual axes of spatial orientation: top and down, right and left, front and back.
Inside tubular systems the person loses two of those three visual axes, consequently losing great part of spatial orientation.

Geometrical non-cylindrical or tubular three-dimensional environments can generate references for the vertical sense establish on Earth. According to David Smitherman and Wallace McClure, from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, “based upon the experience of US and Russian astronauts on Skylab, Mir, and the Shuttle, some persons may be very uncomfortable without a local vertical reference, and subtle clues should be maintained in the passenger accommodations areas to ease this physiological circumstance.

The dynamic architectural design of Kairos doesn't privilege right angles, in ninety degrees – which are typical in practically all gravitational structures of weight and support.

Contrarily to tubular structures, the architectural design of Kairos permits the creation of all kinds of angles – and the creation of all kinds of geometrical three-dimensional shapes. And, contrarily to tubular spaces, it can be easily designed well-defined non-cylindrical spaces inside Kairos– keeping active the three visual axes of spatial orientation.

In this way, it makes possible to design in the interior architectural space clear geometrical forms quickly apprehended and memorized by people.

Theodore W. Hall alerts to the fact that “without a stable gravitational reference, crew members experience arbitrary and unexpected changes in their sense of verticality”.

Possibly, the strategy adopted in Kairos could minimize such effect.

According to the space psychologist Philip Robert Harris, the “vestibular system balance in the inner ear is influenced by information from the eye; in zero gravity the vestibular organ fails to work at first because lack of gravity sends mixed signals as to what is up or down, but after two days in orbit the brain learns to ignore the input from the vestibular system and accepts the information from the eye as correct; on return to Earth, astronauts are visually programmed, and it again takes two days to readapt to maintain an upright body position – blindfolds can accelerate the process”.

Thus, with Kairos' interior design, or with the large possibilities of its deprogrammable system, visual references can be easily worked for more comfort of the visitors.

Energy is a fundamental factor in an orbital building.

Each eleven square feet of solar panel is able to capture up to 100 Watts.

The International Space Station has about 1,200 square feet of solar panels, capturing about 10 kW, or 10 thousand Watts, for six people – the population of the station.

Kairos will have about 34,500 square feet of solar panels distributed on the two layers, or two sections of each module. They will generate about 320 kW, thirty-two times that of the International Space Station – only in one of its modules.

If we take the formation of five possible modules, we would have 1600 kW per hour.

Between the solar panels layers and the building, it will be an empty space for heat dissipation. Dissipation without atmosphere works according to a different principle, that of radiation.

The empty space between the buildings and the solar panels oriented to the Sun also works as a protection barrier against cosmic radiation.

As Kairos is defined under a SSO Sun Synchronous Orbit, which makes possible a continuous solar power supply.

Taking as reference the information about energy consumption at the International Space Station, Kairos would be able to receive up to one hundred seventy-four guests each time, only in one module. In its five module possible formation, Kairos could receive almost one thousand visitants each time!

Of course, this is not a reasonable number both because of the size of the building and of security reasons.

Some people have questioned about a connection of Kairos and the works of art and science.

To work on art and science is not about to have one illustrating the other. It is to take from one of those worlds discoveries and insights that will support the other. It is to implant metabolic revolutions after discoveries and insights.

Hegel argued that art and science are placed in opposite poles of a same process. According to him, art would depart from laws and arrive to relations of quality. Science would start from quality, discovering and establishing new laws. Art and science mean to deal with laws and relations of quality in a permanent philosophical questioning.

Therefore, science is not engineering, or the so-called applied sciences.

Like art, science also is philosophy – and this is their strongest link: to be beyond laws and qualities.

Kairos is not only an architectural design in the old sense of the expression. In its complex while project, beyond all architectural drawings, images and concept, a series of visual artworks is generated.

The paradoxical approach to curve and straight lines, of non-linear curves, of the proportion of human dimensions broken through the conflict of different sets of images, projects a series of drawings that are much beyond the technical elements and information about the building.

Such artworks reveal the fusion between technique and image, art and science, in a series of drawings that establishes, at the same time, a strong connection with the audience – also because of the hidden order defined by the human proportions – and a deep strangeness generated by all kinds of visual conflicts at a logical level.

The whole process projects new logical complexes, beyond traditional logical elements – like those present in our predicative systems of language, verbal or non-verbal.

Only difference generates consciousness.

Until now, since the appearance of the first hominid - about five million years ago or even more - we have experienced a continuous process of human expansion on planet Earth.

During such period of millions of years, certainly, the principal instrument of human expansion was the war.

Now, this process of expansion reached its limit. Nowadays, the human being is already present everywhere in the world - an expansion is no longer possible. Thus, after millions of years, a new logic of civilization will surely substitute that tool known as war.

There is no longer place on Earth for human expansion, and this fact changed the environmental logical conditions.

It can take some time for the war be eradicated - or for a devastating war eliminate much of the world population and restore the old principle of human expansion. The idea underlined in Kairos implies to consider the first scenario as true.

The scale of human relations is definitively changed.

A new process of life and social articulation emerges as result of the new media that is planet Earth.

Wouldn't be exactly this what John Wheeler, always brilliantly, said about the reality as a participatory Universe in all its levels?

All this reminds me John Cage when he said: "I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry".

 

      
Our little
      Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which
      is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.
      (...) Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and
      designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for
      two million years not even knowing that they were on board a
      ship.

      
Richard Buckminster
      Fuller