When the center of urban space is duplicated and radiates into its surroundings, a constitutive illusion is created which, as an ambivalent opening, frees the pictorial imagination, places certain peripheral things into a state of suspension and removes
the supporting structures from others, rendering them weightless as autonomous relics. Suddenly these appear as context-free forms, embodying the negation of the environment through their independent structure and giving the surreal spatial schema of the ›autogenous vessel‹ a visual/technical realization – even if this is only a technique of the imaginary. If such detached tectonic forms could be erected, they would float freely and call for a colonization of the sky* by renouncing the notion of being grounded and instead becoming completely decontextualized, tied neither to landscapes nor adjoining buildings. This is an enduring architectural vision whereby what is deemed impossible by statics calculations strives to become real. It is the idea of achieving the weightlessness of celestial conditions on Earth – of ›lightening‹ as a building project, which in our time can only be physically realized in the orbital domain, through the construction of a space station far removed from Earth, beyond the pull of gravity. Those disturbing images of modern-day things which have broken out of Earth’s gravity well are not without presuppositions, however: in the language games and imagery of a Belgian Surrealist, The Sense of Realities** was already ›ungrounded‹, The Voice of Space ** was heard and the attempt was made – despite unequal mass ratios – to harmonize that which weighs heavily with the essence of clouds drifting in cerulean blue. As it was difficult to take lightly what was (temporarily) light, sometimes these gravity-free states were evoked as The Flowers of the Abyss.**

** Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York 1978

** René Magritte Le sens des réalités 1963 / La voix des airs 1928 / Les fleurs d’abime 1928