Besides simply illustrating my current project and testing out a particular perspective, I’m playing here with using elements that aren’t normally included in a rendering made from a digital 3D model, for instance hatches (positioned in 3D space, on the “water” surface here) and text (positioned behind the building, and exploded into curves). I’ve also saved in the model the sort of throw-away guide lines that used to be referred to as “defpoints” (in the AutoCAD world), and through layering of captured viewports in Photoshop I have made them faintly visible as the digital equivalent of pentimenti.
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The year is 2279. Dutch adigitect Bartel Hendriks (they, them), renowned EOA member and enthused maritime treasure hunter, was finally able to complete his excentric vision of the Dordrecht Dyer Beacon, located in the South Rotterdam Sea.
15 years earlier, then newly elected European Chancellor Vitaskic Aavìk and the prominent European Sea And Wildlife Committee had chosen Hendriks from 42 international finalists. Hendriks and most of the other contestants had played it safe. Their designs were prominently protoclassical, a style largely inspired by the neoclassical continental architecture of Schinkel, Rondelet, and others from 19th century. Where Hendriks managed to set themself apart was by including upcycled solar modules - an obsolete, low-energy-yielding relic from the period remembered as the Great Cleft spanning from the 20th to the mid of 22nd century and whose aftermath is still felt -, as decorative, shingle-like roof elements.
The last thing Hendriks wanted to be known as was a clefter - a misguided, ignorant human -, but their gamble finally paid of, also thanks to world-renowned protoclassicist Yevgeny Snowden from the Second Russian Empire retracting their proposal. The latter’s affair with Sea and Wildlife Committee leader Greta Jørgensen, a descendent of radical Great Cleft environmentalist Thunberg, posed a conflict of interest, when it got leaked to OmniWeb v5.1, and Snowden probably got some unwanted attention from the European Human Decency Bureau.
The construction of the beacon turned out a challenge. Two androids were decapitated and a human injured, while transporting the solar modules from the great Alpine garbage dumps north. Their hovercraft was ambushed by drones in the Bavarian Sands, a desert region largely dominated by different neo-Christian warlords, said to be financed by technogarchs from the Great Reunited States of America, a Judaeo-Christian hegemony from across the Greater Atlantic Ocean.
Construction ceased for about 11 years, until the nostalgic catchy tune “On n’aurais jamais dû surfer la Kali Yuga” from Franco-Luxembourgish proto-vr-pop band, the Beach Bikinis, took the European Song Contest by storm. Construction of the beacon resumed soon after, exactly why is still subject to speculation. Historians think the cause, rather than the song, to be the rapid decline of stone and steel prices, after the completion of the first European Super Chimney on the inhabited island of Small Britain, reaching a breathtaking 5.2 kilometers in height, and thus depassing the Beijing 千兆烟囱 by exactly 1.34 centimeters.
The whereabouts of Bartel Hendriks are currently unknown. His metapedia article mentions that he has joined the Mormons on Luna, but that could have been written by anybody really.
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Well, the narrative that I created to drive this project is probably no great improvement over that, Marc, but I felt that I should stick with the more technical aspects of Rhino 3d modeling and rendering here and leave the crazed architectural fantasy for my Instagram accounts and website.
…I imagine that one could produce the whole thing in about five minutes, along with the"backstory", with the appropriate prompts for some generative AI. And maybe that would be for the best.
But what would be the fun in that?
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