Engage Hyperdrive

As Koolhaas discusses the future effects of congestion on the built environment, notably "bigness", I am tempted to consider some of the more dramatic "big" designs brought in by Sci-Fi films. Notably, this post considers the presently chained to the imagination notion of the starship. That's right, this post is about Battlestar Galactica, the Enterprise, the Death Star, or any other huge vessel swimming about the galaxies—did someone mention that the Tardis is bigger on the inside? Starships, I argue, find their design from extrapolating the ideas Koolhaas draws from projects such as the Downtown Athletic Club. Consider the similarities through Koolhaas's "Bigness" theorems—

1. Autonomous parts committed to the whole. Just like the Downtown Athletic Club, starships find themselves stuffed with varied autonomous programs. The starship frequently contains the entire city and a little bit more—some obvious examples include the ship from Wall-e and Battlestar Galactica.

2. Elevators nullify architectural procession. Star Trek has this "teleporter" thing that's even crazier than an elevator in this regard, as not even a change in travel time has any meaning.

3. The facade has nothing to do with what happens on the inside. Let's take a moment to consider the shape of the enterprise. There is nothing practical about that one. The Tardis is even sillier—"It's bigger on the inside"—not even the scale of the facade has anything to do with the design's core.

4. The structure is absolved from morality. If a built environment is even capable of a morality at all, starships break this rule—the Death Star is definitely evil. On the other hand, I'm not even sure this theorem has any validity.

5. "Its subtext is fuck context"

The Destruction of Alderaan