The following outlines the tasks and logistics associated with deploying to New York City a large scale (three meter) functional model of SPERANOVA. At present, this is seen as the only means by which the concept of this idea can be communicated in sufficient detail and with sufficient interaction for the basic IDEA of the concept to compete with more conventional approaches.

The original intention was to have a poster and web site with an animation available for the ULI and WEF meetings which were back-to-back in late January 2002. This was seen as a possible way to gain sponsorship for building the model and developing an RDS as the means for sharing the concept through an interactive process. This goal was not achievable given other work priorities. After spending a week in New York at the WEF in January/February, I realize that little was lost. There is still far too much noise in the system for the kind of interactive and collaborative process necessary for a proper solution. An art galley is displaying a number of concepts by various architects. This may facilitate a new level of dialog. It may also open up people’s sense of the possible and help them look beyond today’s thinking much of which is highly interactive.

A model showing the World game functionally requires a significant effort involving a large number of people and organizations. It requires a sophisticated web site and other collateral materials. The skill sets required to produce this complex artifact this ranges from model building to electronics, from web site design to research, from design to engineering. For this idea to have a chance it must be well worked out and credible in it’s presentation.

The best option is to display the model in a full RDS environment and conduct a series of DesignShops, in NYC and various areas of the country, to both further develop the idea and build support for it. It would be possible to do this by the third quarter of 2002 if sufficient financial resources are made available soon. It will be interesting to see if a response of this scale can be made in time while the window is open for an approach as radical as this design is. The great likelihood is that the new building will be “designed” politically long before it is designed as a work of architecture. The level of integration necessary - as a technical system - and as an economic engine, will also be difficult to accomplish in today’s political environment.

The Model

At ten times the size of the rough model we made in December, the Sphere will be five feet in diameter. This will provide a sense of the real thing, as well as, the size necessary to demonstrate the Work Game process. The model is conceived to have three key features:

At this scale and with being placed on a sufficient base, the viewer will perceive the model more or less as s/he would from the plaza level. This will provide a realism necessary for the true nature and impact of the building to be felt.

A nice interactive feature will be the model explaining itself in response to viewers questions.

Sponsorship

Fred Stitt has already said that he will provide credits for a semester course. I believe that the Stanford design school will do the same. I believe that many of our corporate clients will be willing to do the same thing.

With the launch of the speranova.com web site, we can start the the recruitment and sponsoring process. As a rough guess, we will need about 15 students, a $100,000 in cash and significant hardware and software contributions from corporations to build the model. We will also require about a hundred thousand to deploy the RDS and a place to show it while in NY. The cost of DesignShop-like interactions will be another 200 thousand or so even with considerable contribution of time on the part of KnowledgeWorkers. In all, this is a million dollar program no matter how you cut it.

The first step of this, then, is to build the web-sites (.com and .org) and get someone to organize the resourse gathering process.

Immersive Media
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