Futurium Noosphere

Testbed

Edited by Philip Beesley

Living Architecture Systems Group

Noosphere is a spherical structure embedded with artificial intelligence. High-powered lights pulse and shimmer while densely gathered fronds shiver. When viewers wave and gesture, dozens of miniature computers answer with intricate patterns of light, sound, and motion. The double-shell sphere structure demonstrates how architecture could be built in the future, using lightweight metal lattices interwoven with arrays of high-fidelity, omnidirectional speakers that produce a collection of individual sounds organized in layered waves, rising to intense crescendos and softening to gentle whispers. The embedded multi-channel acoustic soundscape was developed with the Amsterdam-based 4DSOUND, led by artist Salvador Breed and engineer Poul Holleman.

The LASG was selected to present Noosphere as a prototype that suggests how new kinds of relationships between buildings and visitors could emerge.Located in Berlin’s city center, Futurium gGmbH is a cultural hub for visions made possible using science and technology. The building includes works by artists and scientists working in bio-design, artificial intelligence, and architecture. Noosphere derives from the Greek word ‘Noos’ meaning ‘knowing.’ The title refers to life on Earth as a vast organism with a thinking skin. The term noosphere was coined by the theologian and geologist Teilhard de Chardin, offering an optimistic vision where the Earth could evolve as a whole organism. In the next stage of evolution, the noosphere could transform the earth with a collective consciousness, and even mutual sympathy and empathy.