Ich lasse mich auf ein Experiment ein. In Auroville wird eine Stadt gebaut. Sie ist der Menschheit gewidmet. Es geht um die Erforschung des Bewusstseins, um Spiritualität und Einheit. Die UNESCO unterstützt das Projekt, der Staat Indien, viele Menschen auf der Welt. Es gibt eine Charta, einen Plan, viele Pläne, viele Meinungen, Fortschritt und Schwierigkeiten. Nobody is perfect…
I'm going there to help, so I don't want to comment before I get there. That would be completely presumptuous. But I wonder what I'm looking for or hoping to find there. Who does something like this, building a city that wants to function without money and constraints? Why doesn't everyone do it? How do you do something like that?
Most cities have somehow grown historically, there was a first settlement at some point, then agriculture and construction. Prosperity and war with neighbors. Growth, destruction, reconstruction ... Probably in between, ideas from rulers or architects. Sometimes things were improved, sometimes interests were asserted. Sometimes there were a few profiteers, sometimes the community benefited, sometimes both together or against each other. This organic growth can be seen in cities. If you know how to read them, you can see and feel this history through the architecture, the streets and street names, the fountains and parks, the schools and administrative buildings, the villas and factories; it is lived, it is real. The material determines the consciousness. This organic structure is used, questioned, shaped, it suppresses and enables, it inspires or depresses.
Define goals?
But when you build a new city, what are the guidelines? What is the purpose? How should a society be organized? Should an architect come up with something or should a community think it through together? I think this is where it starts to get complicated. Perhaps a community agrees on a plan. How does such a process work? You think about: how many people should live there, what do they need? Housing, food, education. Who does what?
What is it all about? Is it to be a settlement that produces an economic surplus, is militarily strong, is dedicated to the arts, is spiritual? Is it a city that imposes strong rules on itself or relies on respect? What principles should there be? It took us thousands of years to formulate human rights. Surely they should apply there too, right? And what else, or what else not?
Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller - there are architects and artists' visions. But also political ideas: the Commune, the kibbutz, the collective. There are entrepreneurs, such as Werner von Siemens. Scientists are making plans for a city on the moon or Mars. The question has often been asked and often answered. How do we deal with this discourse? Do we want to learn from the mistakes of the generals, for example? Would that help?
Did Atlantis exist? What is relevant?
