SHUYA XU
Urban Designer, who interested in engaging herself in a life-long experiment of exploring the variety and uncertainty of multi-scale spatial design by interdisciplinary collaboration.
Space Odyssey
Neck of the Moon
Jacques Rougerie Competition, 2015, First Prize
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Jia Weng, Mingchuan Yang, Shuya Xu, Hsin-Han Lee, Sihao Xiong
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Jia Weng, Mingchuan Yang, Shuya Xu, Hsin-Han Lee, Sihao Xiong
“Orbital debris poses a risk to continued reliable use of space-based services and operations and to the safety of persons and property in space and on
Earth,” observe NASA and the European Space Agency. This problem is especially significant in geostationary orbits, where satellites cluster over their primary ground targets and share with space debris the same orbital path. At that height as well, orbital debris will norm
ally continue circling the Earth for centuries or more. New satellites are
continuing to be launched at a growth rate of over a hundred each year and most of these launches will contribute to increase the risks and detrimental effects of Earth’s orbiting junkyard.
The project proposes to clean up the orbital environment by compacting targeted space debris into a new satellite planet that orbits the Earth. Rather than displacing the debris to a
lower altitude, a large tug with a robotic arm approaches and compacts large objects at high altitudes. In a continuous development from atom to nebula, the compacted mass grows organically into planet Laika, the earth’s second moon. For Laika was appropriately a stray creature that orbited the earth; its cyborg namesake was similarly once propelled from the earth. They have a vital generative role in humanity’s journey into the space and information age. We are Odysseus as we travel collectively from ape to human and eventually, after leaving the planet, to starman-angel.
Earth,” observe NASA and the European Space Agency. This problem is especially significant in geostationary orbits, where satellites cluster over their primary ground targets and share with space debris the same orbital path. At that height as well, orbital debris will norm
ally continue circling the Earth for centuries or more. New satellites are
continuing to be launched at a growth rate of over a hundred each year and most of these launches will contribute to increase the risks and detrimental effects of Earth’s orbiting junkyard.
The project proposes to clean up the orbital environment by compacting targeted space debris into a new satellite planet that orbits the Earth. Rather than displacing the debris to a
lower altitude, a large tug with a robotic arm approaches and compacts large objects at high altitudes. In a continuous development from atom to nebula, the compacted mass grows organically into planet Laika, the earth’s second moon. For Laika was appropriately a stray creature that orbited the earth; its cyborg namesake was similarly once propelled from the earth. They have a vital generative role in humanity’s journey into the space and information age. We are Odysseus as we travel collectively from ape to human and eventually, after leaving the planet, to starman-angel.
Space Odyssey
COSMORAMA:
MINING THE SKY, PLANETARY ARK, AND PACIFIC CEMETERY
United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Dimensions of Citizenship, 2018
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Reid Fellenbaum, Jia Jane Weng, Kelly Koh, Shuya Xu, Monica Hutton, Rawan Al-Saffar, Lex Agnew, Garine Boghossian, Ranu Singh, Tianwei Yen, Sihao Xiong
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Reid Fellenbaum, Jia Jane Weng, Kelly Koh, Shuya Xu, Monica Hutton, Rawan Al-Saffar, Lex Agnew, Garine Boghossian, Ranu Singh, Tianwei Yen, Sihao Xiong
Cosmorama responds to current issues that shape humanity’s relationship to the cosmos in three geostories: “Mining the Sky,” “Planetary Ark,” and “Pacific Cemetery.” These geographic fictions render visible important matters unaccounted for in the technological triumphalism and frontier narratives of the Space Age. They project some of humanity’s present environmental and political hopes and fears, and bring forth these same systems and their attributes as generators of a renewed planetary imagination.
“Mining the Sky” speculates on the landscapes of the 2015 SPACE Act (Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act) that recognized the right of US citizens to engage in the exploitation of extraplanetary resources, arguably in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that prevents any state from exercising “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” This new franchising of outer space is expected to accelerate the nascent NewSpace entrepreneurial movement as companies such as Planetary Resources plan to extract billions of dollars worth of ore from near-Earth asteroids. The captured asteroids will be de-spun and towed to a mining depot at the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange, a position where the combined gravitational pulls from the two celestial objects constitute a stable equilibrium point. Robotic arms process the asteroid. They either hollow out the asteroid collecting the trail of debris in the fabricated cave or mine the surface to carve out the face of the gods of the new space age. The mining station serves human settlements through the Interplanetary Transport Network, requiring minimal energy for an object to travel through such gravitationally determined highways through the solar system. The extraction stations constitute the first artificial constellation visible to human eye from Earth.
“Planetary Ark” is a collection of living animals that were launched into space on scientific missions to test the survivability of spaceflight for the human body, as well as other species currently threatened by the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history. Now that climate change and uncertain futures define a new normal on Earth, animal species at (or past) the brink of extinction are sent out, each in its cubicle, on an ark to the International Space Station. Once funding for the most expensive structure ever built is discontinued in 2024, the International Space Station is repurposed into a microcosm of scientific experiments on forms of life, what it means to be human, and the making of worlds. It is also a place of last refuge, where some scientists can tend to creatures with remarkable care, in spite of their imminent disappearance. A few thousand years later, the offspring of these “fellow travelers” embark on a journey to resettle the Earth.
“Pacific Cemetery” is a vortex spiral island where decommissioned satellites and other space debris are brought back from orbit and recycled at Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean. Over the next decades, thousands of satellites will be launched into space and eventually decommissioned after fifteen years of operation. Building on the precedent of the Pacific Proving Grounds, in which the United States secured an agreement with the United Nations to conduct nuclear testing at sites in the Pacific Ocean between 1946 and 1962, the US designates Point Nemo as the Strategic Trust Territory of the Space Age. At more than 1,400 nautical miles from the nearest land, Point Nemo is already the cemetery of de-orbited spacecraft, such as the Soviet-era MIR space station, the Jules Verne ATV and other European Space Agency cargo ships, and a SpaceX rocket. Also dubbed the Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility, Point Nemo is the landfill of the Space Age. It is a planetary terraforming project, in which the vestiges of space objects are recycled into bits of sovereignty to house climate refugees from Pacific Islands. The strategic area directive also proclaims that the United States would promote the economic advancement, self-sufficiency, and right to self-determination of such planetary refugees against the disappearance of their lands.
“Mining the Sky” speculates on the landscapes of the 2015 SPACE Act (Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act) that recognized the right of US citizens to engage in the exploitation of extraplanetary resources, arguably in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that prevents any state from exercising “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” This new franchising of outer space is expected to accelerate the nascent NewSpace entrepreneurial movement as companies such as Planetary Resources plan to extract billions of dollars worth of ore from near-Earth asteroids. The captured asteroids will be de-spun and towed to a mining depot at the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange, a position where the combined gravitational pulls from the two celestial objects constitute a stable equilibrium point. Robotic arms process the asteroid. They either hollow out the asteroid collecting the trail of debris in the fabricated cave or mine the surface to carve out the face of the gods of the new space age. The mining station serves human settlements through the Interplanetary Transport Network, requiring minimal energy for an object to travel through such gravitationally determined highways through the solar system. The extraction stations constitute the first artificial constellation visible to human eye from Earth.
“Planetary Ark” is a collection of living animals that were launched into space on scientific missions to test the survivability of spaceflight for the human body, as well as other species currently threatened by the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history. Now that climate change and uncertain futures define a new normal on Earth, animal species at (or past) the brink of extinction are sent out, each in its cubicle, on an ark to the International Space Station. Once funding for the most expensive structure ever built is discontinued in 2024, the International Space Station is repurposed into a microcosm of scientific experiments on forms of life, what it means to be human, and the making of worlds. It is also a place of last refuge, where some scientists can tend to creatures with remarkable care, in spite of their imminent disappearance. A few thousand years later, the offspring of these “fellow travelers” embark on a journey to resettle the Earth.
“Pacific Cemetery” is a vortex spiral island where decommissioned satellites and other space debris are brought back from orbit and recycled at Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean. Over the next decades, thousands of satellites will be launched into space and eventually decommissioned after fifteen years of operation. Building on the precedent of the Pacific Proving Grounds, in which the United States secured an agreement with the United Nations to conduct nuclear testing at sites in the Pacific Ocean between 1946 and 1962, the US designates Point Nemo as the Strategic Trust Territory of the Space Age. At more than 1,400 nautical miles from the nearest land, Point Nemo is already the cemetery of de-orbited spacecraft, such as the Soviet-era MIR space station, the Jules Verne ATV and other European Space Agency cargo ships, and a SpaceX rocket. Also dubbed the Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility, Point Nemo is the landfill of the Space Age. It is a planetary terraforming project, in which the vestiges of space objects are recycled into bits of sovereignty to house climate refugees from Pacific Islands. The strategic area directive also proclaims that the United States would promote the economic advancement, self-sufficiency, and right to self-determination of such planetary refugees against the disappearance of their lands.
Space Odyssey
Pacific Aquarium
Oslo Architecture Triennale, After Belonging, 2016
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Reid Fellenbaum, Ya Suo, Jia Weng, Shuya Xu, Saswati Das, with initial contributions from Rixt Woudstra
Project Team:
El Hadi Jazairy + Rania Ghosn
Reid Fellenbaum, Ya Suo, Jia Weng, Shuya Xu, Saswati Das, with initial contributions from Rixt Woudstra
The Pacific Aquarium portrays the overlapping concerns of ecology and economy in the Pacific Ocean, where the projected 1 million square meters of deep-sea mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone could constitute the greatest footprint of human activity in what is considered the largest continuous ecological unit. The project appropriates the object of the aquarium to take aim at the abysmal distance between our selfish economic worries and the great scales of the earth. Rather than an image of the ocean that lies outside of human activity, the aquarium channels our sense of wonder to stage environmental externalities as an intimate part of the political constituency of the Earth. Each aquarium constructs a section of the world in which the externalities of resource exploitation and climate change are weaved into spatial scales, temporalities, and species beyond the human. Collectively, the nine aquariums reclaim the production of nature into public controversies by connecting political ecology with speculative design and collective aesthetic experience.
