The STX shipyard in Turku, Finland has just delivered the world’s largest cruise liner ever built. Called The Allure of the Seas it’s capable of housing 6,300 passengers and 2,100 staff, and at approximately five times the size of the Titanic, it is in effect the largest self contained mobile town in the world. Everything about it is big, one lifeboat alone from this ship can hold 370 people, it’s 17 floors ranks it as one of the tallest buildings in Finland if it was only on dry land. Just check out the twin apartment blocks facing each other with sports facilities on the roof (stand up Corbusier’s Unite de’Habitation).
Of course it has everything needed for people to live and enjoy themselves, quoting from the HS article;
The inside of the ship includes shopping streets with bars, cafes, and restaurants, a park, a theatre, an ice theatre, an aquatic theatre, an amusement park for children with carousels and all, hobby and meeting places for teenagers (whatever that means…ed!), a basketball court, a rock-climbing wall, and naturally a casino.
Also of interest is that this ship already includes what the future will be for us on dry land. The whole ship is cash free, clients accounts are automatically billed. Money along with other hassles in the outside world have been abolished. Styling inside is modern Vegas, part exclusive hotel part high class ‘experience’ shopping centre, an edited version of real life only the everything designed to try to drain your wallet as quickly as possible.
Walking City 2010 & Alternative Theories
Buildings like this ship have been in the past part of the Architectural debate, it is beyond tempting to draw the parallel with Archigram’s Walking Cities by Ron Herron. Herrons’ city walked and floated to where their residents could enjoy more freedom or better water supply or just sunnier weather. We see this across so many Archigram projects that have in effect been at least partially realised by the US military or big box retailers, or in some other way, that show how prescient the works of Archigrams buildings were in at least some limited way. Buildings like foxconn city are one extreme manifestation of modern plug in city while Allure of the Seas is the flip side of the same coin.
In opposition to Archigram and to some extent the Situationists, Baudrillard would have seen this ship as part of modern cultures Deterrance Strategy a process of the seduction of the image in which the escapism in the pleasures of the Allure of The Seas distracts us from the unreality of the modern world.
However whatever this mega ship means to modern theories it is worth discussing and analysing for Architects. I believe there is much to be found in criticism of this ship as it is not only a built environment but a rethought society at some level.
Fractured Debate
In starting this post I wanted only to cover what I thought was an important ‘building’ and topic of discussion which has been up to now overlooked. But in writing this I find myself having wistfully wondering about the arbitrary boundaries we put up around ‘Architecture’ sometimes. Maybe the Allure of The Seas could provide us with some lessons about where we want our cities to go in the future and where we don’t want them to go? Moreover where is the discussion in Finland about what is the biggest most significant building produced here this year? It’s not part of the section labelled ‘proper architecture’ and so isn’t discussed. What was being forseen or discussed in the 60′s and 70′s in theoretical Architecture, as part of the Architectural discussion is partly being realised now, however the Architectural discussion around the Allure of the Seas is now absent. The built future is being made, in Finland, and Finnish Architecture has nothing to say about it.
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