I grew up watching Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999, longing for spaceships with a mechanical look. Not a Tesla but a DeLorean; in Star Wars, not Padmé Amidala's smooth Naboo starship but Han Solo's machine-like Millennium Falcon. The boy became a student and, by luck, landed a summer open-desk at Makoto Sei Watanabe's office, making models for the Aoyama Technical College. It lasted only a month, but turning sketches into plastic models was thrilling. Those mechanical bumps and ridges take a frightening amount of time; for anyone who loves building plastic models, that time is irresistible. AI is taking that thrilling time away from us. Architecture's value runs against being finished quickly. Like Gaudí's buildings or a fine spirit, people believe what takes longer is worth more, and AI, by the nature of its trade, cannot understand this. AI and Han Solo's Falcon are both asked for one thing: speed. It is ironic: cutting the time turns a work of art into something as worthless as a pebble.
Panels, seams and small raised parts cover the hull. On a plastic model, each of these would take an evening. The worn, weathered look needs layer upon layer of paint, and that work is a joy. The AI draws it all in an instant, and has taken that pleasure away from us.
A steel stair and deck hang below the hull. The moment a ship gets a stair to the ground, it stops being a vehicle and becomes a house. It seems to be thinking about transforming, too.
The ship rests on a rock pedestal, like a house on a cliff. It looks as if it landed here once and decided never to leave. Was this landscape of sand and rock the home of Tochiro, from Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999?
