With The Venus Project, 93 year old Jacque Fresco, a multi-disciplinarian and futurist, has created an all-encompassing alternative to the society we live in today. Fresco recently visited Copenhagen as part of the event COP Kreativ, where he talked about de signing the future. If you weren’t near Copenhagen, or if you happened to miss his lecture, you can read here about his ideas of how we can create a better world.
The Venus Project presents an alternative design of our culture. It suggests an achievable path to a better future through connecting the latest technological developments directly to the social system. The idea is that through education, research and using what we already know, we can abolish poverty, war, starvation, crime, and even taxes. — Jacque Fresco
There aren’t many alternatives, thoroughly conceived societal models left, nor are there many practical idea lists. The Venus Project and its creator, American Jacque Fresco (1916) are examples of both.
The Venus Project is at once futuristic architecture, technological futures studies, a sociological project, and an all-encompassing model of how we can improve the world on many levels, in particular, the economy and the environment. It is the brainchild of multi-disciplinarian and futurist Jacque Fresco — who is now 93 years old — and uses words, images, videos, photos, and architectonic models to describe a potential future.
The work has been developed by Fresco himself together with his wife, Roxanne Meadows, and a large number of volunteers worldwide. It is a life’s work in the true sense of the word — a work that both has been the centre of the creator’s life and has taken most of a life time to realize. At the same time, the word gesamtkunstwerk is appropriate, for just like Arne Jacobsen — who, among other things, designed SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen from its exterior shape down to details like door handles, chests of drawers, and coffee spoons (as well as the famous chair the Swan) — Fresco has thought about everything.
The Venus Project is a single, unified idea for a better world and hence very close to what we normally call a utopia. However, according to its creator, it is something else:
“The Venus Project is not a utopian concept, Jacque Fresco clarifies. We do not believe in the erroneous notion of a utopian society. There is no such thing. Societies are always in a state of transition. We propose an alternative direction, which addresses the causes of many of our problems. There are no final frontiers for human and technological achievement.”
The Idea
Fresco recently visited Copenhagen as a part of COP Kreativ, a climate event for Danish design and architecture students, where he talked about designing the future. If you weren’t near Copenhagen, or if you happened to miss his lecture, you missed his explanation of what the Venus Project is really about.
Is the project architecture? Design? Politics? Sustainability? Economy? The answer is: all of the above!
The Venus Project presents an alternative design of our culture. It suggests an achievable path to a better future through connecting the latest technological developments directly to the social system. The idea is that through education, research and using what we already know, we can abolish poverty, war, starvation, crime, and even taxes.
There is no place to hide today,” Jacque Fresco says, ”because you can’t hide from human instability. War, weapons, corruption seem to dominate everywhere. Our primary goal, and our primary reason for the project, is to make these things belong to the past.
”There is no place to hide today,” Jacque Fresco says, in good accordance with the Institute’s ideas about No Comfort Zones, ”because you can’t hide from human instability. War, weapons, corruption seem to dominate everywhere. Our primary goal, and our primary reason for the project, is to make these things belong to the past.”
As stated in one of the many presentation videos about the project that you can find on YouTube, “These goals are not merely a paper proclamation. They can be translated into physical reality if, as a society, we choose to do so. A democracy that doesn’t ensure the basic necessities of life is meaningless.”
