Christmas lighting has become a mad race in which half the planet competes to see who has the tallest tree and the brightest city. But beyond the pungent energy impact, light pollution kills insects and birds, and prevents us from seeing the sky. Today the Kings of the East would have serious difficulties to be able to follow the star of the East which, according to the Gospels, guided them to the manger where Christ was born. The tradition of the mysterious star, whose explanation could have its origin in an astronomical phenomenon caused by a planetary conjunction, is deeply rooted and is alluded to in the entire iconography of Christmas lights.
So, if everything comes from a single point of light in the sky, why don’t we return the Christmas lighting at the foot of the street to its place of origin, the planetary orbit? Convert all this display of lights into a new star of Bethlehem that would be seen during these dates from many corners of the world?
It sounds like science fiction, the brainchild of a utopian or crazy mind, but it is technologically possible. There is already a prototype satellite ready to be developed and sent into space. It is called Espill, it has been designed by the Takk architecture studio and will be exhibited from December 11 in the lobby of the Dhub. It is the Christmas kite that Barcelona offers to the world. “This is not an engineering project, although technologically it would be feasible, but a speculative design proposal, an artifact that enables a conversation about the new masters of the atmosphere that are colonizing low orbit, about which has the right to send a new light into the sky… Because when we think we have conquered all possible frontiers, it turns out that we are conquering new frontiers. The human capacity to seek new places of extraction is never exhausted. And the darkness of the sky will be a new good to fight and protect”, argues José Luis de Vicente, the artistic director of the Dhub.
To open the debate about a present that only ten years ago would have seemed unimaginable, De Vicente has turned to the Takk architecture studio, founded by Mireia Luzárraga (Madrid, 1981) and Alejandro Muiño (Barcelona, ??1982), creators of radical and transformative proposals that invite critical thinking. The 57 mylar mirrors – a reflective plastic material – that will cover the spherical structure of the satellite – currently a sculpture – with a diameter of four meters have just arrived at his studio in L’Hospitalet. The mirrors would reflect sunlight and cause explosions on Earth at zero energy cost. After Christmas, Espill would turn 180 degrees on itself and, with its back to the celestial body, would disappear from the firmament. “It’s as if you could turn the Eastern Star on and off every year,” says Luzárraga.
The idea of ??redirecting sunlight using space mirrors to illuminate, say, a shadowy mountainside has been around for 100 years, and in 1992 Russia managed to project an extra amount of light onto Earth for one day equivalent to a Moon. “It is one of the techniques proposed by geoengineering to reverse climate change, although it is still very controversial, among other things because it would be like operating on the patient’s body without having been able to rehearse before”, explains De Vicente.
In reality, he adds, the project is designed to deliberately cause something that is happening accidentally”. down The Starlink [owned by US tech entrepreneur Elon Musk] and OneWeb [partly owned by the British government] satellites shine not because they were designed to, but as a result of reflection from the sun. More and more artificial celestial bodies are illuminated in the sky. This is of great concern to scientists, as it begins to disrupt or make astronomical observations even in the most remote dark places impossible.”
So what’s the point of sending a new light? The director of the Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) and researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (HISSI) of the CSIC Ignasi Ribas, who has advised Takk on the Espill project, is initially reluctant with the idea that “put something into orbit for human entertainment”. However, if this were to replace all the Christmas lights on the planet “we could start talking about it, although we would have to do the numbers and see if that would work out”.
In any case, admits Ribes, once the project has been developed after completing the engineering studies, there would be no impediment to sending the satellite into space if certain regulations were met and you have enough money to pay for the ticket. How much? I don’t dare to calculate it. A rocket flight costs around 200 million euros. If it is shared with others, the price is shared among all, but just occupying 1% of the space is already 2 million. We can be talking about 2, 10, 50… Many millions of euros”.
Because the big question is: Who has the right to put a light in the sky? Can civil society send satellites with other missions? There is currently no legislation prohibiting the sending of satellites, or even entire constellations of satellites, nor does it appear that there should be in the near term, although in low orbit there have been doubled since 2019 and it is estimated that in the near future the figure of 100,000 will be reached. To this should be added space junk, the more than 135,000 objects that wander aimlessly and that also generate light pollution. Scientists fear that in a few years there will be no one left who remembers what the night sky was like before the arrival of satellites and future generations will probably never be able to see the Milky Way.
“No one can claim sovereignty over space. We had the romantic idea that space was a good for all, a good for humanity”, reflects Luzárraga. But low orbit has become the new mining territory of capitalism, “the trillion dollar business is there”. The masters of the atmosphere know this well, and they are colonizing it in a kind of new space race in which rivals compete to transmit broadband Internet to the most remote places. It is worth looking up, because, adds the architect, the bottom of the oceans and orbital space will be the key points from which climate change will have to be faced. “As architects we understand design and architecture not only as a mechanism to solve a specific problem of a certain person, but as a way of building society. Here we are not saying that the star is a proposal for a solution, but a means to put the problem on the table, a way to open the debate”, points out Muiño for his part. Like Luzárraga, he is a professor at Columbia GSAPP (New York), one of the most prestigious schools of architecture in the world, under the deanship of Andrés Jaque. His projects include everything from the renovation of a flat for 10,000 euros to a portable garden in the Ronda de Sant Antoni for the Model festival.
“One of the main territories we have to conquer is our imagination, in the sense of being able to imagine new forms that allow us to find solutions to problems”, concludes De Vicente. “The Dhub started last year to propose an installation on the occasion of Christmas and this year wanted to go a little further. In this city, the subject of the nativity scene in Plaça Sant Jaume has always been very controversial, very controversial. From the Dhub I thought that we can be as experimental as we want and open a conversation. We cannot carry it out, but who knows if an Arab emirate, instead of holding a festival of light, will be encouraged to launch the Mirror”.
