This plan for an ultra-luxury upside down skyscraper inside a mountain is completely bonkers. It sounds like the brief to the architects was ‘please could you design something a Bond-villain would live in.’ If this was ever built it will feature in sci-fi films for a hundred years. Take a few minutes to watch it because the whole thing is brilliantly ludicrous. But when you do listen carefully to the language.

The Void

It opens with a Nietzsche quote but then the architect says, “Starting with the void is actually an incredible opportunity. It opens up new possibilities.”

And I think that’s exactly what God thought when he looked at the void.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

Genesis 1:2

When I think about the laws of nature that can produce snowflakes and spiral galaxies, that bring colour, beauty, wildness, majesty, weirdness and all the processes involved and what it throws up, I think I see a mind that says ‘What an incredible opportunity. The possibilities are endless!’ I think the playfulness and curiosity of God is an underappreciated quality. We think because of God’s omniscience that therefore He can’t be curious or because He know beginning from end that there’s no joy in discovery. How dull that must be for God! No, I think God delights in the almost infinite number of possibilities that symmetry, gravity and so on throw up.

At the end of the film one says, “Taking absolutely nothing and creating something totally new and exciting and filling that void with experience, technology, possibilities and learning; the scale of which the world has never seen that’s what we’ve done with Aquellum.”

And God says, ‘Exactly, that’s what I did too…with the universe.’

A journey from dark to light

There’s some ridiculous nonsense about this being ‘the metaverse that you can physically experience’ but then they say the building is designed to take you on a journey from darkness to light. As humans we are drawn to the light, we can’t help ourselves. No building would work if it was all in darkness. We want windows, views, horizons, even in the most cave like space we need, long for and look for the light. There’s no question that what is true of the physical is true of the spiritual, we are always looking for the light.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him

John 1:9–10

The garden is the pinnacle

Apparently the magnificent cloud garden is the pinnacle: a place to inspire and be under the sunlight. And again that’s the longing of the human heart. To be under the sun, with the warmth of the sun on our faces, giving us life and light and love. To be surrounded by peace, nature, in a well tended but wild garden. Yes the journey ends in a city with a garden or in our case, a tree, right in the middle. The pinnacle, the centre -a tree of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Revelation 22:1–5