Updated
Updated · Yanko Design · Jun 9
Michael Jantzen Designs Internet Observatory With 1-Person Rotating Core as Physical Portal to the Web
Updated
Updated · Yanko Design · Jun 9

Michael Jantzen Designs Internet Observatory With 1-Person Rotating Core as Physical Portal to the Web

2 articles · Updated · Yanko Design · Jun 9

Summary

  • Jantzen’s Internet Observatory centers on a single elevated workstation inside a curved shell, turning internet access into a walk-in architectural experience rather than a screen-based one.
  • A steel grid symbolizes the web’s larger matrix, while movable curved panels can open, close or reconfigure around the occupant and double as projection surfaces for images and sound.
  • Those projections can spill onto the structure’s exterior, making a private session visible to nearby viewers and blurring the line between individual use and public exhibition.
  • Each observatory would also have its own website, letting remote users alter projected content or panel movement in real time and linking multiple sites into a global physical network.
  • Jantzen frames the concept as a “symbolic temple for the computer age,” arguing that architecture can give the invisible internet a tangible, ritualized form.

Insights

Will these 'temples' to the internet become the next evolution of public art or just a utopian dream?
As AI centralizes the internet's physical infrastructure, is this decentralized artistic vision already obsolete?
When strangers can remotely control your sensory experience, who is truly in charge of your reality?