Charlie Blanchard

The Blue Marble at Stockholm, Sweden 

‘To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.” 

-Archibald McLeish 

EVENT THAT INSPIRED EMANCIPATORY PROGRAM: 

In 1972, Harrison Schmitt, a geologist turned astronaut aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft bound for the surface of the Moon for the final time, took a photograph. At 28,000 miles out, he captured the entirety of the Earth in a way that had never been seen before – as a fully illuminated disk. Since then, the Blue Marble (as it has subsequently become known) is now one of the most reproduced images in existence, and the unifying symbol for the nascent environmental movement. It has been credited with changing the way we think about our planet. 

Frank White writes about the significance of the Overview Effect - a phenomenon he describes as the moment an astronaut first glimpses the Earth from space, and experiences a cognitive shift in awareness. Borders and boundaries become insignificant, everything becomes interconnected and our planet becomes a tiny spaceship floating in an infinite universe. 

The same year the photograph was taken, NASA’s Project Apollo ceased, and the UN called the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm – the first Earth Summit. It took seeing the Earth in all its fragility to have us look back rather than continue to look away. 

‘We went to explore the moon, but in fact discovered the Earth’ – Eugene Cernan

The proposed program is titled The Blue Marble, and is sited off the island of Riddarholmen in Stockholm. A new typology of island is envisioned, one that derives its structural grid and shape from looking at the Earth from the Moon. The Elements are the suspended within the island, emulating the fragility of our planet suspended in space. These elements include a Museum, Conference Hall, Observatory and a Space for Reflection. 

RAISON D’ETRE FOR SITE SELECTED: 

Stockholm is known as the Venice of the North. It is a city built on an archipelago, and in 1972 it was chosen for the Conference on the Human Environment, or the First Earth Summit. In siting the proposal in the center of the city, the Earth Summit is given a permanent home, on that reflects current problems facing our planet. The city and constructed island are a constant reminder of human impact on our fragile Blue Marble.