I started off as a flash of inspiration triggered by a visit to this amazing former car manufacturing site in South Australia, Tonsley Innovation District.
The site was quite bare at the time, having been abandoned by the car manufacturers in 2008, but the vision for adaptive reuse of such a huge industrial age site into a digital age, advanced manufacturing, multi-tenanted district for innovation and invention was inspiring.
This resonated strongly with Future Earth System’s mission for adaptive reuse of the ageing, industrial age, socio-economic system into a digital age socio-economic system fit for a globalised world of shared prosperity, well-being and socio-environmental balance.
Planning for the idea of me started on paper as drawings and concept designs at Future Earth Systems. Tired of working purely with complex systems change in the conceptual realm – in the guise of systems theory, analysis and modelling, framework blueprints, software development, data analytics, presentations and workshops etc – might a physical and virtual network of new spaces, based outside traditional organisational boundaries, draw curiosity and interest to the work of Future Earth Systems?
Given the importance of complex socio-economic systems to collective human safety, productivity, economic and socio-environmental futures, it’s surprising how challenging it is to collaborate on macro systems visioning and design to help build a better future for the local and global community.
Moving from being an idea on paper to becoming a reality took lots of time, determination, money…and welding.
I was born in an engineering plant close to the runway at Adelaide Airport in South Australia. Starting out as a de-constructed shipping container, I was moved to a re-purposed hangar in Tonsley – the first time it had been opened since 2006 – and fitted out with two doors for humans, electrical power, modular walls and an air-conditioner.
Through a series of discussions with the various authorities and stakeholders, an agreement was formed to enable my first prototype manifestation to be based in the iconic Main Assembly Building (the MAB) in Tonsley – so I was craned in to my current position, plugged into the electrical power system and here I am.
The plan for my life journey is to slowly adapt from being an industrial age entity – a shipping container – to becoming a network of digital age experience spaces which connect urban and rural/remote communities spanning the real world and the virtual world, initiating a new form of collaborative teaming across organisational and systems boundaries. My overall aim is to assist productivity, economic development and socio-environmental balance for sustainable, peaceful and harmonious human development in the digital age.
But who knows what will happen in real life?