Xanadu Project – Matt Taylor

In Xanadu... did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1797

“There spans 200 years between Coleridge’s concept of Xanadu and my sketch [above],” says architect Matt Taylor of his life’s work.

I took more than 40 years to draw it after I first heard the poem and saw this solution. It is a concept that, once commissioned, will take the better part of a decade to realize. There is a story behind all this - the last, and most significant, chapters of which are still to be written. In terms of my work to create spaces for creativity and innovation, all that I have done is but an exercise - a way of learning - a preparation in order to build Xanadu. If I do not build it, or at least create the means to build it, I will have have failed in the major objective of my life.

Learn more here at Taylor’s Xanadu Project page about this “a self contained innovation center to be built in a remote landscape – what he calls an “Innovation Palace - a modern cathedral built to house and facilitate human creativity and innovation.”

The plan above right shows a version of the Xanadu concept “built on a 100 meter base with four 50 meter domes around a 70 meter dome with three 100 meter towers. This would account for approximately 50% of the campus facility the rest being scattered throughout the natural landscape. . .”  More here.