PROJECT 158

"COBRA TOWER"

Vasily Klyukin

In Japan telling someone that he is a snake means a compliment. In China snakes and dragons often mean the same. The symbol of wisdom and eternal life, this tower would embellish any Eastern city.

Tourists, fascinated, would look at this immense cobra, its jaws serving a terrace would be a restaurant or a night club and its body could contain offices or apartments. Snakes and dragons are custodians of threshold, temples, treasure, esoteric knowledge and all lunar gods. If this skyscraper is built in a city this city will become eternal in its resurrections.

The diamond-shaped pattern on the back of the snake is the symbol of Yang and Yin, duality and reunification of the Sun and the Moon, male and female principles, conciliation of opposites, and androgyny. Snakes change their skin, as this skyscraper can change its coloring.

Skyscrapers rise up proudly in columns looking over cities or stand alone in the landscape. Wherever they are, these high buildings grab our attention and awaken our consciousness, inspiring some and irritating others. These rising towers have changed cityscapes around the world and have become the clearest reflection of cultural and economic progress in the twentieth century. At times skyscrapers can dictate the style of business regions and even whole cities. 

Vasily Klyukin has dedicated the concept of Cobra Tower to the release of his debut fiction book, a sci-fi thriller Collective Mind. This is an absorbing novel about the near future and about what is going to happen with creative people then.