To see it is divine, poised as if awaiting christening. Indeed two years after the fact and HAL does speak very loud and clear. No postpunk entropy, no nuclear winterland, no dire visions of machine subjugating man, only good old-fashioned modernism, science fiction to construct a better tomorrow. Immediately any delusional Orwellian dystopia fades.
It is a magnificently futuristic structure, this winged ship built of glass and steel, antiseptically white like sand-blown whale bone. Yet as monument to the sea, or specifically the lake, nothing alien or unnatural can be discerned from its presence, its being. Ready to set sail, ready to soar, it seems to say, because our mission is to honor, secure and defend that which will come. And the power of its radial geometry only reiterates its symmetry.
Inside the belly of the architect though runs elongated floating white spaces, distorted fisheye-lensed corridors, impossibly curving away to unknown vanishing points. Only the constant intervals of the concrete rib cage supporting these marbled veins offer any sort of three-point perpective. Otherwise travellers lose bearing, any sense of directional logic. Still a comfortable warmth borne of deja vu, forged by the forbidden planet emanates from the cool precision and sterility that comprises its barren skeleton.
Tarkovsky never dreamt of such a pedestrian place where bonneted attendants walk upside down on the ceiling in gravity boots, where abstract purity collides with figurative reality, where right angles bend anthropomorphically.