Architecture for Guerillas

Friday, January 4, 2013

Designed Impermanence

Crunch. Crunch. Boom.

Holy shit, that’s cool.

And by “cool”, I mean mesmerizing. I’m standing on the corner of 16^th and L Street in Washington, DC, watching what is essentially a mechanical dinosaur eating its way through an empty building. The building being demolished is now nothing more than a crumbling ruin of concrete chunks and rebar curly-cues – a heavy, slow, animal that real-estate evolution has chosen to leave behind. The new building that grows up in its place will be lighter, smarter, and better adapted to its surroundings. It will hopefully carry forth lessons learned in all its previous iterations. The mechanical carnivore I’m watching sate it’s appetite on the doomed structure is doing so not out of malice, but in the name of progress – the way nature intended. Sort of.

In his Futurist Manifesto, AntonioSant’Elia commented that “every generation should build their own city”, and I believe he was right. Our buildings should reflect our contemporary ideals and stand as indicators of the progress we’ve made and the future we intend to create. However, as I stand watching the machine crunch through concrete and steel producing tangled piles of rubble, I can’t help but wonder if our buildings are too permanent and if this permanence is holding us back from true innovation and progress. Culture, technology, and fashion are constantly shifting trends that change with the daily push and pull of society, but our buildings often stand idle for 60 years or more with little more than periodic facelifts along the way. Why aren't our buildings designed to more fluidly adapt to the changing needs of society?

Demolishing buildings in the traditional manner is both expensive and wasteful. As efficient as that badass mechanized dinosaur was at its job, it wasn’t actually “eating” any of its meal – it was merely destroying it. Somewhere in the distance, I hear Mother Nature weeping at the waste. At its feet lay a massive pile of concrete, rebar, sheet metal, and other detritus that is now nothing more than landfill and scrap recyclables. It was looking like a major effort to demolish this building, and the only benefit is the empty space it will leave behind. It seemed to me that the cost and associated hassle of demolition and disposal were often deterrents to a healthy turnover of buildings and infrastructure. How many buildings are left in place and given only minor adjustments over time because the cost of demolition and redesign and construction is prohibitive?

Buildings, and the cities they make up, are indeed complex machines that involve countless hours of investment, planning, design, and construction, so it’s no wonder that permanence is seen as a virtue. But designed impermanence could also be a virtue worth implementing. After tearing myself away from the scene of the building being methodically destroyed in such awesome hungry-mechanized-dinosaur fashion, I attended a photography exhibit on the city of Detroit (Detroit Is No Dry Bones at the NationalBuilding Museum) and its vast area of now derelict real estate. Huge swaths of development that previously housed one of America’s most successful and innovative cites now stand empty and crumbling. The photographs of vacant skyscrapers, abandoned theatres, and neighborhoods of uninhabited homes were proof that cities can easily grow, but cannot necessarily shrink to adapt. What if the city were built to be dismantled?

Del Ray Building - Photo from Detroit Is No Dry Bones by Camilo Jose Vagara

Imagine a dense urban core where skyscrapers still grace the horizon but with an ever-adjustable skirt of development surrounding it. Houses and small commercial buildings sit lightly on the land and are all built to be erected and dismantled as needed – their parts and pieces easily reassembled somewhere else or even combined with others to make new buildings. Voltron would be proud. There is no waste to be landfilled, and the cost of dismantling – not demolition – is more than made up for by the new stock of building components left in its wake. As Detroit grows, so can its boundaries. As Detroit shrinks, buildings can be easily removed to reveal open plots of land for agriculture or public spaces. Density can quickly and easily be managed to adapt to a city’s needs. Constantly shifting buildings will allow for and encourage continuous innovation and improved functionality as we reinvent the city.

Suburb Eating Robot by Andrew Maynard

Monday, June 18, 2012

A Love Letter toWindmills

Don Quixote and the Windmills, Salvador Dali, 1969

...As he was saying this, they caught sight of thirty or forty windmills standing on the plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire:

"Fortune is directing our affairs even better than we could have wished: for you can see over there, good friend Sancho Panza, a place where stand thirty or more monstrous giants with whom I intend to fight a battle and whose lives I intend to take; and with the booty we shall begin to prosper. For this is a just war, and it is of great service to God to wipe such a wicked breed from the face of the earth."

An excerpt from The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote De La Mancha by Miguel Cervantes

People hate windmills. Not since the valiant Don Quixote first couched his lance, set spurs to his trusty steed Rocinante, and charged with the bravado only he could muster, have windmills been more feared and loathed. There is, as our hero noted, a war being waged against this ingenious machine.

Vertical Axis Windmill in Nishtafun, Iran. Photo by Caroline Mawer.

In use since antiquity, all windmills function under one simple principle - they are a device used to translate the raw power of the wind into rotational energy. The earliest windmills in widespread use were first observed in Persia in the 9th century, and were actually oriented horizontally. These machines had sails that rotated around a vertical axis and were used to either grind grain or pump water. Only later did they take on the iconic tower form that so tormented our poor heroic hidalgo from La Mancha.

In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, steam power replaced the brute force of wind and water as the primary source of generating energy. Then, to add insult to injury, the rise of the petrochemical age - namely our old friends coal and oil - effectively pushed the traditional windmill to the fringe of the energy-generating landscape, rendering them little more than nostalgic contraptions and refurbished tourist attractions. It was in this transition however, that the key benefit of the windmill was lost. Like it's also-besieged cousin, solar energy, the main attraction of using wind to derive energy, was that the input was free, provided at no additional charge by mother nature. Expensive, non-renewable, extracted resources hate windmills.

Wind Farm at Altamont Pass, via World Watch Institute

But the windmill evolved. The modern iteration of the windmill is the wind turbine, and like it's predecessor, it harnesses the naturally occurring force of the wind to generate power. Only now, the wind turbine transcends traditional mechanical advantage of yore, and produces electricity. Whereas the monstrous giants of Senior Quixote's vexation could only leverage their output locally, the electricity generated by the leviathans of today can be used immediately on site, stored in batteries, or fed back into a larger power grid system. A valuable step forward. Such gracious monsters.

Unfortunately, a wind turbine is still just a glorified windmill. And people hate windmills. Even Donald Trump hates windmills. In early 2012, Trump was the main attraction in a 500 person protest against a planned wind farm in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. Said Trump in his rousing statement: "Tragically the Scottish taxpayer no longer has a voice in this destructive process because the First Minister and his government are ramming these proposals through the planning system at lightning speed, even though the rest of the world already knows that they produce a totally unreliable and very expensive form of power." It should also be noted that the wind farm, once complete, would be visible from his newly constructed coastal golf course.

But these protests are not just confined to the elite. It is a common occurrence now for citizen groups to band together to stop wind farms from being constructed in their communities. They do so under the auspices of wind turbines being a visual and auditory nuisance. Jane Jacobs and her NIMBY followers would be proud. But it is here where we must disagree with a very disagreeable Mrs. Jacobs - if not in my backyard, then where?

Protesters in West Cork County Ireland.

To be fair, wind turbines are not a magic bullet. They will not single-handedly solve the energy crisis. They will not ween a state off of foreign energy dependence. In fact, there is ample evidence on either side to both prove and disprove the ejaculations of Mr. Trump and his band of merry protesters. Some people may find them ugly. They may make noise. They may even kill a few birds (although nowhere near as many as large expanses of glass on tall buildings do…). But all of these studies are missing the point. Windmills (and wind turbines and wind pumps and wind chargers) are a proven link to our past technological triumphs and directly tied to our continued success in the future. The benefits of generating energy from naturally-occurring, renewable sources cannot be understated if we have any desire to sustain our rapidly growing population and simultaneously protect the planet we live on. If we halt the evolution of windmills because they are ugly, because they are loud, because they are imperfect, then they will fall as monsters, ugly, loud, and imperfect.

"…For God's sake!" said Sancho Panza. "Didn't I tell you to be careful what you were doing, didn't I tell you they were only windmills? And only someone with windmills on the brain could have failed to see that!"

Monday, February 6, 2012

The Colorful and Interactive World of Energy Consumption

New York City Building Energy Map

Let's face it, we are a graphic-loving species. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is an interactive graphic map of annual building energy consumption for New York City worth? Visualization is an important asset when trying to explain complex ideas or figures. It becomes even more important when attempting to identify and quantify comparative data as critical as energy usage in urban areas.

The Energy, Infrastructure, and Development Lab at Columbia University has released a graphically interactive map of New York City that displays estimated building energy consumption per block. According to the report:

The map represents the total annual building energy consumption at the block level (zoom levels 11-15) and at the taxlot level (zoom levels 16-18) for New York City, and is expressed in kilowatt hours (k Wh) per square meter of land area. The data comes from a mathematical model based on statistics, not private information from utilities, to estimate the annual energy consumption values of buildings throughout the five boroughs.

The overall map is keyed to provide a color-coded comparison of energy consumption at the macro-city level, however, as you hover over each block, more exact data is displayed for each block including lot land area, average floor area, and fuel and electricity use. The map provides a playful and graphically interesting tool to compare and contrast energy statistics in New York City.

Seen first on Gizmodo.

Images via Columbia University

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Boo!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Splendor of Excess

Metalmorphosis by David Černý. Photographs by Flickr user Rick_28105.

What a splendid waste! Metalmorphosis is a 7.6m tall animated sculpture by Czech artist David Černý. The fountain, which is 14 tons of rotating stainless steel plates, adorns the courtyard of a corporate center in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. As a sculpture, it is a work of artistic and mechanical wonder. The head of the any-man slowly rotates in and out of existence - a thousand pieces in all directions - a confused mind in pure blinged-out ignorant bliss. It's powered by internal motors which are controlled by the artist via internet link. You can watch a live webcam of the fountain here. Metalmorphosis is an artistic statement in engineering that kinetic buildings and other large-scale public objects could become commonplace. The many potential applications limited only by doubt.

As a symbol, it excels even that of it's engineering. The shear size and materiality of the sculpture renders it visually and physically grand. It's familiar form and incorporation of water make it feel playful and whimsical. A grand statement for any successful corporation, indeed. However, rotating in it's Sisyphean glory, the continuous rotation and flow of water belies it's own inherent imagery of excess. What could possibly be a better symbol of waste than one spitting out water in perpetuity? It is, at once, a grand gesture of accomplishment and the spoils that come along with it.

Seen on DesignBoom and Colossal.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Mediated Matter - Neri Oxman at Greenbuild Toronto

Neri Oxman, who directs the Mediated Matter research group at the MIT Media Lab, recently spoke at Greenbuild 2011 in Toronto. The group studies the naturally occurring relationship between structure and function within the natural environment, and how digital fabrication technologies can shape the way synthetic materials are developed. What is the natural material logic? Once we understand the natural logic of a material and how it relates to the function and response of the macro-structure, how can we translate this material logic to built form?

In her presentation, Oxman discussed a fundamental difference between the way natural materials are generated and the way in which we "build". When we construct objects today, we use a component-based design logic. Each element within the object is a distinct layer with a separate function. A typical wall section might include vertical and horizontal structural elements for support, layers of sheathing and barriers for containment, insulation for temperature mitigation, and glazing for visibility and aesthetics. In this approach, various layers are assembled to produce a "functioning" element. This is where Oxman sees a fundamental flaw in the design process.

In nature, form is dictated by a combination of structure and environmental performance. Rather than "separation and distribution", natural materials are derived from "continuity and distribution". Plants are composed of one type of material, but utilize different genetic variations to respond to different needs. Bone is also a naturally occurring material that develops with different densities depending on where they are located and what function they accommodate. Bone is able to directly respond to changes in it's environment. The bone structure in pregnant women is known to grow more dense to accommodate the additional weight, whereas bone that spends time in the gravity-free environment of space tends to grow less dense.

It is this distinction in assembly and response that Oxman sees as the future of material technology. She envisions a future where materials are designed to modify themselves in response to external factors. Building skins are able to modulate themselves in response to the micro-climate. In the next 100 years, she sees the rise of bio-fabrication and construction in which material distribution and density are controlled by use at a micro-scale. Structure is fluid - strong and stiff where necessary, flexible and light where not. In the next 1000 years, Oxman is even more progressive, extolling the possibility of genetic construction where materials and structures are "grown".

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Of Buildings and Time

Image via SciFiReality.

The earth is big. But amazingly, it's scale is still small enough for us to visibly measure its impact on our practice and understanding of events. From the beginning of our existence, most of our actions have revolved around the rising and setting of the sun. Tall buildings may introduce a strange new paradox to our experience of time and routine.

Time is a very tricky thing in theory, but it also gives us a simple, equitable way to mark out the actions of our lives. Routines are developed around regular time periods - breakfast in the morning, work during the day, sleep at night. Routines tied to time occur over all intervals. Many religions promote regular acts of faith that occur periodically over longer lengths of time.

Ramadan, for instance, is an Islamic holy month, in which practicing Muslims spend that time fasting and promoting spiritual betterment. Many Muslims fast during the day and do not eat or drink from dawn until after sunset. After sunset, families traditionally break fast in a meal called the Iftar.

A cleric from Dubai suggests that people living in the upper floors of the Burj Khalifa - the worlds tallest building at 828 meters tall - should fast longer owing to the fact that the sun sets later according to the vantage of the upper floors.

Burj Khalifa. Image: Hadrian Hernandez/Gulf News

Per the BBC,

"...Dubai cleric, Mohammed al-Qubaisi, has been quoted as saying that people living above the 80th floor should fast for an extra two minutes, while those on the 150th floor and higher should wait for three more minutes before eating or drinking."

Therefor, a person fasting at the ground level of the Burj Khalifa will be able to break fast three minutes prior to one fasting at the top floor - say 8:57pm as compared to 9:00pm. Given that the two individuals at fast exist in the same moment of time, the building's immense geometry has allowed it to physically span our combined perception of time by allowing a routine to exist simultaneously in two states, daytime at one end of the structure, and nighttime at the other. There is precedent, however. The earth's rotation causes day and night to exist simultaneously in time, as well as localized differences in day and night at mountains, but those are natural occurrences. The Burj Khalifa may be the first example of a human-made structure impacting our time-based routines at the scale of the earth itself.

Time Dilation.

Is a tall building a form of time travel? Not really - it's more of a time-bender. But at certain heights it can alter our perception of it. The experience of day and night, as interrupted by our built environment. As the scale and complexity of our creations grow, the implications of their physical nature will continue to generate and inspire unforeseen consequences.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Of Bridges, Counterfiet Money, and International Relations

The Ponte Vecchio. Photo by Flickr user Stevehdc.

The bridge has long been both a physical and symbolic construction of positive connectivity. The theory goes that a bridge connects two distinct areas by spanning some obstacle, be it physical or metaphysical. The bridge as structure stands particularly noble when connecting nations. It's materiality promoting development, commerce, and, at it's most basic, trust.

1000 AFRO Note by BIG.

1000 Euro Note by BIG.

BIG, The Bjarke Ingles Group, has designed a series of monetary notes consisting of a 1000 Euro Note and a new corresponding 1000 AFRO Note, in an effort to promote a "United African Currency". Both banknotes graphically portray a proposed bridge that would span from Africa to Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar. The bridge, massive in scale, would provide commercial development, residential property, and other public functions as well as the typical modes of transport. According to BIG:

The bridge is conceived as an inhabited overpass uniting Euro-African typologies—such as Firenze’s Ponte Vecchio and Le Corbusier's Obus Plan for Algiers—into an intercontinental hybrid of city and infrastructure. The investment in concrete and steel doubles as load-bearing structure for living and working spaces for the many immigrants anticipated over the next decades, and will help establish the bridge itself as a bicontinental city in its own right.

The Strait of Gibraltar as seen from space. Photo via NASA.

The bridge is materialized space that attempts to connect two landmasses with physical infrastructure but also to stimulate economy and relations. Because of this, it is ironic and somehow just, that real money would be the perfect medium to convey and promote such a project. The structure represents a real connection between Europe and Africa, which in turn, promises increased movement, commerce, and their effects. Both sides are guaranteed a double-edged sword, experiencing both the benefits and headaches of this improved connection. But in the end, new and ever-evolving economies and relationships could be forged by the bridge - an ambitious, yet honest physical structure.

Seen first on BLDG BLOG.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Wear Your Grass on Your Sleeve

Grass Skin Rug by earthwormstudio.

It's like a bear skin rug - without the bear. Hopefully the bear left behind is out there somewhere, being a bear. Instead, curl up and watch your favorite movies on a nice piece of the countryside. The right patch of grass can be downright comfortable and even adds a great splash of green to any naturally day-lit room. And why stop there? Strike a pose in your best Grass Yeti suit.

Yeti, by Misstika at Figment Festival in New York. Seen on Wooster Collective.

The grass family is one of the most abundant plant forms on earth. It is important in every ecosystem it inhabits - providing a vital energy source to the food chain around it. It also helps to filter rainwater into the soil below and even holds the top layer of earth in place. And it's entirely renewable for the cultavatively curious. Why wouldn't you want some grass walls, floors or clothes?

"Calm down. Stroke the furry wall."

Get Him to the Greek

Sunday, June 19, 2011

How Tall is Too Tall

Photograph by Declan McCullagh Photography.

We often say that we should follow the biological examples set forth by nature when we design. But what happens when our ambitions are greater than the limits of natural design? Take the height of a tree for example - in many cases, the taller the tree, the more energy it can harvest. Since trees naturally grow close to one another, they need to grow vertically to reach the sun amidst it's neighbors. The taller the tree grows, the more access to life-giving sunlight it has. However, any successful quest for the sun would surely be folly - and nature knows it. At the upper limits of a trees structural and functional capacity there is a point where the need for more height becomes obsolete. Growing taller would mean too much energy is invested in moving water from the roots to the upper branches and leaves. The quest for height is counteracted by the physical limits of the trees natural capabilities and thus, an upper limit is reached.

Coastal Redwoods via Coastal Care.

The tallest tree now generally accepted as the tallest living is a 379.1 ft (115.56 m) Coast Redwood in Redwood National Park, California. The height of the Coast Redwood Tree is within the upper limits of a trees natural boundary. Any taller, and the energy required to function would be too great to validate it's successful existence. What are the upper limits of buildings?

The Burj Khalifa.

The tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE. It measures 2,717 ft (828 m) tall. The building, designed by Skidmore Owings Merrill, is undeniably a marvel of modern design and construction. The sheer enormity of the structural, mechanical, and planning needs of a building this tall alone warrant it's status as one of humankinds greatest achievements. The structural system of the building was an elegant solution to excessive height. According to Gulf News:

"To support the unprecedented height of the building, the engineers developed a new structural system called the ‘buttressed core', which consists of a hexagonal core reinforced by three buttresses that form the ‘Y' shape. This structural system enables the building to support itself laterally and keeps it from twisting."

The strength of this revolutionary system allowed the engineers to add more floors than building was originally designed for. The building will apparently also use solar power to heat 140,000 litres of water a day for use in residential and commercial use in the tower. However, the building still consumes a massive amount of resources to operate. Consider the comparison by The Red White and Green:

Water: Around 250,000 gallons of water a day
Electricity: At peak times, roughly 40,000 kilowatts — the equivalent of 500,000 100-watt light bulbs burning at the same time
Raw materials: Nearly 40,000 tons of steel — enough to stretch a quarter of the way around the earth if laid end to end
Wasted space: The upper 30+ floors are so tiny, they can only be used for storage.

The building is an enormous achievement of excess. Beautiful and terrifying.

But can they become bigger without some type of radical new technology? Can a building of that size exist without consuming more than it takes to operate? Give back even?

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

A building twice the size of the Burj Khalifa boasts of the idea of reaching for the gods - a true Tower of Babel. A feat that surely will be attempted, and probably even achieved some day. But like the tree before it, will it do something for humanity, the earth, or for something else altogether - our ego and physically awe-inspiring proof of our dominion over this planet. Will the world be better with it, than without it? That's what nature knows. and is trying to tell us. It only allows for something to exist when that something is a both a benefit to itself and everything else around it.

Inspired by What is a Tree's Maximum Possible Height as seen on i09.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Of Bricks and Bacteria

On average, the kiln-drying process for one brick emits 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. Every year, 1.23 trillion bricks are made around the world. The environmental pollution associated with this process totals more than that of all aviation pollution worldwide. Fire-kilned brick has been around for over 5000 years, making it one of the oldest - if not the oldest - manufactured building material in the world. Introduced to the world by the Romans, the technology surrounding brick has changed little over that span. However, as manufacturing and technology increases, the environmental impact of the material is being unearthed. The traditional method has never changed because there was no reason to change it. Now there is. And now you can grow a brick.

Ginger Krieg Dosier, 24 year-old architecture professor with a passion for microbiology, and chemistry, and winner of the Build a Better Brick competition sponsored by Metropolis, has invented a brick manufacturing process that works sans heat. According to Bustler:

"Dosier's process replaces baking with simple mixing, and because it is low-tech (apart from the production of the bacterial activate), can be done onsite in localities without modern infrastructure. The process uses no heat at all: mixing sand and non-pathogenic bacteria (sporosar) and putting the mixture into molds. The bacteria induce calcite precipitation in the sand and yield bricks with sandstone-like properties."

The brick represents a twofold advantage over the traditional methods of kiln-firing. First, the environmental impact. By replacing the most environmentally damaging part of the manufacturing process - the firing - the process is rendered almost entirely natural. The brick relies on the active ingredients to produce chemical reactions to achieve the brick's hardness and strength. Second, again by replacing the firing process, the physical infrastructure required to manufacture the brick has been reduced. Without the need for large firing kilns, the process becomes much more suited to rural and developing areas where a manufacturing operation can be set up quickly, on site and local, and without permanent structures or facilities.

See the whole process of making a brick here at Metropolis.

As a type of unit masonry, the brick lends itself to small-scale and mass production. However, the idea of growing structural components is intriguing. Could the scale be increased, and entire building structures be grown organically from the ground up? Moreover, if the active ingredients were designed to not just activate, but multiply, could we see structures grown with the precision typically reserved for Mother Nature? Strength where required, and lightness where it is not. This would relate very well to the theories of Neri Oxman and iGem Synthetic Biology.

Seen on I09, Bustler, and Metropolis.

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Library as Vending Machine

There is something mysterious and exciting about walking down a dark narrow library aisle - the stacks closing in over top of you, the dusty smell of aging paper, and the possibility of stumbling upon a book you never even knew existed. This is the experience of silently wandering through countless libraries all over the world. Unfortunately, this experience is also at odds with the fast-paced immediate retrieval experience that is the digital age we find ourselves in currently. Starting your search may be as easy as typing in the broadest definition of the topic, and result in countless digital paths of inquiry - akin to browsing through dusty stacks as organized by Dewey. However, if you know exactly what you are looking for, the ability to narrow down feedback results can be as precise as you can type. Results can be almost immediate - and all from the comfort of your home computer or mobile device. This is the wonder and detachment of the internet and digital information.

The new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago has bridged the gap between physical records and digital accessibility with it's "Automated Storage and Retrieval System" that "takes inspiration from commercial inventory techniques". The books and manuscripts are stored in special preservation-condition bins and bar-coded so that the system knows exactly where to send it's robotic retrieval arms for delivery. The user short-circuits the traditional method of library searching, and instead, is greeted by the worlds largest vending machine. Instead of Honeybuns and Cheetos's, pressing B5 will bring you Shakespeare and Darwin.

The technology is indeed highly sophisticated and brings a new level of organization and ease to a process once fraught with uncertainty and confusion. The search for information has become more direct and efficient, however, gone are the days of exploration and tangential discoveries that often lead to new avenues of research. The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library uses an online catalog that allows users to digitally "search" the library holdings. It would be interesting to know if a certain amount of "randomness" could be built into this search so users are given several options to branch out their search. The catalog could have a built-in "I'm Feeling Lucky" function similar to Google's Search Engine, or even a recommendation function similar to Amazon's "User Who Searched for This Product Also Searched For..."

Seen on Gizmodo.
Video via University of Chicago

Monday, March 28, 2011

Of Robots and Clouds

In the summer of 2022, Qatar, a small country on the Arabian Peninsula will host the FIFA World Cup. In the summer of 2022, temperatures are expected to reach, as they do now, up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 C). FIFPro, the global football players union stated that temperature extremes such as this "...[do] not provide suitable conditions for a festival of football such as the World Cup". FIFA officials initially stated that the tournament, which is historically played in the summer months of June and July, would be moved to the winter months, but have since stated it would go on as planned during the summer.

Qatar engineers plan to air-condition the host stadiums through energy collected from solar arrays to combat the excessive heat, but also have a new trick up their sleeve: Robotic Clouds. According to a video clip on BBC, The "clouds", constructed of lightweight, inflatable materials, driven by four turbine engines are powered by integrated solar collectors and would be remote controlled to follow the path of the sun, thus "shielding it from direct sunlight and providing a favorable climatic environment" for the stadium.

This robotic cloud may be part of the natural evolution of the "Goodyear Blimp" phenomenon, which began in 1925 as a platform for advertisement and eventually the television and video broadcasting of sports events. Add to this technology the ability to create remote controlled micro-climates, and a new breed of airships is born. One where, as BLDG BLOG notes "the next step in temporary event architecture will be a remote-controlled swarm of rearrangeable horizontal and vertical surfaces, forming ceilings, roofs, walls, floors, ramps, and stairways."

The idea of a technology enabling users the power to control their environment is not a new one, but is still an extremely powerful one. One can easily imagine entire fleets being used to alter entire environments, programmed to mimic the circadian rhythms of far-off regions to enable agricultural production until now rendered impossible due to harsh climates. Or conversely, in a dystopic realization of the technology, climate warfare where fleets of robotic clouds are positioned to disrupt agriculture and other physical and social benefits of the sun.

I am reminded of a scene from the recent The Simpson's Movie where helpless Springfielder's stand trapped under a dome and watch a live feed from their captor on a huge video screen above...

Seen on BLDG BLOG and the BBC.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Nature in Architecture by Michael Pawlyn

In this TED Talk, designer Michael Pawlyn of Exploration discusses the advantages of biomimicry for the future of architecture and design. Pawlyn begins by citing a few examples of nature's own inventive ways of adapting to specific climate needs and indeed, makes a very clever analogy out of this evolutionary advantage:

"You could look at nature as being a catalog of product's and all of those have benefited from a 3.8 billion year research and development period, and given that length of investment, it kind of makes sense to use it."

Throughout the talk, Pawlyn uses examples of existing technologies and projects that learn from nature's example and use bio-mimicry to solve what he sees as the three necessary steps to becoming truly sustainable:

1. Radical increases in resource efficiency
2. Linear to closed loop systems
3. Fossil fuel economy to solar economy

Perhaps the most intriguing indictment against us is expressed in Pawlyns second step - the comparison of our current method of resource use versus the way nature does. Our current mode of design, consists of extracting resources, turning them into "short-life products", and then disposing of them. However, this contrasts greatly with the way nature uses resources. In the natural model, everything that is created is used, - the waste generated in one system, is used for energy in another. By altering our current mode of design to a "systems" model, we are able to add value to waste, which is currently now a completely negative by-product.

Video via TED.
Seen on ArchDaily.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Buckyball Distraction

Monday, January 3, 2011

Kowloon Walled City

Kowloon Walled City was an urban Chinese island in the British-owned territory of Kowloon, Hong Kong characterized by it's incredible density, labyrinthine structure, and social make-up of pimps, gangsters, and opium dens. Founded as a Chinese outpost in 920 AD, the city was condemned to demolition in 1987 by the government of Hong Kong. It was demolished in 1993 after a six-year eviction process of it's residents. The city-within-a-city became notorious for it's reputation as an urban construction of hell-on-earth and indeed became a walled zone where most people could not enter without a high possibility of incident.

In 1993, prior to demolition, a team of Japanese researchers was allowed to map the interior of the settlement and produced these colorful section diagrams showing both the social and sectional topography. The tangle of activities and spaces show an existence of incredible complexity and spatial relationshio to the inhabitants surroundings. However, as frantic and limitless as the graphic seems, it stands to reason that the true experience of the space was even more extraordinary than illustrated.

Seen on deconcrete. Aerial image copyright Ian Lambot via ArchDaily. Graphics courtesy of Zoohaus.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Ice-Nine, Or How to Grow Concrete from Bacteria

In Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 satirical novel Cat's Cradle, the protagonist follows the trail of a brilliant researcher's children who hold with them ice-nine - a chemical invention small enough to be carried under the fingernail, but potent enough to freeze all water on earth solid. The element is described as a "seed" that alters the atomic composition of liquid:

"There are several ways", Dr. Breed said to me, "in which certain liquids can crystallize - can freeze - several ways in which their atoms can stack and lock in an orderly, rigid way." That old man with spotted hands invited me to think of several ways in which cannonballs might be stacked on a courthouse lawn, of the several ways in which oranges might be packed into a crate. "So it is with crystals, too; and two different crystals of the same substance can have quite different physical properties."

He goes on to describe the stacking process:

The theoretical villain, however, was what Dr. Breed called "a seed". He meant by that a tiny grain of the undesired crystal pattern. The seed, which had come from God-only-knows-where, taught the atoms the novel way in which to stack and lock, to crystallize, to freeze. "Now think about cannonballs on a courthouse lawn, or about oranges in a crate again", he suggested. And he helped me to see that the pattern of the bottom layer of cannonballs or of oranges determined how each subsequent layer would stack and lock. "The bottom layer is the seed of how every cannonball or every orange that comes after is going to behave, even to an infinite number of cannonballs or oranges."

And of course, the prolific advantages are described alongside the horrific consequences:

And that old man asked me to think of United States Marines in a Godforsaken swamp. "Their trucks and tanks are wallowing", he complained, "sinking in stinking miasma and ooze." He raised a finger and winked at me. "But suppose, young man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing a seed of ice-nine, a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed into the nearest puddle...?" "The puddle would freeze?", I guessed. "And all the muck around the puddle?" "It would freeze?" "And all the puddles in the frozen muck?" "They would freeze?" "And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?" 'They would freeze?"

In 1963, Vonnegut pondered both the possibilities and the dangers of such technology through dark humor, the absurd, and the profane in this story of invention and the human hands that guide it. In 2010, however, the potency of this allegory is all to familiar as science, theory, and invention is constantly redefining the ability of humans to solve problems.

For the annual iGem synthetic biology contest, a group of students at Newcastle University have engineered BacillaFilla - a type of bacteria that, once inserted into a concrete crack with the proper growing media, will germinate and produce a "mixture of calcium carbonate, levan glue and filamentous cells" that will densify and "activate concrete repair". Eerily, the scientific name for the compound is called Bacillus Subtillus 168. According to the team:

BacillaFilla repairs concrete by producing a mixture of calcium carbonate, levan glue and filamentous cells in the cracks. Once we have applied BacillaFilla spores onto the concrete surface, they will start germinating in the presence of media. Once the cells have germinated, they will start to swarm down the crack. At the bottom of the crack when they reach a high density, they will use subtilin quorum sensing to activate concrete repair. BacillaFilla repairs concrete by 3 different processes:
1. Some of the cells with produce calcium carbonate crystals,
2. Some of the cells will become filamentous thereby acting as reinforcing fibres in the crack and
3. All the cells will produce Levans glue which acts as a binding agent and at the same time it fills up the whole crack.

Interestingly, the bacteria only work through a swarming process whereby the bacteria propel themselves to reach the point of germination. Also, almost in a pre-meditated response to detractors and grey-goo fear-mongers, the team has implemented a genetic "kill-switch" to stop the spread of bacteria.

Of course, the ability to repair concrete from within is as exciting as the potential for a runaway concrete-producing super-bacteria is alarming. Material technologies such as this blur the lines between natural phenomena and synthetic architecture, border on Utopian ideals and science-fictional dystopias, and represent bold new ideas in research and development.

Images via TeamNewcastle and Newcastle University. Seen on i09.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

A View of the Pakistan Floods

The Indus River Watershed on August 18th, 2010.

The Indus River Watershed on August 13th, 2001.

The beautiful imagery of this satellite image belies the terrible ongoing event that is causing it. The flooding in northern Pakistan started in mid-July when monsoon rains exceeded expectations and overwhelmed an already overstressed watershed of the Indus River. Since then, the region's population of over 15 million have been terribly affected - millions homeless, over 1,500 people dead, and most with little or no access to proper shelter, sanitation, food, or health care. Extent of flooding graphic via The NYT

The situation is expected to worsen, as more rains are expected in the coming weeks.

There are many ways to get involved. Donate time, money, or expertise to aid organizations or local communities. Spread the word about the event to friends and family. UNICEF has made clean drinking water and food to be priorities among aid divisions. Donate via UNICEF here. The Red Cross lists shelter and medical aid as a major concern for immediate relief needs. Donate to the American Red Cross here. The Huffington Post has also assembled a more extensive list of ways to help here.

Images via NASA Earth Observatory.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

LIVE BLOG - Promoting Green Building Rating Systems in Africa - 2015 Goals

2015 Goals

In the final day of the conference, there were several things left to do. Previously, the group spent two days engaged in discussions and brainstorming sessions. By the third day, it was evident that everyone in the room had a lot of ideas about how to move forward. There were three overarching conference goals:

1. Make commitments, develop elements of a strategy, and create a road-map for achieving those goals.
2. Develop an outline for a continental network supporting the sustainable building industry and professionals, and for assistance in establishing green building councils.
3. Provide recommendations to UN-Habitat on how this can be achieved.

Each country represented at the conference was asked what their specific goals were for the year 2015. The following are individual country goals for 2015:

Uganda: Written green building guidelines for different environmental regions in country.
Nigeria: Establish a GBC. Complete an example building (pilot project).
Tanzania: Integrate green building (re-integrate traditional sustainable building techniques) into codes. Pilot projects for schools, healthcare/clinics, and commnity centers for public awareness. Financial system in place w/industry support.
Malawi: Environmental curriculum in schools (all levels).
Gambia: Sustainable design guidelines.
Cameroon: Grass-roots awareness campaigns at the local level.
Zambia: Implement a GBC and get government commited to green building.
South Africa: Integrate social aspects into rating systems.
Ghana: Involve government and private sector into GBC development.
Ethiopia: Worldwide sharing of knowledge and goals (networking).
Morocco: Complete a pilot project in each sector.
Burkina Faso: Promote traditional methods of green building and integrate into codes/regulations. Create GBC and green building guidelines.
Egypt: Mandate zero-emission codes.
Chad: Develope institutional framework for GBC at a local level and connect to the Africa-wide and global GBC network.
Mauritius: Be self-sustainable in all aspects (energy, food, materials, etc.).
Rwanda: Tax-incentives for green buildings. Awareness campaigns.
Kenya: Increase in demand for green building among developers and the public.

As these goals were discussed, several general themes emerged. There were four broad action-categories that each goal could be attributed to:

Policy Implementation: Codes/regulations. Political support.
Market Transformation: Financial Incentives. Industry Buy-in.
Guideline Development: GBC's. Rating Tools.
Awareness and Education: Curriculum. Pilot Projects. Awareness Campaigns.