Fab Fi, Or How to Make the Internet From Junk

Dubbed Fab-Fi by it's creators at the MIT Media Lab, this rusty contraption is actually a handmade reflector for a wireless internet network in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. While traveling in the region, members of the Bits and Atoms Lab showed locals how to build the reflectors from scraps of metal, wires, and tin cans. Since then, members of the community have built enough reflectors and, in conjunction with wireless routers, have boosted the range of internet connection to many locals who would have no access otherwise with 25 simultaneous live nodes in Jalalabd.
When compared to a similar World Bank funded initiative to install internet infrastructure in the region - which took 7 years and millions of dollars worth of investment to achieve similar results - the idea that teaching concepts is sometimes the best solution. Imported infrastructure is often expensive and highly sophisticated, whereas a piece of technology developed from a concept that uses local materials and methods can evolve into an extremely potent solution. By using materials that already exist at hand, the users are most likely tapping into a material stream that is both local and readily available. As these materials are probably common to their makers, their use and manipulation is that much more of a familiar process. Furthermore, the possession of imported infrastructure is often kept to the supplying entity. With locally created technology, the process can become part of a user-generated economy - something that will do more good for a distressed region than any type of imported technology.

Seen on Gizmodo.

Inflatable Hospital in Haiti

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has set up a 'mobile field hospital' made up of a collection of nine inflatable structures. This 'plug-and-play' encampment is located on a soccer field just outside of Port-Au-Prince and will provide space for 100 beds, a surgery unit, an intensive care unit, and relies on a power and sanitation system that operates independently from the local infrastructure. The kits are designed to be as self-sufficient as possible. In an interview with Boing Boing, Laurent Didieu of MSF describes the set-up and theory behind the installation:

9 tents, 100 beds, including hospitalization and ICU and recovery beds. A triage and emergency tent, and two operations theatres. The idea is that within the tent we have a complete kit we can deploy including energy supply, water supply, all the sanitation, and all medical equipment inside the tent. In Haiti, everything needed to run a hospital including beds and biomedical equipment is included.

We want to be as autonomous as possible with regard to energy. In this case we have one 30 KV generator and one 60 KV generator. Plus an electrical board, and equipment to ensure electrical safety. And then you have all the electrical wire you need to set up lights inside the ward, and set up plugs for the medical equipment.

MSF designs and operates the units themselves and over the past decade, they have modified the design through field experience. All units use standard MSF components and technology and are designed to be employed in most any environment or situation. Since 2005 they have been used in such diverse locations as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and now Haiti. Pioneered by experimental designers like Ant Farm in the 1970's, the mobile field hospital by MSF proves how dynamic inflatable structures can be in response to time-critical building and infrastructure mobilization.

Seen on Boing Boing. Photos by Benoit Finck via Boing Boing.

shenzhen crystal island

OMA, in collaboration with Urbanas, has recently been announced as the winner of the Shenzhen Crystal Island competition. The scheme imagines an inter-connected landscape of creativity. Located in front of the old City Hall, the development would link the creative industries of the city through connective infrastructure. Layered into the urban fabric the plan vertically stacks three zonal concepts. Underground, a network of "shortcut connectors" form the "design link", a system that physically joins the disperse creative industries of the city. A large-scale public plaza and "creative center" occupies the surface area of the site and provides 20 hectacres of parks, pavillions, and "design villages". Amidst all of this is the Shenzhen Eye. This feature is seen as the "landmark" element on site. Situated between the underground network and the above-ground landscape, the "eye" seems to defy it's own spatial existence. Located below grade, the curvalinear form of the apperature and the distorted perspective provide a "floating" glimpse of the city skyline beyond, realizing at once the spatial implications of creative design. swiped from designboom.