Wednesday, October 20. 2010DuPont™ Corian® Design StudioVia Archinect --- The DuPont™ Corian® Design Studio opened last summer in the Flatiron District of New York City. The studio, designed by NYC-based Morris Sato Studio, acts not only a showroom for DuPont's innovative line of products, but also a workspace for architects to collaborate with material experts to develop unique uses for the DuPont™ Corian® solid surface material.
Tuesday, October 19. 2010Vertical Farming: New Book OutVia WorldChanging ----- Dr. Dickson Despommier, a former professor at Columbia University and champion of vertical farming, has released a new book on The Vertical Farm Project. The book puts forth his argument about the future of urban agriculture through vertical farms. Worldchanging has covered the debate over vertical farms quite a bit (see the list at the end of this post for links), and the idea is certainly a controversial one. I've not yet read the book, but it would be interesting to know if Despommier addresses some of the challenges to the concept pointed out by others, such as the need for a proven business model for wide-scale application, and how vertical farms can grow food without herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers and operate in a low-carbon way despite high energy needs.
LA Half-Way House Starts Vertical Farm | Sarah Kuck, 25 Aug 08 Since moving into the Los Angles half-way house two years ago, residents of the Rainbow Apartments have been devising a plan to start their own urban garden. After a few trials and errors, the novice gardeners have now succeeded in creating a 34-foot-long plot bursting with strawberries, tomatoes, basil and other herbs and vegetables, which grow vertically against their cinder block building. ¶ In addition to providing them with fresh, nutritious food, the residents have found that the garden has given them a way to connect with each other and build a supportive community... Cities are for People: The Limits of Localism | Adam Stein, 8 Aug 08 Columbia Professor Dickson Despommier has generated a fair amount of attention with his concept for "vertical farms," stacked, self-contained urban biosystems that would -- theoretically -- supply fresh produce for city residents year round. The New York Times showcased outlandish artists' conceptions of what such farms might look like. Colbert did his shtick. Twelve pilot projects are supposedly under consideration, in locations as far-flung as China and Dubai. ¶ The concept has captured the imagination of at least the sliver of the public (including the editors at Worldchanging), who laments the enormous resource demands of our food production system and yearns for something easier on the land, easier on our aquifers, and less demanding of fossil fuels. Vertical farms seem to promise all that. ¶ Promising, of course, is different than delivering. Construction requires a lot of energy. Keeping vegetables warm in winter requires a lot of energy. Recycling water requires a lot of energy. Generating artificial sunlight requires a lot of energy. In other words, the secret ingredient that makes vertical farms work (assuming they work at all) is boatloads of energy. No one seems to have actually done the math on the monetary and environmental costs of such a scheme, but they would no doubt be considerable. ¶ Perhaps those costs pencil out (although they almost certainly do not), but the plausibility of the idea itself is in some ways beside the point. Whatever the merits of vertical farms, the enthusiasm with which this idea has been received suggests that we're becoming mightily reductive in the way that we think about sustainability... Rewilding Canada | Karl Schroeder, 01 Jul 2007 ...to focus on just one technology, let's look at the potential impact of vertical farming. ¶ There's a great site introducing the concept called, logically enough, the vertical farm project. This site will give you an extensive introduction to the idea of doing intensive hydroponics agriculture in urban hi-rises, and it includes a lot of architectural plans, systems analyses and hard numbers. Cost is somewhat skirted-around, but doesn't appear to be prohibitive when you factor in the fertilizer, pesticide, transportation and storage costs of our current mode of production. ¶ It seems crazy to talk about farming in a hi-rise; the vision it gives rise to is of a kind of student-residence crammed with pot-smoking hippies who've traded their carpets for wheat. In fact, the approach is pretty hard-nosed and industrial, with very high outputs as its aim. And here's where it gets interesting from the point of view of our ambition to rewild the country: in the study entitled "Feeding 50,000 People, Anisa Buck, Stacy Goldberg and others conclude that a single building covering one city block, and up to 48 stories high depending on the design, can grow enough food to sustain 50,000 people. This calculation doesn't require any magical technology; there's no fairy-dust being evoked here, we could build such a structure now. ¶ So, let's do the math... More Infrastructural Greening | Sarah Rich, 9 Apr 07 It's hard to tire of projects that involve wallpapering, paneling, and roofing urban structures with plant life. Though it's becoming a more common design approach for enhancing air quality, catching runoff, highlighting the "green" aspects of a building, and sometimes even providing food, it always has an unexpected effect, accustomed as we are to surfaces made with impermeable and dull materials...[the concept of vertical farming] had a recent update in New York Magazine.Since we discussed the concept, developed by Dickson Despommier, who teaches environmental science and microbiology at Columbia, a whole lot more people are on board with the climate change issue. So his proposal to put agriculture into skyscrapers and reallocate land to forests in the interested of sequestering carbon and slowing global warming now has the attention of more than just design junkies and eco-imagineers. It's become an attractive possibility to venture capitalists from all over the world. The idea factors in not only the climate aspect, but also impending population explosions, looking at taking food cultivation upwards instead of outwards as it grows to accommodate greater numbers of people . Vertical Farming | Alex Steffen, 26 Jun 05 On an urban planet, closing urban resource and energy loops -- creating zero-waste systems for meeting the needs of people who live in highly dense cities -- floats in front of us, grail-like, as a goal. ¶ No one quite knows how to get it done, yet. But more and more interesting pieces of the puzzle are piling up, like smart places, smart grids and product service systems...Here's another piece of the puzzle -- vertical farming:...it's a provocative idea, and might fit together with some of the innovations discussed above in novel and worldchanging ways.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Sustainability, Territory
at
13:27
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, books, density, ecology, farming, sustainability, territory
Monday, October 18. 2010Rome City Vision Architecture Competition winner / Weekend in a Morning ArchitectsVia ArchDaily ----- by Sebastian J Italian architects Massimiliano Marian and Andrea Cassi (Weekend in a Morning Architects), received first prize in the Rome City Vision Architecture Competition. Images and architect’s description after the break. Rome is the city of illusions, it is not a chance (“Roma” by Federico Fellini, 1972) A cloud of aerostatic balloons is hanging over the city, airships borrowed from a time when dreaming and running after the future were compulsory. Almost a Fellinian dream, a sonnet by a famous composer played on a loose chord. Each balloon has taken off from a dock corresponding to a specific suburb, defining an imaginary circle that takes up the diameter of the Raccordo Anulare, the ring road of Rome, and embraces the city. A trampoline to look out, count the fallen and dream. Until you get back to the ground with fragments of these thoughts in your pockets. Surrounded by the hills in a circular embrace; center of a land strip slid onto the sea, our sea. Rome is the embrace of an antique porch, open to the world. Enclosed by a ring of traffic, by mountains of houses that don’t follow the course of the river anymore; houses that all look the same, with doors and windows, piled on top of each other. Rome isn’t Rome everywhere. The circle of streets and buildings of its outskirts surround the city of souvenirs and memories: without any exchange, without any words. Like an old man and a boy, sitting on a bench with nothing to say. A vision is that place where memory and future look at each other without being afraid to speak. Sometimes a dream comes out of this. Waking up is always hard – headache and nausea. The vision that has always labeled Rome is made of the past, buildings that impose their history. Excavations for piping that take ages due to the steeplechase between buried treasures. Young american girls with sandals and international cameras as if they were in a theme park. Waking up from a dream like this one means getting out of the historic city and moving on to what we, and not our fathers, are building. Rome isn’t Rome everywhere. There are places where there’s no architectural or plastic element distinguishing a precise region, a particular landscape. These places reveal without any filters the inhuman nature of a maximized and globalized society, where there’s only one kind of landscape: the product of ideologies that act through simplifications or mere speculations. In these places the only thing leading back to a precise place of the territory is the skyline of the center, in a mist. The only element unifying two parallel yet divided realities is heaven. It’s the outskirts and heaven that we’re focusing on. The concept consists in creating a sort of fluctuating ring road. A new level that is added to the existing layers of the city. An immaterial level, defined only by the straight and circular trajectories of the balloons that move from one dock to the next, connecting the various Roman outskirts with each other. A system that is placed on the margins of the city that allows to seize the urban environment through new means. Knowledge, combined with the volatileness of a dreamt world, like a circus tent, like the famous travelers’ note books, these are the foundations of our views. “Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole.” (Earnest Hemingway, “Death in the afternoon”, 1932) The outskirts turn into the center of a special infrastructural network and almost ends in themselves: the docking towers become new architectural symbols that reflect the existing physical necessity of the urban borders. At the same time they are the frame of a transport system that provides a solution for two issues: tourism and environment. Through offering the chance to fly/float over Rome, the new system is aimed at decentralizing a part of tourism, today concentrated in the old town, thus creating now opportunities for the suburbs. At the same time this new infrastructural level can be regarded as alternative to individual transport by car. A new quick and non polluting way of creating new links in urban texture. The antique taste of this airship shall remind us of evolution that has led to the creation of ever more effective and technically advanced means. We think that it’s fundamental that the poetic and fantastic aspect of this proposal is supported by a special emphasis on environmental and technical innovation issues that need to be the foundation of any urban project. A city in fact is a place where interaction takes place, where many different levels of connection exist: a real ecosystem made of continuous exchange between the substance of what’s being built and the living organisms. Infrastructures, plants and streets are the support of numerous activities, movements and both evolution and involution processes. Today it seems essential to try to understand their complexity, and that’s where new technologies can be of avail. Let’s imagine we can read parts of town with a system now present on every smartphone, that has a photographic lens: the lens of augmented reality (AR). Pictures taken from the airships are broadcast live on a screen at the bottom of each docking tower: environmental and other useful data complete the images, thus providing a genuine scan of the metropolitan situation. A new scientific medium, continuous and complete. The outskirts become the place where city is read. The grid has been completed – both physical and virtual exchange are taking place. In our vision the continuous exchange of informations between balloons and stations and stations themselves (between outskirts and outskirts, a “suburban” dialogue) guarantees transversal monitoring of the city, allowing the citizens to have better consciousness of their own role within the urban ecosystem. Hence knowledge, not only in terms of creating postcards from above or taking fascinating photographs from bird’s eye view, but rather as starting point for a necessary participation in change. The aerostatic balloons float over the rooftops of Rome. Related Links:Personal comment:
As a side note, I think it's quite "funny" to see how much "flying things" are now present in architectural renderings (birds, baloons, kites, etc.), and by extension, things based on wind (energy harvesting). In this case, the project is fully based on flying balloons, but in many other cases, I believe that it is a way to illustrate the idea of sustainabiliy (without the project being necessary sustainable...).
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Territory
at
10:42
Defined tags for this entry: air, architecture, history, mobility, speculation, sustainability, territory, urbanism
Buenos Aires Vertical Zoo Competition proposal / Hila Davidpur, Tal Gazit, Eli Gotman, Hofi HarariHila Davidpu, Tal Gazit, Eli Gotman, and Hofi Harari recently shared their “ECO-CLIFF” proposal for the Buenos Aires Vertical Zoo Competition. The “ECO-CLIFF” is a revolutionary tower that will serve as a nesting ground for thousands of migrating birds as well as an ecological habitat for the different animals and species of the “Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve Zoo”.
Wrapped around a rigid structure, a system of nets and steel cables of varying densities covers the different functions, while maintaining, from a distance, the tower’s image of an organic cliff. The perforated skin of the tower will allow the controlled penetration of natural light and fresh air as well as rain water, in preferred areas, along with a system of green vegetation ingrained in the netting system, thus creating a small eco-system within the buildings boundary. In order to minimize the damage to the reserve by motored vehicles and the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions in the city, the Eco-Cliff’s main entrance is via a cable-way which connects to a public transportation system. As an option, we suggest to re-use the old mill silos at Puerto Madero as a possible gateway station, therefore connecting the Av. De Mayo urban axis and subway station to the Costanera Sur Reserve. As one of its primary functions, the Eco-Cliff will accommodate a variety of migrating birds which pass the Costanera Sur Reserve each year. The migrating birds nesting areas would accompany the human visitors along their ascending path throughout the varied elements of the tower, including the different animal spaces and the observation decks. The cliff- like tower seeks to be self-sustained with the help of photovoltaic cell system along with an ecological recycling and water treatment facilities. By taking a unique eco-educational point of view, the Eco-Cliff would create an unforgettable educating experience to the visitor on board as well as a spectacular landmark for the Costanera Sur Reserve and the city of Buenos Aires skyline.
Wednesday, October 13. 2010Seeper does GehryVia Archinect ----- Vimeo Festival - Architectural Mapping @ IAC from Louis Gruber on Vimeo. London-based interactive artists, Seeper, displayed a projection piece upon the Gehry-designed IAC building in NYC over the weekend, as part of the finale to the Vimeo Festival and Awards. Nice stuff!
Related Links:Personal comment: Another big projection mapping on a building, this time onto Gehry's IAC building, by Seeper. Similar to Pablo Valbuena, Anti-VJ, Exyzt, etc.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Interaction design
at
08:40
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, design (environments), design (motion), interaction design, lighting, mapping
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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