Friday, May 14. 2010
Via Bustler
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An American architecture professor, Ginger Krieg Dosier, 32, Assistant Professor of Architecture at American University of Sharjah (AUS) in Abu Dhabi, has won this year’s prestigious Metropolis Next Generation Design Prize for “Biomanufactured Brick.” The 2010 Next Generation Prize Challenge was “ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE” - a small fix to change the world. The Next Generation judges decided that Professor Dosier’s well-documented and -tested plan to replace clay-fired brick with a brick made with bacteria and sand, met the challenge perfectly.
“The ordinary brick - you would think that there is nothing more basic than baking a block of clay in an oven,” said Horace Havemeyer, Publisher of Metropolis. “Ginger Dosier’s idea is the perfect example of how making a change in an almost unexamined part of our daily lives can have an enormous impact on the environment.”
1-2-3 brick-making with Dosier’s competition-winning concept: pour the bacteria solution together with the cementing solution over the sand inside the formwork, let it saturate and harden (currently about one week) - voilà: we have an ecobrick!
There are over 1.3 trillion bricks manufactured each year worldwide, and over 10% are made by hand in coal-fired ovens. On average, the baking process emits 1.4 pounds of carbon per brick - more than the world’s entire aviation fleet. In countries like India and China, outdated coal-fired brick kilns consume more energy, emit more carbon, and produce great quantities of particulate air pollution. 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. If biomanufactured bricks replaced each new brick on the planet, it would save nearly 800 million tons of CO2 annually.
One of Dosier’s many ecobrick experiments in the lab
Professor Dosier, was trained as an architect (at Auburn University, Rural Studio, and Cranbrook Academy) and teaches architecture. But she studied microbiology, geology, and materials science in her spare time, most recently when she was teaching architecture at North Carolina State University. The results - which have been tested with Lego-sized bricks in research at AUS - impress architects and geologists alike. Grant Ferris, professor of geology at the University of Toronto, says that in all the scientific studies of microbial mineral precipitation, there has been little or no work on the “fabrication of construction or design materials,” which is what makes the Next Generation winner’s work “so compelling.”
Bacteria is dunked in a broth of growth media. The solution then incubates in test tubes at 37˚C before it’s fed into sand-filled formwork via drip.
“There was a strong feeling among the judges that the award should go to someone dealing with an issue on a global scale,” says Next Generation juror Chris Sharples, of SHoP Architects. “Here was a very simple concept defined by scientific method and an example of how you can come up with some very innovative ways to solve basic problems.”
“Ginger Dosier’s achievement is a tribute not only to her own imagination and grit, but serves as an example of how designers can make an outsize contribution to creating a more sustainable world,” said Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis. “We challenged the design community to produce a “small (but brilliant and elegant) ‘fix’” for the designed environment. We were surprised that an object with no moving parts - the brick - could be redesigned in so profound a way. But there were many entries that fully met the challenge of producing One Design Fix - and they show that the design community as a whole is overflowing with the imagination, knowledge, intuition, and skills to produce not just one but hundreds of fixes that can affect our planet today and for centuries to come.”
Digital bricks: Dosier will soon be able to print bricks of all shapes and sizes on rapid-prototyping machines.
Monday, May 10. 2010
Via e-storming
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Allan de Souza, The Goncourt Brothers stand between Caesar and the Thief of Bagdad, 2003
©Courtesy Allan de Souza and Talwar Gallery, New York / New Delhi
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DREAMLANDS
5 mai – 9 août 2010
Galerie 1, niveau 6
CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
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De la toute fin du XIXème siècle jusqu’à nos jours, à travers plus de 300 œuvres, l’exposition « Dreamlands » interroge l’influence grandissante du modèle du parc d’attractions dans la conception de la ville et de son imaginaire. Photographies, installations, projections, peintures, dessins, plans et maquettes d’architecture, extraits de films : au sein d’un parcours spectaculaire et inédit, l’exposition explore une quinzaine de thèmes et de lieux, de Paris à Coney Island, de Las Végas à Shanghaï et souligne la « colonisation » toujours plus forte du réel par la fiction et le spectacle.
Autant de mondes utopiques où la réalité devient rêve !
Expositions universelles, parcs d’attractions contemporains, le Las Vegas des années 1950 et 1960, le Dubaï d’aujourd’hui: tous ont contribué à modifier profondément notre rapport au monde et à la géographie, au temps et à l’histoire, aux notions d’original et de copie, d’art et de non-art. Les «dreamlands» de la société des loisirs ont façonné l’imaginaire, nourri les utopies comme les créations des artistes, mais ils sont aussi devenus réalité: le pastiche, la copie, l’artificiel et le factice ont été retournés pour engendrer à leur tour l’environnement dans lequel s’inscrit la vie réelle et s’imposer comme de nouvelles normes urbaines et sociales, brouillant les frontières de l’imaginaire et celles de la réalité. Du «Pavillon de Vénus» conçu par Salvador Dalí pour la Foire internationale de New York de 1939, au «Learning from Las Vegas» (L’enseignement de Vegas) des architectes Robert Venturi et Denise Scott Brown, et au «Delirious New York » de Rem Koolhaas (qui associe Manhattan et le parc d’attractions de Dreamland), les seize sections de l’exposition retracent les étapes d’une relation complexe et problématique.
Crossposted with Do projects.
The response to the Systems/Layers walkshop we held in Wellington a few months back was tremendously gratifying, and given how much people seem to have gotten out of it we’ve been determined to set up similar events, in cities around the planet, ever since. (Previously on Do, and see participant CJ Wells’s writeup here.)
We’re fairly far along with plans to bring Systems/Layers to Barcelona in June (thanks Chris and Enric!), have just started getting into how we might do it in Taipei (thanks Sophie and TH!), and understand from e-mail inquiries that there’s interest in walkshops in Vancouver and Toronto as well. This is, of course, wonderfully exciting to us, and we’re hoping to learn as much from each of these as we did from Wellington.
What we’ve discovered is that the initial planning stages are significantly smoother if potential sponsors and other partners understand a little bit more about what Systems/Layers is, what it’s for and what people get out of it. The following is a brief summary design to answer just these questions, and you are more than welcome to use it to raise interest in your part of the world. We’d love to hold walkshops in as many cities as are interested in having them.
What
Systems/Layers is a half-day “walkshop,” held in two parts. The first portion of the activity is dedicated to a slow and considered walk through a reasonably dense and built-up section of the city at hand. What we’re looking for are appearances of the networked digital in the physical, and vice versa: apertures through which the things that happen in the real world drive the “network weather,” and contexts in which that weather affects what people see, confront and are able to do.
Participants are asked to pay particular attention to:
- Places where information is being collected by the network.
- Places where networked information is being displayed.
- Places where networked information is being acted upon, either by people directly, or by physical systems that affect the choices people have available to them.
You’ll want to bring seasonally-appropriate clothing, good comfortable shoes, and a camera. We’ll provide maps of “the box,” the area through which we’ll be walking.
This portion of the day will take around 90 minutes, after which we gather in a convenient “command post” to map, review and discuss the things we’ve encountered. We allot an hour for this, but since we’re inclined to choose a command post offering reasonably-priced food and drink, discussion can go on as long as participants feel like hanging out.
Who.
Do projects’ Nurri Kim and Adam Greenfield plan and run the workshop, with the assistance of a qualified local expert/maven/mayor. (In Wellington, Tom Beard did a splendid job of this, for which we remain grateful.)
We feel the walkshop works best if it’s limited to roughly 30 participants in total, split into two teams for the walking segment and reunited for the discussion.
How.
In order for us to bring Systems/Layers to your town, we need the sponsorship of a local arts, architecture or urbanist organization — generally, but not necessarily, a non-profit. They’ll cover the cost of our travel and accommodation, and defray these expenses by charging for participation in the walkshop. In turn, we’ll ensure both that the registration fee remains reasonable, and that one or two scholarship places are available for those who absolutely cannot afford to participate otherwise.
If you’re a representative of such an organization, and you’re interested in us putting on a Systems/Layers walkshop in your area, please get in touch. If you’re not, but you still want us to come, you could try to put together enough participants who are willing to register and pay ahead of time, so we could book flights and hotels. But really, we’ve found that the best way to do things is to approach a local gallery, community group or NGO and ask them to sponsor the event.
At least as we have it set up now, you should know that we’re not financially compensated in any way for our organization of these walkshops, beyond having our travel, accommodation and transfer expenses covered.
When.
Our schedule tends to fill up 4-6 months ahead of time, so we’re already talking about events in the (Northern Hemisphere) spring of 2011. And of course, it’s generally cheapest to book flights and hotels well in advance. If you think Systems/Layers would be a good fit for your city, please do get in touch as soon as you possibly can. As we’ve mentioned, we’d be thrilled to work with you, and look forward to hearing from you with genuine anticipation and excitement. Wellington was amazing, Barcelona is shaping up to be pretty special, and Taipei, if we can pull it off, will be awesome. It’d mean a lot to us to add your city to this list. Thanks!
Personal comment:
An interesting initiative by Adam Greefield. Reminds me a little bit about the walks in the city or urban landscapes the italian architecture group Stalker is/was doing. With different goals in mind though. And I quite like the idea of a "walkshop" too!
Wednesday, May 05. 2010
Via Mammoth
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[Halley VI, a British research station on ski pods, via Wired.]
At Wired, Andrew Blum surveys the architecture of Antarctic research stations, which, as it includes buildings which have to be towed to remain at fixed geographic points, hydraulic lifts that raise buildings in reaction to snowfall, and architecturally-induced “subzero maelstroms”, reads like a photographic companion to the recently opened Archigram Archival Project.
Tuesday, May 04. 2010
Via BLDBLOG
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by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].
LOT-EK and set designer Christine Jones will be premiering their project Theater for One in Times Square, two weeks from now. It "will be up for 10 days, with performances open to the general public"—but, as the architects point out, the public is only invited "one at a time."
[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].
Specifically, the petite space is "a theater for one actor and one audience member. Inspired by small one-to-one spaces—such as the confessional or the sex peep-booth—Theater for One explores the intense emotion of live theater through the direct and intimate one-to-one interaction of actor and audience."
[Images: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].
In many ways, I'm reminded of the dramatic intensity of Nancy Bannon's Pod Project, which consisted of "13 private, one-on-one performances housed within 13 sculpted spaces." In Bannon's work, "the viewer actually enters the performance environment and experiences a one-on-one exchange in unconventional proximity. The interiors of the sculptures/pods are personalized"—but this also means that each pod has been architecturally stylized so as to fit the dramas involved.
[Image: Theater for One by Christine Jones and LOT-EK].
What I like about the LOT-EK/Christine Jones project is the blank architecturalization of this dramatic experience; portable, easily deployed, and externally neutral, the Theater for One could just as easily be reused as an interviewing station, a place for personal confrontation, or even a writing lab. It could be a dressing room, private cinema, or staging ground for psychedelic self-actualization—and I would actually love to see this thing hit the road someday, popping up all over the U.S. and abroad, to see what flexibly subjective uses people wish to put it to. NPR meets Storycorps, by way of a one-actor play.
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