Wednesday, April 03. 2013Deterritorialized Living, a fabric | ch residency and workshop in Beijing
By fabric | ch -----
At the invitation of Zhang Ga, curator and director of the TASML Lab at the Tsinghua University in Beijing (joint lab between Parsons School of Design and the Tsinghua University, in fact), to start develop a research project and run a short workshop with the students, I'm currently located for a month approximately alternatively on the campus and in town. The residency will last until mid July and other members of fabric | ch will come later. We are starting here a new line of project that we've titled (so far) Deterritorialized Living and that will group several projects (Deterritorialized Daylight, Deterritorialized Air, Deterritorialized Heat and Deterritorialized House that will use some of these climatic elements to define a strange house). The main idea of this project is to take on the emergent and yet almost invisible "icon" of the data center. To take it as a background for our project. A kind of re-emergence of the modern "international" ("ubiquitous"?) idea, transformed: a modern "specter", as Clog mentioned it. We try to question and anaylze it (its centrality, its ambiguous status of privately hosted if not owned people's data, its energy consuption, its heat production, its physical location and use of ressources, its seriality --rack structure--, etc.). But in fact, we want to push its own logic to its end: into a fully deterritorialzed way of living, with permanent --in fact almost useless-- access to (zombie) services and data, out of physical location and time zones. We want to study this situation and produce designs to respond to it.
The workshop part in itself that we are running here is a sub-subject of our own research, it is about inhabiting the computer cabinet or rather the servers cabinet, slightly extended therefore, but still minimal living. The workshop is entitled "Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet, with two suns", but I'll do a dedicated post about this later.
All in all, my own situation here in Beijing for a month gives me the occasion to really experience and analyze my own "deterritorialized" way of living, as I fully rely on software and networks architectures to keep working with the rest of the team in Switzerland (vpn to bypass some digital territorialities, clouds services of all sorts, video calls, file exchanges, etc.), as well as to periodically relocate myself with the help of an american gps service or to speak and exchange with people here.
I really look forward for the results of the workshop and of our own work! So more about it in the coming days/weeks...
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Interaction design
at
09:32
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, climate, computing, conditioning, fabric | ch, interaction design, interferences, research, speculation, teaching
Tuesday, December 04. 2012The Coldscape
Via Cabinet ----- By Nicola Twilley
More than three-quarters of the food consumed in the United States today is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and sold under artificial refrigeration. The shiny, humming stainless steel box in your kitchen is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak—a tiny fragment of the vast global network of temperature-controlled storage and distribution warehouses cumulatively capable of hosting uncounted billions of cubic feet of chilled flesh, fish, or fruit. Add to that an equally vast and immeasurable volume of thermally controlled space in the form of shipping containers, wine cellars, floating fish factories, international seed banks, meat-aging lockers, and livestock semen storage, and it becomes clear that the evolving architecture of coldspace is as ubiquitous as it is varied, as essential as it is overlooked.
(...)
More about it and about a "perpetual winter" on Cabinet's website.
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Culture & society
at
09:55
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, conditioning, culture & society, engineering, food, geography, globalization, goods, weather
Tuesday, March 27. 2012San Alfonso del Mar, ChileBy Patrick Keller -----
Please welcome San Alfonso del Mar... the second (or third ?) degree of artificality: the "spanish costa brava buildings" over the horizon pool over the XXL sized horizon (sailing) pool over the ocean. Who says better?
Related Links:Personal comment: Would it be in Las Vegas, I could possibly understand, even if it would still be ridiculous. But there, just behind a beach and the ocean it goes beyond understanding.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Territory
at
16:55
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, conditioning, culture & society, territory, tourism
Thursday, March 22. 2012Space Colony Art from the 1970sVia It's Nice That
-----
de Liv Siddall
Ever sat at work daydreaming about living in space? Then you’ll be pleased to know that NASA has enormous teams working on space-habitation. In the likely case of us having to flee our planet, we’ll hopefully be able to whizz up to these pods where there are barbecues, golf, parks and suspension bridges waiting for us (Phew! Thank god they’ve got suspension bridges up there, I’d definitely miss those). Check out these insanely cool (though sadly rejected) designs for space houses from the 1970s and remember – these are not just musings, they are real designs, made by real NASA. (Read more)
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Design
at
14:04
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, conditioning, design, future, history, illustration, space, speculation
Thursday, November 17. 2011Should Scientists Seed the Sky With Chemicals?Via GOOD ----- by Sarah Laskow
Photo via (cc) Flickr user dcysurfer/Dave Young
Personal comment:
While I agree with the fears of Sarah Laskow about geo-engineering the planet, I want also to add this comment: we've already geo-engineered the planet for decades! Even so it was not an intended one (or was it?), 7 billion humans with their food production systems, architectures and travel infrastructures, energy production, factories, etc. are a very strong geo-engineering force, especially in the developed countries! It is no more a natural Earth we are living in, but a man transformed one (the famous "anthropocene" described by some), in its very essence (up to the quality of the air we are breathing).
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Sustainability, Territory
at
10:27
Defined tags for this entry: conditioning, engineering, geography, science & technology, sustainability, territory
Wednesday, November 16. 2011Project Ice Shield[Image: "L.A. Ice" by Victor Hadjikyriacou, produced for Unit 11 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, part of last year's Landscape Futures Super-Workshop].
The project aims to artificially create "naleds"—ultra-thick slabs of ice that occur naturally in far northern climes when rivers or springs push through cracks in the surface to seep outwards during the day and then add an extra layer of ice during the night. Unlike regular ice formation on lakes—which only gets to a metre in thickness before it insulates the water below—naleds continue expanding for as long as there is enough water pressure to penetrate the surface. Many are more than seven metres thick, which means they melt much later than regular ice. Fascinatingly, naleds have already been used as foundations for infrastructural projects elsewhere; in North Korea, for instance, the Guardian reports, the military has utilized naleds "to build river crossings for tanks during the winter and Russia has used them as drilling platforms." The ideal site has the following characteristics: deep, narrow, slow flow in a single straight channel with gradual approaches to the ice; no tributary streams, creeks or lakes immediately upstream; and it is located near an existing road network. The site should also be free of warm springs and sand bars and not subject to major snow drifting. Being downstream of riffles/rapids may be conducive to supercooling and frazil ice formation that might accelerate ic e formation and growth at the bridge site. (...) Once natural ice cover has progressed across the channel thick enough to bear the weight of personnel and light equipment, existing snow cover is removed to accelerate ice growth at the bottom of the ice sheet. Variation exists in whether snow is removed or just compacted. Snow removal is recommended on upstream and downstream sides of the road for a distance of 23-30 meters (75-100 feet) as well as on the road itself. Subsequent to ice growth in response to snow removal, surface flooding is recommended to build up ice thickness on the road surface. (...) Lateral barriers of snow, logs or boards are used to contain floodwater on the road surface. Water should be applied by layering, allowing full freezing of previous water applications before the next. Conflicting recommendations exist as to whether brush or logs should be incorporated into the ice. One study did document the increase in ice strength after incorporating geo-grid material during the ice buildup process. A regular regime of ice drilling and monitoring of ice thickness is recommended. If you want something a little more hi-tech, on the other hand, the U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center has slowly been amassing insight into the construction of ice roads and ice bridges.
The engineers built field-expedient water tanks, berms of snow and crushed ice, to keep the water in designated areas for freezing. They move about 70,000 gallons of water per day using a gas-powered water pump and water lines. Once the bridge is capable of holding the weight, they will use 5,000 gallon water trucks to help speed up the process by delivering water faster than the pump. The frames and techniques used for building with frozen water, then, are very similar to those used when dealing with concrete; in either case, it is the architecture of hardened liquids.
Monday, June 20. 2011+ Pool / Family and PlayLab in collaboration with ArupVia ArchDaily ----- by Kelly Minner © Family, PlayLab A 30-day Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the continued development of + Pool is underway. From the creative minds at Family and PlayLab, + Pool is a collaboration to design a floating riverwater pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City. Beginning the next phase of the project, material testing and design, the online fundraising campaign hopefully will raise the initial $25,000 needed to begin physically testing the filtration membranes providing results to determine the best filtration membranes and methods to provide clean and safe riverwater for the public to swim in. A preliminary engineering feasibility report was initially conducted by Arup New York, which assessed the water quality, filtration, structural, mechanical and energy systems of + Pool. Family and PlayLab launched a Kickstarter online fundraising campaign this month with the ultimate goal of generating enough support to prototype the filtration system by building a full-scale working mockup of the one section of + Pool. Research, design, testing and development will continue through the year in conjunction with permitting, approvals and building partnerships with community, municipal, commercial and environmental organizations. Donation levels for the Kickstarter campaign range from $1 to $10,000 with the hope that everyone interested in cleaner public waterways can get involved. Donors can choose from a variety of incentives and gear up for a day at the pool. For more information about the project and the campaign or to donate click here. Or write to info@pluspool.org. Follow the break for more details about this project and the history of floating pools in New York City, which date back to the early 19th century.
© Family, PlayLab EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH A POOL + Pool is the collaborative initiative of design studios Family and PlayLab to build a floating pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City. The project was launched with the ambition to improve the use of the city’s natural resources by providing a clean and safe way for the public to swim in New York’s waters. As both a public amenity and an ecological prototype, + Pool is a small but exciting precedent for environmental urbanism in the 21st Century. NYC + POOL + Pool is for you, for your friend, for your mom, for your dad, for your girlfriend, for your kids, for your boss, for your bartender, for your tamale guy, for your other girlfriend, for New York City, for everyone. An offshore reflection of the city intersection, + Pool both exemplifies the dense, busy character of New York City and offers an island retreat from it. © Family, PlayLab HISTORY + POOL Floating pools have paralleled the development of New York City dating back to the early 19th Century. When the city’s elite used lower Manhattan as a resort in the 1800s floating spas were located just off the Battery. After the Civil War the huge influx of immigrants required bathhouses in the Hudson and East Rivers as many were without proper bathing facilities in their homes. In the early 1900s improved plumbing infrastructure and increasing water quality concerns closed the last of the river-borne pools, relocating aquatic leisure activities to more sanitized and inland sites. In 1972, the Clean Water Act set forth the goal of making every body of water in the country safe for recreation, and in 2007 the Floating Pool Lady – a reclaimed barge now located in the Bronx – brought back the first semblance of New York’s floating pool culture in almost a Century. Today, as the appreciation for our city’s natural resources becomes increasingly crucial, a permanent floating pool in the river will help restore the water culture so integral to New York City. © Family, PlayLab EVERYONE + POOL + Pool should be enjoyed by everyone, at all times, which is why it’s designed as four pools in one: Children’s Pool, Sports Pool, Lap Pool and Lounge Pool. Each pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool, or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play. WATER + POOL The most important aspect of + Pool’s design is that it filters river water through the pool’s walls – like a giant strainer dropped into the river. The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality. PARK + POOL Its universally recognizable shape and unusual offshore siting immediately position + Pool as a iconic piece of public infrastructure. Whether as a compliment to a thriving park or catalyst for a growing one, the pool can serve as a destination for weekend visitors, an island haven for busy locals, and a symbol for the surrounding neighborhood. © Family, PlayLab TEAM + POOL After the launch of + Pool in the summer of 2010, Family and PlayLab began meeting with waterfront organizations, engineers, urban planners, environmental experts, public and private developers and community organizations to build a team to push the project forward. Likeminded institutions like The Metropolitan Waterfront Association, NYC Swim and the Department of Parks and Recreation have all been integral in shaping both the design and process of the pool itself. The + Pool team has been working with renowned engineering firm Arup New York to study the filtration, structural, mechanical and energy systems of the pool as well as the water quality conditions and regulations necessary for the project. The team recently completed a preliminary engineering feasibility report in preparation for the material and methods testing phase. © Family, PlayLab NEXT + POOL Following the completion of the preliminary engineering report done in collaboration with Arup, the + Pool team is now moving into the phase of material testing to assess and determine the best filtration membranes and methods to provide clean and safe riverwater for the public to swim in. Family and PlayLab launched a Kickstarter online fundrasing campaign in June of 2011 with the ultimate goal of generating enough support to prototype the filtration system by building a full-scale working mockup of the one section of + Pool. Research, design, testing and development will continue through the year in conjunction with permitting, approvals and building partnerships with community, municipal, commercial and environmental organizations. Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Sustainability, Territory
at
13:57
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, conditioning, ecology, infrastructure, sustainability, territory
Friday, April 29. 2011Apollo programPictures taken out from the BLDGBLOG post about Nicholas Monchaux's recent book: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo. ----- [Images: From Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux].
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture
at
09:28
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, conditioning, dimensions, history, photography, research, space
Tuesday, March 15. 2011Terra Luna Incognita*Space exploration and colonization has been a source of architectural fantasies since the adventurous journey that started 40 years ago after the 1969 moon landing. The idea of a Moon colonization is something really provocative for the architects’ mind. As MUST wrote on its article Very Dirty Realism for Volume magazine:
Already in 1970–71 Alessandro Poli, from the radical architecture group Supersutio, designed the project Architettura Interplanetaria, based on a new idea of geography, that imagined a form for architecture at an interplanetary scale, including a highway from the earth to the moon. Superstudio’s idea of avoiding traditional architectural response, involved with formal preoccupations on mega structures, led them to desigh this highway that would make possible to transport people from the Earth to the Moon. We can think that Superstudio knew about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky‘s proposal for a space elevator, which is dated around 1895 and based on the idea of a free-standing tower reaching from the surface of Earth to geostationary orbit.
As a precedent we can remind here Yu Artsutanov‘s proposal in 1960 to go to the cosmos in a electric train, where he pointed that the creation of weightless, anti-gravitational ships was possible. And he adds:
Bradley Edwards on his study The Space Elevator pointed out the relationship between science fiction with this kind of designs. And reminds us that Arthur C. Clark put together an interesting tale of the construction of the first space elevator in his book Fountains of Paradise, while he adds:
So, can we talk about a terraforming project on the Moon?
Why is the Moon re-entering the popular imagination? We can read that the “once upon a time” science fiction concept of a space elevator has been envisioned and studied for real. David Smitherman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center’s Advanced Projects Office has compiled plans for such an elevator. The illustration beyond, by artist Pat Rawling shows the concept of a space elevator as viewed from the geostationary transfer station looking down the length of the elevator towards the Earth:
According to Edwin Gardner and Julian Bleecker on Designing Fiction, at Volume #25: Getting There Being There, the utopian future, like science fiction future, also deals with social, cultural and societal aspects. Taking this idea, maybe we’re looking again to the Moon as a response to our needs within the current state of the world, within wars and disasters. That’s why the idea of having settlement on the Moon as a logical step in the expansion of humanity beyond the Earth maybe is not the answer. If humanity succeed on having permanently occupied extraterrestrial bases, maybe it’s time to quote part of Fukuyama’s The End of History:
Fukuyama pointed that the traumatic events of the twentieth century formed the backdrop to a profound intellectual crisis as well. And he adds that it is possible to speak of historical progress only if one knows where mankind is going. So we just wonder if we really know where we’re going?
If we think on Fukuyama’s text, it’s inevitable to wonder if the idea of Moon colonization is an idea progress or simply the human ideal of power, that drives us to try to colonize every single square inch we find in our path. If our main task is no longer to improve human society but to save the planet from human society, why are we thinking to take human society to another environment? Even now, that there are major discussions and conflicting positions regarding the safety and necessity of nuclear power, NASA raised the need of nuclear fission on the Moon, to provide the necessary power. According to their research, “a nuclear reactor used in space is much different than Earth-based systems. There are no large concrete cooling towers, and the reactor is about the size of an office trash can. The energy produced from a space reactor also is much smaller but more than adequate for the projected power needs of a lunar outpost.” All this utopic ideas are quite provocative but even if we deeply believe in the need of utopias as a tool for architectural thinking, what if we simply stop for a while… and think instead of build? —– Related readings and interesting links:
Friday, March 04. 2011McCall's mile high Column of cloudVia Creative Review ----- by Patrick Burgoyne Artist Anthony McCall has unveiled plans to create a spinning column of cloud a mile high on Merseyside next year as part of the Cultural Olympiad for 2012 McCall's Column will be sited at Wirral Waters in Merseyside and be visible across the North West region throughout the Olympic year. It was commissioned by Arts Council England as part of Artists taking the lead, a series of 12 public art commissions across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Apparently, a “coherent convection” of cloud and mist, will be created by gently rotating the water on the surface of the Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil (see here). A scale model of the installation is on show at McCall's current London show. Related Links:Personal comment: Anthony McCall strikes back! I really wonder if this will work (and if it will look like the picture...), but it's a quite beautiful project nonetheless.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Art, Territory
at
15:20
Defined tags for this entry: air, art, artificial reality, artists, conditioning, public, territory, weather
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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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