The tower of David

In last February, the NY Times wrote an article about a very interesting skyscraper in Caracas, the Torre de David,  that seems to carry a good analogy with the current Venezuelan situation since Hugo Chavez has been elected since 1999. In fact this 150 meter tall building is currently hosting about 2500 squatters who find in it, a good way to dwell in this housing crisis time. This skyscraper that was originally supposed to become an architectural symbol and an economically operative building of the Financial power never finished its construction because of the national financial crisis in the late 90′s.

To read more:

http://www.domusweb.it/it/architecture/la-torre-di-david/

Solar balloon experiments

The video shows a tetroon shaped balloon made from 20 bin bags, measuring approximately 7mx3.5m folded out, and once inflated with air the balloon was about 4m in diameter. The balloon reached a height of about 25-35m. I found it rose quicker when released from a height (the tetroon was released from my loft bathroom window). I also carried out several other tests with different forms (and some with a weight) such as a cellular tetroon, UFO, double bulb, cuboid and a tube, but I found the tetroon form the most stable in the air, it also reached the greatest height, was the largest balloon I constructed and used the entire bin bag during construction.

Double bulb (20 bin bags)

UFO (20 bin bags)

Mini Tetroon (9 bin bags)

Cellular Tetroon (29 bin bags with a small weight 226g of chocolate)Unfortunately this balloon got caught on my neighbours roof, but I am confident that it can work again.

Cuboid (6 bin bags)

Tube (7 bin bags)

Tetroon (20 bin bags)

A Pneu Story

This animation tells the story of an autonomous pneumatic landscape emerging from the ground. The story begins deep in the ocean where the first pneus forms came into existence, overtime they evolved and reached the surface of the water to continue life on land, where they became animated by the changing environment that surrounded them.

I used Cinema 4D and After Effects(and some Trapcode Particular).

This was my final animation for my digital representation unit at the University of Westminster.

The images below are my chronograms and storyboard from my logbook.

 

Evapotrons

Evapotrons are devices used at Burning Man to evaporate grey water quickly and efficiently (and they look pretty damn cool!). A tray is filled with grey water and a drum runs over it which is covered by a dark absorbent material. This drum is constantly driven round by the wind. The absorbed water evaporates from the dark material at a  much faster rate than if it were just sitting in the trough.

The website explains this process more thoroughly as well as providing information about the history and development of evapotrons over the years.

DrinkPeeDrinkPeeDrinkPee

The drinkpeedrinkpeedrinkpee  project by Submersible Design details a novel way to extract the Nitrogen from urine in order to create fertiliser for plants. The process also has the added bonus of not overfeeding the marine environment which is a direct result of flushing urine directly into the sewers.

The Bridges of Meghalayas

“In North-East India, the giant cliffs, lead up to a hidden word: Meghalayas. Nearly 2km high and buffeted by mansoon clouds this is possibly the wettest place on earth. Once 25 meters of rain fell here in a year, the world record. Living here poses an unusual problem and it is not just keeping dry. Nearly all the rain falls during the summer mansoon. River flows from gentle stream to raging torrent. They become wild and unpredictable and almost impossible to cross. Harli and his niece Giuliana are busy cultivating a cunning solution: 30 years ago, Harli planted this strangler fig on the river’s edge and today he is teaching Giuliana how to care for it…”

David Attenborough in the BBC Documentary How the world made us below (from the PermacultureForest Youtube Channel)  narrates the beautiful story of the live bridges of Meghalayas which is a network of living fig tree bridges, sometimes several century old, used to cross the torrents in the Mansoon season.

Above: The “double decker” bridge, in Travel the Unknown blog  

Above: Close up Photo of a fig tree bridge by Neeraj2608 

Above: Even Handrails were made with the roots, article from Inhabitat      

 Above: view of one of the bridges from dpreview

 

 

Re-connecting Urbanites with their Food / Nature

The Fin’s Labyrinth is a project by Stewart HICKS and Allison NEWMEYER from Design with Company which just won Suckerpunchdaily‘s competition to imagine a Center for Urban Farming.

This theoretical project titled “Fin’s Labyrinth” encourages inhabitants of a city to “play with their food”. According to the authors, it acts “both as working fish farm and a new form of public (civic) amenity. It uses the infrastructure for raising fish as a backdrop to a wide range of activities designed to entertain you while getting you acquainted with your next meal. It reintroduces the production of food into the daily lives of city dwellers, making a more concrete connection between what we put in our mouths and the environment required to generate it.”

A few months ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the famous co-founder of Facebook declared that he will “only eat meat that he killed.”  He justified this personal challenge by saying “I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat [...] so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have.” Under the tutelage of a chef, Zuckerberg visits local farms and cut the throat of animals with a knife, which is “the most kind way to do it”.

The Fin’s labyrinth and Zuckerberg’s latest “challenge” reveals a growing discomfort for what cannot be seen in the city while being inherent to its functioning: An intense violence was necessary to kill the animal yet one can buy its pieces packaged from the supermarket just like cereals. This imbalance could be solved in myriads of Architectural proposals. One could imagine a supermarket where you can hunt for food, with forests entering the white cold aisles. Who knows, maybe this might help reducing crime by helping people release their inner violence hence killing two bird with one stone. [:)] 

Toby and I would like to encourage these “closed-loop” or “self-reliant” systems where very little is needed from the outside to make the program work…

Below are several projects from Design with Company on this topic:

The Fin’s Labyrinth

Farmland World