It's Alive

Theo Jansen has created these beautiful walking beach animals. They are aware of their place in space and their environment. His newest creatures walk without assistance on the beaches of Holland, powered by wind, captured by gossamer wings that flap and pump air into old lemonade bottles that in turn power the creatures' many plastic spindly legs. The walking sculptures look alive as they move, each leg articulating in such a way that the body is steady and level. New robots are now modeled with such joinery. They even incorporate primitive logic gates that are used to reverse the machine’s direction if it senses dangerous water or loose sand where it might get stuck.

The fact that they are self powered is a kick in the pants to why more buildings can't be that way. Yes, we have integrated wind and sun more but really it is not an everyday occurrence. These sand beasts that Jansen has made are low tech and could be reproduced. Imaging if you lived inside of one of these beasts, and not only was the wind powering the "animal" and what ever else you plugged into it but you with your movements were also attributing to its energy?
Would that then be the inhabitable organism?

It came from the depths!

If life really originated from the waters, why not go back there? Cesar Harada and his team are building a floating architecture that evolves like a living organism as it moves across the sea. This Laboratory was initiated by Cesar with his writing about open architecture and his experiments on bioarchitecture in urban contexts. The Open Sailing project is coming along with the goal of being truely an open-source development of an International Ocean Station.

Open_Sailing 4 minutes concept from cesar harada on Vimeo.

I hope to update more as it comes in. They have started construction on the station.
Another great sea addendum is a recent project by Bios Design Collective. This project designed by Charles Lee. He produced this model of a sealife inspired boat dock. He incorporated the idea of communal gathering spaces in boat communities where trade and work can be done before retreating to the privacy of your quarters. If there was farming involved, it would be more similar to the Harada's project.
Acconci Studio designed in Korea a performing arts center for a floodable island. This project relates due to its capability to adapt and change. Some words from Acconci::

DROWNED WORLD. The floodable base of the island is a landscape of no-landscape. It’s other-worldly but not untouchable; it’s usable, walkable – you walk in and out of craters and crevices, you sit inside the craters…

HOVERING WORLD. The Performing Arts Center proper is rotated on the floodable base of the island; it’s cantilevered off the base, it escapes floods, it hovers above the water like a spacecraft.

TUBE-TO-TUBE, VEIN-TO-VEIN. The skin is sucked into the body of the spaceship to make an access. The access tube is sucked in to make a circulation-tube; one tube is sucked in to make another, the tubes take you up and down and across the spaceship, as if through the circulation-systems of the body.

BLOWING BALLOONS. The skin of a circulation-tube is sucked in, stretched out, to make an opera house, concert halls, restaurants…

STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE. The space in-between the programmed spaces is landscape, interior landscape: it’s a jungle. You stop off here on your way to a theater; you enter on different levels, it’s as if you’re floating through the jungle.

AN INSIDE OF OUTSIDE. The perforated surface of the spaceship lets sunlight in, into the jungle. It rains and snows inside the jungle.

COMING IN OUT OF THE WATER. If you don’t want to walk or drive across the bridge, you can come to the island by boat; you dock your boat in a crater. The largest craters are occupied: they’re filled with transparent capsules, that function as hotel rooms.

GOING OUT INTO THE WATER. The hotel capsules are tethered to the craters on pistons; when the river floods, the hotel capsules float.

Who is ready to take this out to sea?