inhabitable organism

life design

2010-11-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

Design of life.
Craig Venter is pretty amazing. He also has his Synthesized organism. One which he says will translate CO2 to fuel. Think about it. Self replicating species whose parent was a computer.

Hello Singularity. Is that you at my cell wall?

ACADIA 2010

2010-10-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

So I am here right now- there is a lot to write about yet I won't attempt this right now. Just to give a small overview and highlights. Speakers that spoke this morning were :
Alessandra Ponte, Associate Professor, University of Montreal, Alberto T. Estevez, Director Biogenetic Architecture Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Jenny Sabin, Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania, Tomasz Jaskiewicz, Scott Crawford.

Currently in a pleasant overload of information. On day 3 of the conference. I need a moment to digest.

Sad not to see the gentlemen from the BIOS Design Collective not here.

an answer to the archaic?

2010-09-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Rachel Armstrong is hitting home. I was talking about biomemetics in architecture as way of self organizing cells (and repairing them self.) She also talks about metabolic materials. Not far off from what was proposed in the Inhabitable Organism (our METABOLISM!!!!)

Rachel Armstrong is not an architect. She is a medical doctor, multi-media producer, science fiction author and arts collaborator. Through her current research that explores architectural design and mythologies about new technology, she has been working with scientists and architects to explore cutting-edge, sustainable technologies.

Though I don't see her idea's too far off or "futuristic", Armstrong believes cities will be able to replace the energy they draw from the environment, respond to the needs of their populations and eventually regarded as "living" similar to parks or gardens. (I guess she was a big fan of Ecotopia as well....) This is also similar to point others have made about Open Source Urbanism (as the natural world can be considered as open source... let's think about mulit-poos.)

"Scientists need to work outside their own areas of expertise to make new technologies that are pertinent to the 21st century and to collaborate, both with other scientific disciplines and the arts and humanities."

Rachel Armstrong

(I KNOW RIGHT?!)

in Social Media Publicity grows like cancer

2010-08-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

"The ideas that we proffer are based on off-the-shelf existing technologies. We just change the solution-bases and do things that aren't necessarily as obvious. We don't have a problem with thinking about science fiction -- in fact we actually embrace it."

Mitchell Joachim

The Colbert Report

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pee shit bricks...

2010-08-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

Waste not want not? Well, Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, is making what some call waste into building materials. What if we could grow and cultivate architectural materials by employing natural minerals and microorganisms?

The built environment that we all know and sometime love consists as is a limited palette of traditional, static materials such as concrete, glass, steel, and wood. These materials embody high concentrations of energy, with most components of concrete and steel mined from non- renewable resources. Not that great for the sustaining the environment or leaving a minimal carbon foot print. (Though LEED and other associations will give you brownie points otherwise....) Did you know 40% of global carbon dioxide is linked to the construction industry, primarily due to material production and disposal? So why not "grow" bricks? Biologically grown materials can be pollution free (note can be- they might just have a lower production of waste until we figure out how to recycle it). These grown materials also have the potential to contain a low embodied energy and could be produced as part of a local ecosystem.

Dosier has been working on a new breed of biologically “grown” bricks that are durable, sustainably manufactured, and easily produced from readily available materials. These “Better Bricks,” can be “grown” from sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride, and urea. (There's the pee again!) Growing bricks instead of being baking them, which consumes a ton of energy, saves and produces a great amount of energy!

Something to think about. I know it has been a while- but I have just been occupied with settling down in my new home/city/etc. Inhabitable Organism is on the rise! And I have a feeling it will be a pissing good time....

pee power again!!?!

2010-08-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

I've done a few posts about Urine at this time but here's something new!

Youtricity, a research group of the Engineering & Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, is developing the world's first Direct Urea Powered Fuel Cells. They are focusing their efforts to water treatment/purification and renewable energy where urea is a contamination problem.

This revolutionary new fuel cell takes in urine and out comes electricity and clean water. Brilliant! This would mean wonders for third world energy and clean water problems.

How does this magic work? The fuel cells convert chemical energy into electricity through a series of reactions between a fuel and an oxidant. Urea is a great (and redily) replacement hydrogen or methanol fuels. The only catch is that the batteries don't store any chemical energy inside them. This means they can only operate when external fuel sources are supplied. So keep drinking that aqua.

This yellow wonder is the brainchild of Doctors Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan. It uses cheaper materials for its membrane and catalysts. It uses a non-toxic, non-combustible fuel: urine. Talk about reducing your carbon foot print. Did you also know that urea is also known as carbamide? Urea is not strait urine and comes from humans and mammals. These batteries work with both.

Dr. Tao explained his inspirations::::

"Growing up in rural eastern China I was aware of the use of urea as an agricultural fertilizer. When I became a chemist and was looking at fuel cell development I thought of using it in the process. We are only at prototype stage at present, but if this renewable material can be used as a commercially viable and environmentally friendly energy source then we will be absolutely delighted, and many people around the world will benefit."

Urea elsewhere- it is being used in trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. Other interesting urea items are Urea-formaldehyde, aka pee plastic! This is a non-transparent thermosetting resin or plastic. These resins are closer to you than you think. They are used in adhesives, finishes, MDF, and molded objects. It also has a high tensile strength and used to glue wood together! Ah, the resources we piss away everyday!

Wave Power!

2010-07-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

Why didn't we think of this before??!! Well it's been going on for a while. Wave Power has actually been in use in one form or another from the late 1700's. The first known patent to utilise energy from ocean waves dates back to 1799 and was filed in Paris by Girard and his son. Oh la la! An early application of wave power was a device constructed around 1910 by Bochaux-Praceique to light and power his house at Royan, a town near Bordeaux in France. This was the first Oscillating Water Column type of wave energy device.
In the 1940's the modern scientific pursuit of wave energy was pioneered by Yoshio Masuda. His experiments tested various concepts of wave energy devices at sea, with several hundred units used to power navigation lights. In 1973, a new interest was invigorated due to the oil crisis then.
Some other things being done now --- an Australian company BioPower Systems uses the biomimicry of the floats of swaying sea plants in the presence of ocean waves in its BioWave system. The Oyster wave energy converter (featured in the video) is a hydro-electric wave energy device. The wave energy device captures energy from nearshore waves and converts it into usable electricity.

Wave- cool!

bees breeze.

2010-03-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

With all the interest in swarming and termites, what happened to the bees ingenuity from the populous spectrum? In Syria, one of the traditional Middle Eastern construction keeps cool with out electric hungry HVAC systems. These "beehive" homes are located along the Aleppo and Euphrates Rivers. How they work in keeping the inhabitants cool is through their thick mud brick walls that trap in the cool and keep out the sun. Due to the mass they are similar to Trombe Walls for passive solar heating and cooling. They also let little light in but do have some openings for ventilation. The high dome structures move the hot air away from residents sleeping on the bottom.
The walls and exterior skin is used as a translator of energy. (passive) Imagine if the the dirt and bricks were embedded with photovoltaic chips as well or chloroplast-like cells that could not only keep the building cool and warm but transfer the energy to light and power for the inhabitants. This existing "dead" system could have a new life of its own.

Chloroplasts, the organelle that turns light into energy through photosynthesis, have been the long time inspiration for the solar panels as we know them. To this point they are still large and not nearly as integrated as their original inspiration. But let's get a bit smaller. Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have taken it there. They have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, consisting of an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

Dawn Bonnell, a professor of materials science and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at Penn, and colleagues fabricated an array of light sensitive, gold nanoparticles, linking them on a glass substrate. By minimizing the space between the nanoparticles to an optimal distance, researchers used optical radiation to excite conductive electrons, the plasmons, to ride the surface of the gold nanoparticles and focus light to the junction where the molecules are connected. This plasmon effect increases the efficiency of electrical current production in the molecule by a factor of 400 to 2000 percent, which can then be transported through the network to the outside world. Pretty amazing. These new cells could be infused into even clothing. Just think about it.

Breathing Builds

2009-12-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

Harmonia 57 is Triptyque’s office building located in west Sao Paulo, Brazil. This building works as a living body. It breaths, sweats and modifys itself, transcending its inertia. The walls are simple, thick, and covered externally by a vegetal layer, working as the skin of the structure. This dense wall is made of an organic concrete that has pores, where several plant species grow, giving the facades a unique look.

In this great machine, where the rain and soil waters are drained, treated and reused, a complex ecosystem is formed within the local. This ecosystem is a multifunctional universe made of several interconnected machines. It’s a zone of multiplicity, where meanings and actions float between the unsaid, resulting in dynamic entities.

stomach in the trees

2009-09-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

Finding shelter” is: living under an overhang, a rock. “Finding shelter” happens by chance: you’re walking – it’s raining, suddenly – you walk faster, you look around, there’s a rock, it was there all the time – you crawl in under out of the rain. “Finding shelter” is an act of adaptation; you take your hat off to nature, no “self” is asserted in nature’s face. “Making shelter” (as we know it in Western culture) is, by contrast, the act of taking over nature, placing something on top of nature. “Making shelter” is male. -Vito AcconciWouldn't be nice to live and eat in the trees? You can in Auckland, New Zealand at the the Yellow Tree House Restaurant by Pacific Environments Architects. 10m wide,over 12m high and 10m off the ground, this timber trussed structure is basically curved fins of glue-laminated pine. The roof is made of acrylic sheeting.

Living Bridges

2009-08-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

“a commitment to the cultivation of life is a practice whose value far transcends the pettiness of individual products; it represents an heroic enlargement of work to an ethics, and a commitment to a human social ecology that far exceeds the usual posture of voluntary submission to the law of markets. No one knows where such an experiment will go, and it is one certainly rife with traps and dead ends. What is most beautiful about it, in fact, might well be its potential to magnify risk.” Sanford Kwinter
In the forests of Meghalaya, India, the War-Khasis people have used the growth during the rainy season to their advantage. They guide the roots of an abundant species of rubber tree in order to create these living organic bridges. These are so sturdy that they can support the weight of up to fifty people . Because they are alive and still growing, the bridges actually gain strength over time – and some of the ancient root bridges used daily by the people of the villages around Cherrapunji may be well over five hundred years old. The root bridges, some of spanning over a hundred feet long, take ten to fifteen years to become fully functional. The time is not that far off from a getting a building built today.

For the logistics behind construction to make a rubber tree’s roots grow in the right direction, the Khasis use betel nut trunks, sliced down the middle and hollowed out, to create root-guidance systems. Technically, the roots could be guided to any direction, say even to become a dwelling.
The thin, tender roots of the rubber tree, prevented from fanning out by the betel nut trunks, grow straight out. When they reach the other side of the river, they’re allowed to take root in the soil. Given enough time, a sturdy, living bridge is produced.

This is quite similar to the FAB Tree HAB by Terreform. Instead of using the betel nut trucks, they propose to use prefabricated Computer Numeric Controlled cut reusable scaffolds. Imagine if Levittown was grown instead of built?

a truck grows in brooklyn

2009-08-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney have revved up mobile living and food to a whole new level.TRUCK FARM is their brilliant film and food project featuring a 1986 Dodge Truck. By combining green roof technology, organic compost, and heirloom seeds, they have created a living, mobile garden in the streets of Brooklyn. The spacial concept of this is amazing. As every person who has a garden speaks about the "land" and ownership of static space, the truck shifts that notion and reiterates how dynamic the city is but at the same time redefining our innate need and wants to independently grow our own food.

A solar powered timelapes camera is documenting the growth and adventures throughout the summer. Every month they have also been releasing a short as well.

With the new passing of H2749 and CODEX, this might be our only option one day. This sneaky bill which Obama is behind (wtf? when Michelle has a garden at the white house??!Was that all a front?) Her garden is pretty much illegal unless she can dish out $500 dollars. My garden is as well. So would be TRUCK FARM. (more on this bill in its own blog)

Possible we will revert to what I saw when I went to visit my family in Maierato, Italy. Trucks would come around selling goods. There was a mattress truck, egg truck, you name it truck. There was also a boy going around with a cart and a goat selling FRESH FROM THE GOAT goats milk and cheese. Next we will have the village green back.

blamable sustainable

2009-07-16T16:17:00.001-07:00

Liftfrance09: John Thackara from Lift Conference on Vimeo.

I love the part about the photoshopping green/grass to make it "sustainable."
John Thackara is the director of Doors of Perception. This is the talk that he gave at LiftFrance09. This talk points in on the the role of design in finding solutions to the ecological crisis. Are you in the Future business? Or the business of now? He invites the audience to avoid terms such as "future" or "sustainable" as they maintain a certain distance to the problem we face. The important point is that the resources to be put in place already exist and that they might not necessitates complex technological developments. Though I would disagree to a degree about the technological developments not being necessary I do believe everything we need is already at our finger tips. The waste in the system is not just noise but energy. But the point is how you TWEAK the waste/noise to be back into the system, be it living walls or energy retrieval devices.

2009-06-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

Tremont Electric has created a kinetic energy-based charger called the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator). This charger immediately converts kinetic energy to electricity and feeds it to your gadgets instead of storing the energy and then charging. This little hand held device can charge the average portable device up to 80 percent with an hour's worth of movement. (What about carpel tunnel? Arthritis? mmm) This clever gadget can be placed in your backpack or purse or strapped to your bike or kayak and derive the same energy. You can even use it while standing on the subway or bus, great way to relieve nervous habits and boredom. This 9 ounce 9 inchx1.5 inch device just plugs into your phone, MP3 player or other device directly into the PEG via USB cable. Then just start moving. Tremont claims that if everyone with portable devices used the PEG for an hour every day instead of plugging into the grid, enough energy would be saved to power 21,000 households for a year. Pretty impressive, right? Imagine if we took that to power the things in your house. Not just while your bored or while your watching tv, you could power your house every time you walk around.

This is very similar to the eco-energy-generating-dance floor that is in England. The floor harnesses power from the pounding of clubbers’ feet and convert it into electricity. The harder you party the more you WORK, from the physics sense. (Think of Ciara's new song work.)

The club is quite pricey at a £10 entry fee but those customers who can prove they travelled there by
foot, bicycle or public transport will be allowed in free. That dance floor could be your bed room floor! Or imagine some sleazy motel powering its blinking sign from the people getting it on inside... It's just recycling the energy.

Notable tweets.

2009-06-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

I have been following Bruce Sterling's tweets. He just attended and spoke at Lift France 09 recently.

Here are some of my favorite ones so far. He had said something about John Thackara as well.

If we all talk about "the future," it removes us from being responsible for what we do today -- we trample the world as it exists now!

Two human beings: a sick person and a doctor. What is the lightest, smartest and quickest way to connect them to each other?

Monumento in Brasil: "No more 'stuff' is needed! We have favelas here and four thousand empty office buildings."

Bio®ebo(O) T

2009-06-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

Via Babble Fish- Here is something to look forward too.
"François Roche
Bio®ebo (O) T
“an architecture of moods”

State of advance (02) of the research which will be made public in January 2010, at the Laboratory - Paris.
In the continuation of Ive heard butt presented to the MAM in 2005, this second opus attempts more precisely to work out the computational, mathematical procedures and robotics with collaborations of François Jouve, Marc Fornes and Stephan Henrich. The urban biostructure thus generated remains contingent with protocols of indeterminations, fact of successive aggregations which Re-articulate the bond between the individual and the collective, but not only.

It will be the occasion to question this turbid zone ''of the emission and the collecting of the désirs' ', by the nonintrusive collection of signals neuropsychological and to seize moods of the future purchasers like as many generative inputs of the diversity and the heterogeneity of livable morphologies.

François Roche is member of R&Sie (N), limited liability company of architecture founded with Stéphanie Lavaux in 1993. He is of more teaching in ''the advanced studio' 'of Columbia University Gsapp/New York and of Angewangde School/Vienna in Austria.

François Roche, through the limited liability company was invited to six recoveries with the Biennale de Venise, took part in more than one score of international exhibitions and gave more than one hundred of conferences abroad. In France, this production structure and of research asserts a statute of native immigrant."

Your Future Your School

2009-06-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

Previously published this on my other blog that is based on education and school spaces, The Future is Yours. I recently completely the Classroom of the Future Competition by Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network with Ms. Miles 6th Grade Class at George Washington Carver Middle School in South Central LA. These kids are amazing. I had everyone draw me a plan. They also know how to draw sections and elevations.

Based on a month long collaboration with the sixth grade class of struggling middle school with low performance statistics in a rough urban neighborhood, this design presents the collective predictions and prescribes suggestions for a better learning environment, directly from those who hunger for the betterment of their future. The classroom of the future needs to be an environment which perpetuates active symbiosis; a place where students are teachers, teachers are students, the space is a teacher, and the space is a learner. Spaces need to be smarter as the students will teach the classroom how to better appropriate itself to them. Without a doubt, technology needs to be more efficiently infused with the learning process.

Let's start with the immediate. Let's start with the immediate experience. In our design, the XO2 Laptop by One Laptop Per Child is available to each student in the class. Working with their software, Sugar, as well as Windows, the students are able to integrate themselves with the lesson plans via the technology.Being a few inches away from the material as it appears on the screen, instead of squinting from the back of a classroom to read the chalk board, students can remain engaged and intellectually stimulated throughout the lesson while having the liberty to posit their own contributions to the lesson through the same technology. This also cuts down on the costs and waste of paper handouts. Students can turn in there homework electronically to maximize efficiency. The laptops will all be connected to a live feed or chat room set up that is displayed on a Smart Board at the main focal space of the room where their work can be displayed instantly to each other, connecting each student in the classroom and unifying them in the material while promoting intellectual diversity by exposing them to the various opinions of their peers. The children will also have ear phones, allowing them to listen in when podcasts are integrated into the curriculum. Wireless Internet is a consistent and necessary amenity for the students. By maximizing the educational potential of these existing conditions, teachers can simultaneously collaborate with classes around the world and provide the opportunity for students to discus and learn about other cultures first hand from fellow students around the world. If the laptops are unavailable, the integration of cell phones and social networking services such as Twitter or Ning can also introduced into the curriculum to act in a similar capacity. With the cell phone, the student can text message their answers or questions to display them at the front of the room. If a Smart Board is out of the budget, a projector attached to the teacher's laptop can fill its role. This promotes group learning from everyday actions that an educator might find to be traditional distractions. If the student is apt to text messaging about social happenings, then they would also be apt to text message about their answer to a question posed the board. This promotes healthy intellectual discourse and does not deter students from learning but rather encourages the use of everyday, attainable technology in their learning environment in a similar capacity to the technology's use in the professional world of which these students hope to one day be productive members. Due to the nomadic nature of laptops and other hand held communication devices, the classroom lends itself as a flux of striated and smooth spaces. All spaces are activated by the inhabitant's (students' and or teacher's) presence and are re-arrangeable and modular.

The space attempts to appeal to all types of learners: the visual, auditory, kinesthetic. There is a spectrum of place where the students learn, relaxed space to rigid space. Relaxed space has beanbag chairs or lightweight couches that can be moved for group or individual work. This area, or the break out space, is a place where students can feel at home in the classroom. The beanbag chairs are constructed out of recycled materials as are most of the objects in the space. If local materials are more economical and sustainable, they will be employed into the classroom. The break out space is also acoustically insulated so that students can come and study and read to stimulate themselves and to erase the stigma of "boredom" in the classroom. Boredom is a frequent complaint of students in the classroom. From existing in a media overload culture, it is hard for most to concentrate without multiple stimuli. The students are not necessarily afflicted with Attention Deficiency but instead simply require multiple stimuli to concentrate, absorb, and question the information they are intellectually ingesting. Carpet from recycled materials defines the space as well as brings a sense of homeyness to it, as well as a hearth or fireplace for the students to congregate around. A small satellite library with physical books chosen by the students and access to digital libraries and A Smart Table will also help to amalgamate the intellectual and informal cues of the space. The rigid space is similar to a traditional classroom setup with desks and chairs yet the desks are table units with at least two students to a unit. Each student has a partner to collaborate with throughout the term. The tables can then be combined to make a classroom in the round for better discussions or even larger groups. Group learning encourages participation for living in a global society with the understanding that multiple perceptions and actions affect others. An area for recycling and sustainable energies in action encourages students to learn and live with an ecological conscious. So far all of the above can easily be included in a retrofitting project at an existing school.

The classroom needs to be integrated with natural elements to inspire the students with real life as well as digital influences. Opening to a classroom-specific outdoor space with access to an edible garden or edible green wall as a product of the space allowance will add to the curriculum and nutrition of the students. The incorporation of a water element with living fish that are the responsibility of the students lends itself to hands on science explorations and lessons. For the truly ambitious school that is dealing with overcrowding, organic and living construction can alleviate the use of the "temporary classroom." By using controlled cultured plant growth, the skin of the classroom is living and changing. The structure of this growth of living materials such as native or non-invasive trees or shrubbery uses a prefabricated system to direct its form. The possibility of this plant as a nutrient supplier, aka an apple or a fig tree, offers healthier strategies for the student suggested snack and soda machines. A sitting area outside with a natural moss or grass lends itself as the setting of an outdoor classroom. Composting and water harvesting are also part of the outdoor curriculum. The school, if not the classroom itself, will obtain part of its energy from solar panels and insulate itself with inhabitable green roofs.

As per request of the students, the classroom should have direct access to the restrooms with efficient Grey water toilets. The main reason for this was that other students use their opportunity to go to the restroom to skip class and socialize. With this program shift of restrooms reintroduced into the classroom program, the area of the hallway outside the classroom is not longer just a through space and can then be augmented with other small niches for breakaway and socializing areas. Socialization does not have to be frowned upon and should be thought as part of the curriculum. Thus socializing will not be seen as a distraction from learning but a method of learning itself. Another important factor is the introduction of teacher-specific space. At the end of the day, the teacher is the one encouraging and inspiring the students to try harder. Teachers also deserve better spaces and their own breakout rooms and an inviting teacher lounge that is not just a dark room with few chairs and a microwave. An overall design motive is to have as much daylight as possible with out over heating the space. Larger windows and glass garage doors can be added to existing walls. When applicable, light wells to the sky similar to James Turrell's Sky Space pieces can leak sunlight from above. Shading and water protection is also provided. Other than day lighting there are low hanging LED lights equipped with proximity sensors so that when a student is near or below it will turn on.

All in all, the classroom of the future should be comfortable and a place that is more attractive and safe than the streets. School can be a fantastical place where the walls are filled with living plants instead of bars. They have the power to provoke the minds of the students and cultivate their ideas, but only if the space is inviting and receptive to creativity and cooperation. The space has to allow for itself to be occupied or claimed by that group of students and reclaimed by the next. The classroom cannot deny its previous history by being sterile but can celebrate learning as a compilation. The students requested clean spaces but clean does not have to mean sterile. Due to the context of the urban school, a graffiti wall should be placed in each classroom where students have permission to tag on designated areas. Graffiti will be seen as art and not as an act of vandalism. Thus, the classroom needs to reflect the community in which it exists while creating an intellectually stimulating and safe community within itself.

Hydoponics amoungus.

2009-06-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

This R&Sie(n) project grows on you with its 1200 hydroponics ferns and its 300 glass beakers that collect the rain to feed them.

LOST IN PARIS

It s the story of an urban witch living behind a rear windows designed as a duck cabana. As alchemist, she feeds the plant with drop by drop hydroponics system watering liquid substances coming from the bacterian chemical preparation in 200 beakers disseminated in the ferns surfaces.The neighborhood is both attracted by the green aspect and repulsed by the brewage and the process to produce it.

edible architecture

2009-06-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

Forget the gingerbread house, too many carbs! How about a house that is better than a Victory Garden in the back? Forget trips to the grocer, hello Edible house! The Wall Street Journal had a feature to find out "The Green House of the Future.” Author Alex Frangos asked four well-known architects to design the house of the future. The future (if you have been living under a passive solar rock) will be energy-efficient and sustainable. The houses had no budget constraints or restraints on how we currently live.

The Incredible Edible House was designed by LA-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios. This is a thorough design for a concept home. The Edible House is constructed out of three prefab containers stacked on top of one another. The mixture of living and prefab is a fantastic combo bringing living home aspects to an attainable realm.

This house is stacked with vertical axis wind turbines mounted along the roof placed in front of an evaporative cooling reservoir. The energy production and cooling system are integrated into the house, reducing energy usage dramatically. This is what one could call a dry metabolism, self sustaining itself. Of course, the house comes with a photovoltaic awning for energy production and shading as well as adjustable doors on the sides of the house for natural cross ventilation.

The hydroponic skin covering the living quarters with a multitude of plant, vegetables and fruits starts to creep towards a wet metabolism. The living wall on the outside of the house reduces heat gain to the house as well as nourishment for the people inside.

This is close to the Edible Estates from Fritz Haeg.

superwoman.

2009-06-03T01:20:00.000-07:00

Natalie Jeremijenko, an inventor and engineer, produces work that focuses on the design and analysis of tangible digital media. She bridges the technical and the art world. She is the director of the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic. The Environmental Health Clinic develops and prescribes locally optimized and often playful strategies to effect remediation of environmental systems. This progessive self sustaining strategy produces measurable and mediagenic evidence and coordinating diverse projects to effective material change.

URBAN SPACE STATION Sofia, Madrid 2008 from cesar harada on Vimeo.

Her Urban Space Station project is quite remarkable. Cesar Harada worked on this as well. (He's just amazing.) This portable piece of architecture is intended to improve the quality of air in the surroundings. It sits on the roof and filters air, grows food and re-uses organic waste for inhabitants. Very Inhabitable Organism! It's goal is to improve the health of people around it as well as tidy up our environment. A conscious receptacle of wastes that transforms them to food per say. This is a light weight answer to heavy construction green roofs, not to deter any one from using them. If the urban space station was packaged right , it could be the next big hit from IKEA or any other vernacular store where people could feel apt and capable to application of them. You too can have one on your roof!

It's Alive

2009-05-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

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?

Bugging out.

2009-04-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Out of batter power you say? Well, let me just fetch some of these viruses for you and you'll be off in a jiffy. How long do we have to wait till this is part of our vernacular jargon?

At MIT, a team led by Angela Belcher has genetically engineered viruses to excrete certain proteins that react with chemicals introduced to the environment to create complicated structures much like life forms. The viruses are genetically programmed to first grow the iron phosphate battery electrode material, then pick up an individual or bundle of carbon nanotubes that then wire the electrode for fast energy transfer. The battery created is only big enough to power a calculator but the same technique could be used to make batteries for cars, or maybe even ones home or at least plug in appliances.

The recipe for this energy is simple:: all you need is the virus (easily multiplied exponentially in a lab) and the raw materials. Now, it's not available at your local Ikea just yet. The batteries being produced are not at the standard of traditionally designed nanotech batteries due to their shorter cycle before they start to loose charge. I say give the team at MIT a few months and it should be up and running.

Unfortunately, the batteries being produced are not up to the standards of traditionally designed nanotech batteries. They can only go through about 100 cycles (vs. more than 1000 for today's batteries) before starting to lose their charge. Of course, the team is confident that they can direct the viruses more effectively and increase that number significantly.

Genomatica, as other various green companies, is a company that has devised organisms that can produce chemicals like methyl ethyl ketone which can be used as a way to replace energy-intensive processes like cooking chemicals at high temperatures to produce other compounds or noxious, fossil fuel based substances. Genomatica also makes bugs that produce plastic.

Now I am still waiting for them to teach cancer to be a building material. Maybe a field trip is in order.

Source1:ecogeek. Source2:greentechmedia. Source3:inhabitat.

Open Urbanism

2009-03-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

The transition from physical to virtual spaces means that there is less opportunity to physically interact in public spaces. Historically public spaces were used for celebration, today they are used for anonymous mobile calls. We would like to explore the ways in which the tangible aspect of physical space might be re-introduced into our virtual interactions through an exploration and discussion of - among other things - responsive architecture. The people in the panel above are Mouna Andraos, Francesca Birks, Joshua Kauffman, and Molly Wright. Side note about the amount of women.

Mouna Andraos worked on the Public Farm Installation Work AC did for PS1 last year. She is a designer and artist working on interactive objects and installations as well as in web, electronics and video. Recently she was a R&D fellow at Eyebeam's OpenLab where she researched the possibilities of open source and sustainable design.(wink) She's also been researching the intersection of established crafts and emerging technologies as a means to generate innovation. Lo tech Hi tech if you will. I appreciate the analogue digestions of technology.

Francesca Birks is an Analyst within London’s Foresight, Innovation & Incubation (FII) group at Arup, where she leads demographics research. This group identifies and researches emerging global trends which will have an impact on the built environment. She is also a researcher for Arup’s Drivers of Change initiative. She doesn't look at just the numbers but the stories of the demographic research behind the situations and the environments. She's pretty much studying the future.

By living in cities we have an operating system already inlaid. How do we hack the city? Is graffiti a hack?

It's Alive!

2009-03-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

Choe U Ram is an amazing artist from South Korea. He has a deep understanding of robotics and creates these organic like structures that "live" autonomously almost. His show entitled Anima Machines was at the SCAI The Bathhouse gallery in Japan. Anima means soul in Latin. These things definitely have a life of their own. One of the best part of his work is that he treats these sculptures as specimens and gives them scientific names as well. This beautiful specimen is Una Lumino, 2008
Scientfic Name : Anmopispl avearium cirripedia URAM
The materials are Metallic material, machinery, metal-halide lamp, and of course electronic devices. Here is the description from U Ram's website:: According to a recent report from United Research of Anima Machine- U.R.A.M,
a brand new species of mechanized sentient creatures has been discovered
operating within communities.Said to exhibit sophisticated and uniform behavioral patterns, this new species has been observed communicating actively with each other in colonies not unlike those of bees and ants.

Communities of these species gather and collect to form a giant mass of pulsing, breathing light, where they exchange information about where to find city energy, their main source of sustenance. Despite the inexistence of leaders or orders due to lack of command system, they seem to operate through interactive communication. When the lump with congregated independent living entities shines brilliantly, larvae swim in the air towards it and attach themselves.In addition, their eggs and larvae are reported to generate light by themselves. This living entity also emits redundant energy where city energy is necessary through communication by means of light. When looked down from a night plane, the city lights seem as if they are breathing,
and some are actually the scenes of these living entities’ interactive communication. Although these living entities are not easy to be distinguished from city lights due to darkness and distance, observations are occasionally made on their swimming act in search of greater community to adhere to.
This living entity has the form and movement the same as that of sea acorn (barnacle), which collects city energy in the air by moving their hard mouth.
They often attach themselves on some surfaces in factory machinery rooms, basements of old buildings and colorful neon signs within places with high human population density. It has been reported that the discovery of mechanical living entity community in the form of a giant bee hive is the first in history.

I love it how he talks about energy as well. mmmm sounds familiar....

PEE POWER!

2009-03-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

I have written before about the urine powered batteries in Japan. In a recent article on TreeHugger, they talked about pee as fertilizer. We are clearly wasting our waste. They bring up the points of how our pee regardless of our sewage system does find its contents in our drinking water eventually. Things such as antibiotics, birth control, and viagra are tainting our own organic systems. Gothenburg researcher Zsofia Ganrot has come up with an awesome new method of powdering pee which also removes traces of pharmaceuticals. She has figured out how to recover nutrients by freezing–thawing human urine in combination with struvite precipitation and nitrogen adsorption on zeolite. Shes pretty amazing. Zsofia did her PHD on ”Urine processing for efficient nutrient recovery and reuse in agriculture”. The Treehugger article continues to point out how much we PEE a year. Quite a good bit! Each one of us contributes about 7-9 liters of urine a week to sanitary systems for all those pissing in porcelain. According to Ganrot, in Sweden alone the collection of this resource could offset 1/5th the country's fertilizer use and reduce pollution from the transport of liquid fertilizer. Brilliant! It's recycling the noise into the system!

Pee is a valuable resource which we just throw out everyday. Urine therapy has been around since the Romans and then before. In 1978, the former Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, a longtime practitioner of urine therapy spoke to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes about urine therapy. Desai stated that urine therapy was the perfect medical solution for the millions of Indians who cannot afford medical treatment. How could we actually process the urine and make it into something that could sustain us?

Or for a bigger stretch, what if we could pay for things with pee one day? It would be more of a barter system, but if we can sell our eggs and organs, why not our potential energies? I mean the dollar isn't worth the paper its printed on most days now so .. how bout something that's more "physical"? ENERGY IS THE ANSWER.

ubik

2009-03-13T03:26:00.000-07:00

Adam Greenfield wrote about the everywhere. This Sixth Sense is the next next of the iphone minus the calling. This is like the yellow arrow project but to a more seamless level. Philip K. Dick, can you hear us? Mmm may be I was on the right meme when I made this stop animation...

the wheels on the bike go round and round...

2009-03-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

and on his truck as well. a friend of mine, Zach Lihatch is currently trucking around while pedaling his book! (ha ha ha) He is putting together a book that documents bicycle cooperatives and co-ops in the US. If he comes your way, please send him some support. Here is his blog where he's been keeping track of his adventures thus far. Below is his mission statement::

Four the past four years, Zach has been involved with BICAS in Tuscon, AZ. BICAS (Bicycle InterComunity Action and Salvage) is a cooperatively-run non-profit Community Center that through bicycle advocacy and recycling bikes, promotes education, art and a healthy sustainable environment. In conjunction, it provides services and opportunity for those in need.
The emergence of places like BICAS has occurred relatively recently. 10 years ago only one or two such projects existed. For a little history, BICAS itself was created in 1989 with a different mission than bikes. It was to help the homeless and originally called Bootstraps to Share, operating out of someone's garage. In 1994, Bootstraps to Share organizers decided to focus on what the group did best encourage people to ride bicycles. Thus, BICAS was born. BICAS is one of the country's oldest bicycle co-ops, along with Boston's Bikes Not Bombs and New York's Time's Up. It is only appropriate that Zach started his journey there. Now almost every major city some type of collectively run community bike space. Many of these groups have organized a network and meet at a national gathering to discuss their tactics, success stories, and challenges. All across the country, community bike shops have become a powerful resource, impacting all who come in contact with them.
I would even go to say that they have become a staple in our generations society. I almost expect there to be a bike co-op in every city because I grew up with one as well. (shout out to free ride!) It's weird that that's what I assume. Fortunately, every city I've gone to in the US there's been one. Right after I moved to LA (like that week) I found a bike on craigslist and brought it to the Bicycle Kitchen. It just happen to be Bitchen Kitchen, the ladies night. I didn't know any one in LA and it was so welcoming! And re-affirming to be able to be fixing my bike in a strange new place.
Bicycle co-ops/collectives are the actualization of strong ideas. This once viewed as a sub-culture occurrence has blossomed into a current and appreciated amenity of the city and culture of its own. Zach's goal with this book is to bring attention to the bicycle co-ops and collectives and give this new and promising movement the recognition that it deserves. This next part is a direct quote (I've been paraphrasing thus far) but its too beautiful not to say it as it::"Thus far, there are many people who are involved in such endeavors, and countless others whom I believe could benefit from the knowledge that there is a practical and viable alternative out there. As individuals and communities, we can empower each other to reject those forces in the world that hold us down and to replace them with something much better. Through photo documentation, interviews and film [Zach] will be offering a glimpse into an alternative that is flourishing. "
It brings tears! So great! and SO TRUE! When I fix my bike and turned my Motobecane to a single speed all by myself I felt so empowered. This sounds lame. But bicycles truly contribute to bodies in space working in complete freedom. They cross lines of occupantcy and rights. When you are on your bike you become this beautiful hybrid of flesh and metal. With cars, you are still just in a pod, your energy is not recycled in any way and there is abundant waste. Freedom and mobility are extremely important to me and to what I think are everybody's rights (that and the right to information.)
I would also like to throw out there how much I have wanted this for a while::
So! Please contact Zach while hes on his journey. This book should be pretty awesome.

getting down to business.

2009-03-03T02:52:00.000-08:00

Juan Enriquez is one of my favorite speakers and perhaps one day one of my favorite people. He should be more popular than Paris Hilton that's for sure. Juan Enriquez is a lot of things other than a hero. He is (taken from his bio) a "bestselling author, businessman, and academic, is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the economic and political impacts of life sciences." He's alot. He is also the Chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy LLC, a life sciences research and investment firm. He is future based with a great sense of wit. The future is coming on us fast, no sorry, it's soon to be growing all over us. Please watch his lecture above.

Not only do the experiments and experimenters need to step up and take a more active role in day to day life, it is important for us as a society/civilization/terrestrials to educate our youth and future business men that real estate is not a reason to wear a suite. Sustainability is not for tree huggers. It's about every one involved in the system. The system is as simple as a transfer of energy from one element/person/thing to the next.

Some of the clients that Biotechonomy has are also amazing. Xcellerex is working on revolutionizing the way biomolecules are developed, manufactured and commercialized. ( Biomolecules are any organic molecule that is produced by a living organism, including large polymeric proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids as well as small molecules such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and natural products. - wikipedia) Another client is Synthetic Genomics. Here's a quote from the founder and genius Craig Venter:

Work in creating a synthetic chromosome/genome will give us a better understanding of basic cellular processes. Genome composition, regulatory circuits, signaling pathways and numerous other aspects of organism gene and protein function will be better understood through construction of a synthetic genome. Not only will this basic research lead to better understanding of these pathways and components in the particular organisms, but also better understanding of human biology. The ability to construct synthetic genomes may lead to extraordinary advances in our ability to engineer microorganisms for many vital energy and environmental purposes."
- J. Craig Venter, 2003

We are living in very exciting times!

I still have to respond about open source urbanism.

imagine

2009-02-27T23:46:00.001-08:00

this is to just help you think about the potential of active material growth....

Branching with color mutation from flight404 on Vimeo.

This was made by Robert Hodgin, the guy who brought us flight 404, the processing dynamic diagram that mapped all the flights. He uploaded the one above 3 days ago. Branching is pretty great to watch regardless.
This other movie that he uploaded a month ago shows self organizing particles/cells. This was something that I was talking about in the inhabitable organism. The question is, how do we make a material that can be self organizing? Yes there are polymers out there but.. what else?

Organizing from flight404 on Vimeo.

architecture commit suicide!

2009-02-20T02:04:00.000-08:00

more to come on Benjamin Bratton's lecture last night. AMAZING... till then watch this series of videos by this eco-energy consultant in SF, Jesse Krieger, as he interviews Dan Winter. Dan writes about the biologic architecture and how sacred geometry is embeded in it. I agree. Look at branching systems! Except I feel that we won't be "designing" per say, just writing the program/code (genetic?) for the growth/structure/skin. Everything else is reaction.

let's talk about fuel baby, let's talk about nano and me...

2009-02-18T00:23:00.000-08:00

mmm Do you smell something? Oh wait, it's just the fuel. I know this isn't directly related to bioarchitecture but one might need a biocar to park in a biogarage, and well you get my drift.

So, in an article I was reading on Ecogeek, they were saying how researchers at University of Dayton have been able to use an array of carbon nanotubes to perform the same catalytic activity that Platinum produces in a standard fuel cell. Platinum is good at splitting up the oxygen (O2) molecule into two oxygen ions (O+) at the cell’s cathode. Platinum is a pricey metal if you were not aware and for a typical passenger car, the platinum catalyst can cost about $4,000. That's quite pricey.

The carbon nanotubes are doped with nitrogen. The full name of these wonders are nitrogen-containing carbon nanotubes, or VA-NCNTs. The Nitrogen prevents the carbon from reacting with oxygen to form CO, a process called “poisoning”. The CO builds up on the surface, and reduces the effectiveness of the catalyst over time. But these VA-NCNTs keep carbon unreactive, and thereby prolong the catalyst’s lifetime.
Go carbon!

I want to know though what will the wastes then be? And how can we reuse them?

2009-02-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

inhabitable organism_video 1 from nina marie barbuto on Vimeo.

This is the video that I made for my thesis.

2009-02-08T01:41:00.000-08:00

This is from his myspace::
"PHYSICALLY ALIVE ARCHITECTURE - THE LIVING STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT (extracts) "Subject: The Vegetable-House as the Answer to Low Cost Housing
The modern movement in architecture is based primarily upon the utopian solution to the most basic of building types: mass-housing. As we enter the Bauharoque Period with its bulging populations, unwinable terrorist wars that seem to keep on escalating, a general and continuous degrading of the world’s natural environment, politics as entertainment and a substitute for religion, or the popular media making money by pitting various interest groups and classes against each other - what could be more plausible than having the world housing shortage ended by simply sowing genetically altered seeds so that houses could be grown almost anywhere on the surface of the earth, with a growing time of approximately two months."

"I believe that if a strategy for mass housing could found, that would involve non-repressive personal environments [ that would avoid mechanical standardization], a base could be established from which other social problems will be solved. Then finally the quest for meaning in existence could gradually replace the goals of our almost complete secular world. To do this requires the total convergence of Science with Mysticism. While this task has already been started a few individuals and groups [beginning in the 19th Century], it will not be until the entire world is involved, will a real change be noticed.

My proposal ,therefore, for ending the world housing shortage is by growing houses from plant materials and developing genetically altered seeds which will induce habitable forms in single multiple species. These forms will then begin to approximate the rich vocabulary of spaces the history of the Human Species has created from the individual home to the city"

"The Conservatory has one basic drawback. It is a building type that requires Human intervention to protect the plant species inside. The purpose of Das Urpflanze Haus or physically alive architecture is to do what all architecture is supposed to do – protect us from an alien environment.

We exist on the Earth because of the existence of Vegetation, not the other way around. Over the aeons we have been weakening the life force of plant materials by protecting them by artificial cultivation techniques and Hot Houses. What we must do is help plant species regain their rightful place in the world as the Prime Species and avail ourselves of their protection and love by willing to fall in love with plant forms and feed ourselves by eating their delicious fruits and nutritious vegetables [ which are seed pods which are produced in an abundance beyond what is necessary for sustainable reproduction]."

YES!!!!!!now to only incorporate the metabolism aspect....

build me up moldy cup

2009-02-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

Paul Laffoley was recently brought to my attention. His work is directly related to the inhabitable organism. In fact, it is it! He is describing what I have been trying to get at. First a little bit more about Paul::

He went tot the Harvard's GSD for art in 1963. He was dismissed from there. Why I don't know yet. He then went to NYC to work with Frederick Kiesler. Andy Warhol got a hold of Paul and had him watch a lot of tv. A fact that is quite haunting is that Laffoley worked 18 months on design for the WTC Tower II (floors 15 to 45) with Emery Roth & Sons under the direction of architect Minoru Yamasaki. He was fired by Yamasaki after he suggested that bridges be constructed between the two towers for safety. He returned to Boston after that and started painting.

His highly original approach to the construction of the painted surface is based on extensive hand written journals documenting his research, diagrams, and footnoted predecessors to various theoretical developments. He deals with concepts from time machines to nano laboratories in the brain. JUST AMAZING.

I hope to talk to Paul Laffoley about the growing buildings. He even said, you'd get some seeds and in a few months you'd have something. That's one of the points I had in my movie. How do we make this real? How does one bring this to the attention of the public with out them running off? Let's get Paul Stamets and Laffoley in a room and grow something.

FIght the Power!

2009-01-02T09:50:00.000-08:00

Here is your chance to help make the "rules." You have 3 more days to submit comments to the LEED game of life for Neighborhood Development. Public comments close on Jan 5th. So take a stand. This is the first public comment period for the Neighborhood Developement rating system section, which hopes to integrates the principles of smart growth, new urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design. This is a collaborative effort among USGBC, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This rating system is built upon the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot rating system, which nearly 240 projects have been using since July 2007 as part of a successful pilot program. Their invaluable feedback, combined with countless hours of USGBC volunteer time, has produced a more sophisticated, market-responsive rating system."

View the rating system draft and comment! Please go the LEED Rating System Drafts Web page.

That said, I still and do find LEED to be ridiculous. But some people need a "game" to play to think and act responsibly. I have to leave my own comments yet. I just wonder how much of the community itself is taken into consideration. What is organic and controlled?

Take that Venice Beach

2008-12-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

This is by far one of my FAVORITE green-ings of daily life. This video was made by GOOD magazine. This wonderful man made the first official ecogym. It's reminiscent of what the first Olympians might have been stretching and flexing on. The brilliance behind this idea is that we might not need to "re-invent" the wheel, but just figure out how it was done in the first place. A dash of comedy and salt is always enjoyed.

Level One part 4

2008-11-23T17:33:00.001-08:00

Recently I have been working projects that contribute to my idea of the inhabitable organism. I origianlly broke it down in to certain steps.
Level One consisted of
1. Noise Recycled into the System
2. Nesting/BioMimicry/BioMimetics
3. Existing/Exploration of Materials
4. Pattern Recognition and Accumulation

This latest endevor has been focusing on Level One part 4. (It also works with Level One part 1 to a degree. )

I have been having "happenings" during lunch time in Los Angeles. The project "Mass Collection 1" is about well that. Mass collection! The medium is chewed gum and plexi glass. I stand in a specific spot for 3 hours and ask people to come and chew a piece of gum and place it where ever they feel it belongs on the plexi. If some one is passing by with gum already in their mouth, I ask them to place that piece on the plexi and I give them a new piece. The gum is a Mexican brand of Chicklets and come in a variety of flavor and colors. This piece also is about mark making and territory. So far, I have had 2 of these happenings.

The first site was Downtown Los Angeles by the Public Library. There, the demographics of the crowd was mainly people in suits, bike messengers, and some homeless. There were even some tourists in the mix. Here are some of the photos of the piece and the making of it.

This is the final composition for that session::
The other site in front of a coffee shop in the Arts District in Los Angeles. The accumulation was completely different. People were more apt to changing and adding to previously placed pieces. This piece was more graffiti like. People also felt compelled to draw and be creative with it, saying "I don't know what to draw/I don't know what to make." The only direction I gave (for both pieces) was to place the gum where ever you saw fit, preferably on the plastic. This piece was also more 3dimentional, where people would add to each others mounds. People were also bringing up a precedent gum wall in Northern CA.

Here are some images from the wall in San Luis Obispo::

The next stop is Chinatown. Other sites are heavy pedestrian places... I might be in Venice Beach tomorrow doing it so come

don't burn on re-entry

2008-10-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

Having conquered the world made of bits, you need to reform the world made of atoms. Not the simulated image on the screen, but corporeal, physical reality. Not meshes and splines, but big hefty skull-crackingly solid things that you can pick up and throw. That's the world that needs conquering. Because that world can't manage on its own. It is not sustainable, it has no future, and it needs one.
-Bruce Sterling

It's about time I returned out of retirement and continued in my pursuit. (I hit some unfortunate events and one unfortunate vehicle hit me...)

But alas, returned.

I am in Minneapolis right now for the week. I am attending the ACADIA conference on silicon and skin. They focus on bio materials in digital design in architecture. Some of the speakers are a few of my favorites:: Sanford Kwinter and Francios Roche. Others I am interested in are :: Jerome Frumar, Charles Lee, Jelle Feringa, Aaron Westre, and of course who would be talking at this conference? RAMESH! my first computer modeling teacher from Carnegie Mellon University. Oh the days of FormZ. More to come as I attend.

I am reposting my final (sofar) video later today. It up loaded incorrectly before. Sorry about that.

SNEAKY PEAKY....

2008-08-07T00:50:00.000-07:00

Here is one of the renderings. This one isnt used in the film. But you get the idea of what is happening. This is all you get for now. The film is to be presented in... 48 or so hours.. so it will be online after wards.. stay tuned. and WATCH OUT.
Thank you to Jenna also for helping me make this... AWESOME.

Almost a party favor...

2008-07-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to make any fun-guy jokes. This little bugger is a fungus from New Zealand. Ileodictyon cibarium is the name of this amazing growth! It forms this structure formally is reminiscent of coral and a vonoroi script.

I stumbled across this while looking for images for the film I am making.
Think of this being in the "structure catagory/ the scaffolding.

"Fruiting Body: Initially a whitish "egg" up to 7 cm across, attached to white cords; rupturing, with the mature fruiting body emerging as a more or less round, cage-like structure, 5-25 cm across, forming 10-30 polygons; arms about 1 cm in diameter, not thickened at the intersections, white underneath the olive brown spore slime; the egg tissue creating a whitish volva, but the mature structure detaching from it." _Kuo, M. (2008, July). Ileodictyon cibarium. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ileodictyon_cibarium.html

grow lichen this?

2008-07-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

you want to be a super (foods) model?

2008-07-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the most recent processing script so far. We have 3d space. We have movie out put! We have a movable environment. This code is built off of what Valentina Vasi and I presented for Roland Snook's Swarm class last semester. Granted most of the origional code work has to be contributed to Mr. Snooks. He's amazing. This script uses the kVec and kGeom libraries that he and his other partners at Kukkugia developed. I also have to address Mr. Baoquoc Doan (aka mr. WOK) for helping me so far also, especially with the video out put.

I will be posting some of the interview footage soon.

Green walls && growth walls

2008-07-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

This is an installation made by Jesse Harlin and the Shadow Observatory. Growth Interactive installation consisted of music generated by user input on two gravis gamepad video game controllers. A large image of CG leaves were projected on the wall that responded to the music created by the user.
I wrote him an email and he got back to me (in only a few hours!) Jesse is currently working on a 14 ft. tall organism that will detect human proximity and motion, temperature and light levels to ascertain an "emotional state" and then communicate that emotional state through 16 speakers over 8 discrete channels. Pretty groovy. He is using arduino and max/msp. He is making a "symbiotic music organism." Very similar to Marcos Novak's Navigable Music but the music its not just the void in the space, it is the thing. (I need to get my installation rolling along.. but thats another story. ) Here is the video footage link he sent me:

Imaging if this also could happen with actually green walls?

le interviews...

2008-07-18T02:24:00.000-07:00

Interviews start in a few hours.. the line up is.. well lining up...
First I am presenting them with my thesis....

Here is my thesis statement for what we can go off of....

Current culture is now polluted and propagated with escape routes and throw rugs of green and sustainable design, offering penny pinching game plans to move towards the illusion of tree hugging in Prada. Buildings (dwellings) can not be fully sustainable until they can assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through a symbiotic metabolism. Though as every object/particle could be argued as having its own agency and possible realities, their reaction via their observed system has the potential for being dynamic through time and scale. The goal of the matter is to chisel towards and ideally define what is an Inhabitable Organism, and thus developing the model for which it is entitled and can be communicated across the rhizome.

and here are some of the questions:

What does it mean (to you/your practice) to be sustainable?

What do you think the repercussions might be for buildings having metabolisms?

What do you think about the potential for buildings to be Inhabitable Organisms that work in symbiosis with its inhabitants?

What is the potential for self organizing space that has an active reaction to its users?

Interviews will be no more than 10 mins as this final film will be oh .. 10 mins.. I want to see what everyone has to say.. the model is coming along...

Here is a still from one the scripts I am messing with. I am making a composite with another one and getting it to be 3d...I should just use the swarming kokkugia code from last semester but....

How does your home grow...

2008-07-18T01:51:00.000-07:00

Just to reiterate how awesome and on point this project is....
Thanks Terreform.
Thanks Mitchell.
and Thanks

Artist Edina Tokodi. Green terrorism! Reminiscent of the Knitta Please...

BOOKCLUB-broods everyWARE

2008-07-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

In Octavia Butler's book, Lilith's Brood, (of course in a human led apocalypse) the survivors must "choose" to adapt to their new circumstances and environments and merge with an alien species, the Oankali, or face extinction. As the original title suggests, Xenogenesis is an origin story, about a completely new beginning for humanity in which essentialist conceptions of identity are immediately put into play with alienness. In the last part, the character Jodahs's body drastically responds and adapts to its environments wishes and is no longer be alien to anything. The body can choose to truly inhabit any other body, any environment and therefore is a transformation of the understanding between subject/object. Humans are drawn to its appearance, which morphs to align with their own desires. Ultimately Jodas is the interface where increased chance of survival is coupled with the fulfillment of deep inner desires, as its own body can shift to become whatever another longs for, transcending and commanding categories of definition such as sex, race and form. Humans are given the chance for something they themselves have agency to help define and construct and live symbolically with.

Similarly yet closer to our realms of recognition, in Adam Greenfield's book Everyware, the Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, we are looking for this interface that keeps "face." His book is broken down into 81 thesis(s), one being "Everyware is information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life." The point of the Inhabitable Organism is part of this embedded info processing. It is the matter of the data that is rendered visable or just "digetstable" (no pun intended) to its users. An important facet that I would like to exploit out of this is that the Everyware is also the user not just the used, and the "users" are also the used. The dialog between those increases while in flux.

While discussing this book for the class I have with Benjamin Bratton, I realized what is necessary for the InhabOrg to actually work::RIGIDITY! Aka conflict is structure. (Bits vrs atoms or bits and atoms ) This new form of building/growing can not exist as a democratic system. So thus it has to have the scaffolding to grow and and repeal against. The interface of the the Inhaborg has to to be embedded and interlaced with other interfaces... it is not just fungus growing on a wall, it is fungus growing on a lattice structure with a copper battery and led and sensors that then shift and shock the new "skin/muscle" to react to what it senses (people/animals/things/environment/etc)

response and alterations...

2008-07-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

Current status of the thesis presentation:
I have the packaging sequence story boarded out. I have employed a friend of mine to help visualize that part. I am currently PHYSICALLY growing fungus (not the lichen that I would like but we are starting with some mushroom action. ) I am currently scheduling interviews with people who are working on the lines of this idea. I will post the questions soon. I am almost done with the processing script that will be used to help visualize the growth of this thing.

I sent my thesis statement to Pia Ednie-Brown, a professor at the SIAL.
In her response she pinpointed out somethings.

What does it mean for environments to "assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through an auto- metabolism."?

To my own criticism of my statement, I do believe that most systems and environment already integrate themselves into the existing context, eventually if not immediately but their relation and integration is not communicated and understood but the users all the time. Overall, I guess this statement of them assimilating and integrating is pushing towards a stimulus with a "positive" outcome that would not have a terribly foreign and dramatic effect on its surroundings. The self utilizing statement runs along the lines of Waste=Food, a concept pushed by William McDonough and Partners, a prevalent designer in the world of green design. (In their Cradle to Cradle Design, they have a term called BIOLOGICAL METABOLISM. "the natural processes of ecosystems are a biological metabolism, making safe and healthy use of materials in cycles of abundance.") One could say we are trying to do that here.

Pia also brought up what the thesis statement lags in in how this model or desire to design to define what an 'Inhabitable Organism" is (or, could be), isn't just a one shot procedure but could be easier of I gradually defined what the value or goals of such a thing is. This way the model is more of what it become or could become.

Also she brought up the point that buildings become "part of ourselves as organisms, like new limbs, skins etc as we inhabit them – ie they are organisms to the extent that they are part
of living ecologies. If you are (as the sentence above suggests) seeking a building that is autonomously an organism (to the degree that living creatures are autonomous) then I imagine we could not rely on them in the same way as we do our rather solid conventional dwellings. But could they offer the world something else, and what would this be?"

Good question! (It's funny that Pia refers to the building being an extension of ourselves much like a limb and etc due to it was the extension of ourselves that brought me to architecture as a scaler jump from fashion initially. just a side note) I think its more to make the building autonomous away from a larger support grid. (of the grid .. etc. ) But supporting it with the inhabitants. So you could come home and feed your house sort to speak. You could power your house potentially with a urine battery. Or compost pile. Imagine, you might be able to "power" your house with the ants you could attract from the food left out.

The human interaction and relationship with the new structure is very important and is going to be addressed when this movie is finished. Tali and Peter from Imaginary Forces came in yesterday and talked to us about their work and projects, specifically the Experience Design. The presentation reminded that thats was what it was about in the end. What is the experience of the Inhabitable Organism? How can that be communicated? How can people understand that its ok to want and grow one of these things?

breeding spaces

2008-07-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

A biological life support system (BLSS) can, by exploiting photosynthetic and microbiological sequences, close the circuit of metabolism and energy processes and thus from a self-contained cycle between producer, consumer and composer.

Zbigniew Oksiuta

im sticking with you, cus im made out of glue...

2008-07-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

While studying bacteria to understand the basics of how cells work, microbiologist and geneticist Yves Brun, Ph.D., of Indiana University in Bloomington found a natural form of "superglue" in the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus. This glue consists of a sugary substance that does not dissolve in water. The bacteria uses the substance to attach to water pipes and rocks in freshwater streams. Brun performed a test to investigate the bacteria's strength. He allowed the bacteria to attach to a tiny glass tube, then measured the force required to rip them off, using a special microscope equipped with a probe.

Brun's findings reveal that the bacterial glue is several times stronger than commercial dental adhesive or even superglue, with an adhesive force of nearly 5 tons per square inch. This makes it the strongest biological adhesive ever measured. Brun's studies suggest that the glue works in water and can attach to just about any type of surface. These characteristics make the substance an ideal candidate for a surgical adhesive, says Brun, who is now working to understand more about the properties of the natural glue.

installation progressions....

2008-07-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

yikes. So here is a combination of what is going to be going on ....
Here is a mechanical dry erase board project that I found that is VERY VERY similar to my project. The guy who made it, Romado12187 has been a big help so far. Mine will just spray glue versus ink. As to spray the glue... I am going to make it as a tangent to this project. This whole thing has made me a bit nervous. I really hope I can pull this off. I also need to buy a blower...

el thesis statement...

2008-07-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Current culture is now polluted and propagated with escape routes and throw rugs of green and sustainable design, offering penny pinching game plans to move towards the illusion of tree hugging in Prada. Buildings (dwellings) can not be fully sustainable until they can assimilate and integrate themselves into the contextual biospheres, self utilizing the excess materials through an auto-metabolism. Though as every object/particle could be argued as having its own agency and possible realities, their reaction via their observed system has the potential for being dynamic through time and scale. The goal of the matter is to chisel towards and ideally define what is an Inhabitable Organism, and thus developing the model for which it is entitled and can be communicated across the rhizome.

for the installation

2008-06-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

I am looking for ways to start to design this mechanism....
Bike chain? any one?

mid term movie...

2008-06-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the comments and where I need to take it from here. Ed Keller was there. He is so tremendous! Jean Michel and MarkDavid and 2 friends of his from UCSB were also at the review.
1. ed-what does it mean to be alive? organic/inorganic...
is the brick alive, what does it mean? what does it mean about existing in an inhaborg?
Look back to D&G and the machine of the non-organic life- what are the trends and issues of self regulation- intelligence and force0 the quantity thru flow, what is the META META for life? to exist?
2. what are the boundaries of inhabitation.. what are the rulesets.. what is the model...there is a spray can but it is just the place holder for the device to communicate- control the tools for communication
3. (this is from jmc) he said that i "undermined my credibility with the use of youtube", i need more presices in visual material and though i might be exploring the canvas right now its time for a verticle explorations. what is the new domain? what are the new parameters?
4. mdh- what is the role of the human? (good question right? gees i should have actually put that more in the forefront.. i mean who are we growing this for? oh nina ) so is it man vrs. nature but i m saying ultimately that MAN IS NATURE (i know hard to believe) and that the boundaries can be broken down from the inhabitation and the subject. You can live in something more similar to yourself.
5. also.. nano/quantum levels-bacteria things that break down he boundaries and the illusions of the boundries of existing and proposed.
6. ed again- apple tree anecdote- apple tree and the parasitic vine became one. the sapping- what are the local and global implications and how it actually harnesses the energy(s) around it.. why the vine not the strangle
7. macroscopic and fields .. look at the macro break down in the other fields that operate through the matter/media
8. I NEED A MODEL OF THIS THING>>>>>>>>> MOST IMPORTANTE!.....what is the basic model.. what does it mean to be this THING? where is the feed back loop from the rules...
9. THE FLY!!!
Goldblum takes over the habits of the fly--predistinguish.. there are a catalogue of attributes what is the TAXONOMY of this SPECIES-- where is the TRANS action the mutual exchange between the people and the inhaborg?
10. (here's a kicker) RE DEFINE EVOLUTION... that one is one of my favorites.
what does it mean for evolution to take place? communication to evolve? what is the rule set of communication .. think about Sanford Kwinter's class, how does it integrate to culture and complex life? how does it get there? memes? Temes? memorization systems and habit...
11. micheal serres txt.. ill get back to that... model for how things work in this world irreversible..
12. thermodynamics model and info theory.. how to produce/value its intelligence?
13. noise reaction-- question of level 4 .. how do you know if it is going the right way?
14. jmc-make it more systematic.. work with systems towards the model
15. mdh-making and doing only way to progress the project.. and i completely agree.. i need to start to make some of the experiments.. ben bratton said that to me in the first convo i had with him on this... yep.. its all a big i know you told me so.. i just have to get it done.
my experiments for the model.. what ever happened to me and the scientific method?
16. write out a thesis statement.. (we should have done this in the beginning.. but you know how things are around here)
17. reflect on the media, the biology is the media...medium of communication. (back to the great dance.. iLove that movie)
18. limits of organic life- nasa paper, how would we be come if we didnt know how we got here?
non living vrs. .living
how inhaborg deals with contact flow and information.. what is the pattern recognition. transmition/transactive
19. what are the protocalls/ mattenence of pattern.. but also ARAKAWA AND GINS.. breaking habit.

naughty by nature...

2008-06-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

DNA

2008-06-24T19:19:00.001-07:00

Little bit on the lowdown.

mani-pul-ation....

2008-06-24T06:02:00.000-07:00

This is the proposal for an installation I am making for the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival . This is exploring some of the points in Level 1 of the steps to Inhaborg. This is also for a class I am taking with MarkDavid Hosale. So by the end of it (or at least August 8th) I will know how to get my little arduino board up and running.

Words From Chu

2008-06-24T03:19:00.000-07:00

The evolution of life and intelligence on Earth has finally reached the point where it is now deemed possible to engender something almost out of nothing, at least in principle, a universe of possible worlds based on generative principles inherent within nature and the physical universe. For the first time, mankind is now finally in possession of the power to change and transform the nature of biological species, including the genetic make-up that defines the condition of being human. By bringing into the foreground the hidden reservoir of life in all its potential manifestations through the manipulation of the genetic code, the unmasking or the transgression of what could be considered the first principle of prohibition - the taking into possession of what was once presumed to be the power of God to create life - may lead to conditions that are so precarious and treacherous as to even threaten the future viability of the species, Homo sapiens, on Earth. At the same time, depending on how mankind navigates into the universe of possible worlds that are about to be siphoned through computation, it could once again bring forth a poetic re-enchantment of the world, one that resonates with all the attributes of a pre-modern era derives, in this instance, from the intersection of the seemingly irreconcilable domains of logos and mythos.

From Genetic Space, Karl Chu
-

moving units

2008-06-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

Now is time to start thinking about what are these units, what are these cells that are sprouting and spreading? What is this unit we are scripting and coding? How would this happen in reality and not just in the the maya perspective viewer? Let's look at what makes a cell as living or possible to self sustain?
The Top Ten things that characterize a Cell as Living:
1. Cells obey Laws of Energetics - they transform energy
2. Cells are Highly Structured with emergent properties
3. Cells have an Evolutionary Origin (from a single primordial cell)
4. Cells Metabolize
possess metabolic pathways, process nutrients,
self adjust to environment via metabolic regulation
5. Cells Self-Replicate (divide) µ
6. Cells Osmoregulate
7. Cells Communicate 8. Cells show Animation (cyclosis ) 9. Cells Grow, Divide, & Differentiate10. Cells Die!!!! so, this building will not last forever! it be able to change and morph at will. reaction and actions. Cells transform energy (waste/food) by capturing light and chemical/redux reactions. The cells trans form the energy to do work - osmotic or mechanical or electrical (mmm electrical). Not only do they transform the energy but they give off energy as to maintain a non-equilibrium ordered state.

That's some radical agents. Each cell is a power plant in the spectrum of the organism. Imagine harnessing the energy? There is so much potential out there!

The basic units I will be looking at for now are the following:
animal cell based
plant cell based
hybrid (plant-animal)

Each start off as a unit in a petri dish, or like the The Perfect Human, by Jørgen Leth. That is how it forms in the computer, the script that lets the code unfold without outside stimuli. Then we take it as (Lars Von Trier did with his 5 Obstructions) , set the code/cell out with new parameters and chance and time and context.

2008-06-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

Eichstatt
This is a reactive hyrid plant that grows, blossoms, and withers. The leaves and flowers are picked from The Garden of Eichstatt, a 17th century botanical book.

Eichstatt is an online version of an interactive installation (with jars and suction cups) shown at the Royal College of Art Show in 2001.

Metaphorical.net is a collection of experiments that explores and extends the passions and fleeing enchantments of William Ngan.

Also

http://processing.org/exhibition/works/bees/index_link.html

Metabolism= Peeeece of mind

2008-06-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Scientists in Singapore have developed a battery powered by urine. Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology created the credit card-size battery as a disposable power source for medical test kits. Ki Bang Lee and his colleagues have designed a disposable battery on a chip that is activated by biofluids, aka urine, blood, and potentially even semen. All this stuff in our bodies is potential energy! All these fluids contains ions which allow the electricity-producing chemical reaction to take place in the battery.

This potentially low-cost biodegradable battery is not that complex to fabricate. Lee and his colleagues soaked a piece of paper in a solution of copper chloride and sandwiched it between strips of magnesium and copper. This sandwich was then laminated between two sheets of transparent plastic. When a drop of urine is added to the paper through a slit in the plastic, a chemical reaction takes place that produces electricity. (Electrici-pee!)

This little prototype battery produced about 1.5 volts, the same as a standard AA battery, and runs for about 90 minutes. Researchers said the power, voltage, and lifetime of the battery can be improved by adjusting the geometry and materials used. This technoloy can be used to power laptops, mp3 players, lightbulbs, whatever potentially! imagine all the energy that has been wasted! No more black outs in NYC! Everybody Pee!

list of things...

2008-06-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

I have been tardy in getting this out.. but here is the list of 100 projects that contribute to the progress of the inhaborg. Bear with me as this is going to be an unruly list.

The following are key points of projects.:

1. project with goal of recycling waste(noise)
2. reuse cancer
3. reuse aids, dwelling that live of the disease
4. reuse urine as the main power source for heating
5. homeless/nomadic virus pod that attaches and attacks the propelled surface similarly to a leech.
6. pin point on suction technologies and their application.
7. observation of suction and connective tissue in plants and animals
8. additive and interjection of technologies potential in reconfiguring the suction and connective tissues in plants and animals
9. additive and interjection of nano technologies potential in "wall" cartilage for maneuverable environments
10. unit design and coded cells
11. look at collective building systems such as coral and or pollen collection services
12. symbiotic relationships and interweaving of organisms that unite to form the dwelling
13. plant animal hybrid cells?
14. Building out of banyan trees interlaced with internet
15. nesting systems
16. weaving systems
17. reactions to implied force, aka heating and cooling, chemical reactions
18. Endocrine secretions to cause a genetically-programmed death in octopus/dwelling
19. walls with chemosenors, transducing chemical signal to potential action
20. collage and layering of "cells" and eating them away
21. bacteria spray that eats at masonry brick and leaves a residue that allows for new mold/moss growth
22. vomeronasal organ exploited to a surface, reacting and acting on its stimuli
23.looking at how ivy grows on buildings and thinking how to implement that in to a system for an inhabitable growth
24. observations of mitosis
25. cell communication through paxillin
26. start growing plant life homes in obscure urban places
27. start gowning plant life homes in automobiles that live off of exhaust
28. structure from hair
29. structure form shed skin
30. structure from belly lint
31. structure from ear wax
32. structure from cum
33. structure reacts to spit
34. structure that reacts to water
35. material that dissolves in water
36. self organizing space via simple unites and a electrical charge between the connectors
37. morter less brick at the nano level!b
38. Stimergy (information gathered from work in process) and out putting that info for reactions
39. Bernard Convection as a form of information transfer
40. the use of flocking in birds or bee swarming ad a active yet temporary space/field definer
41. metastasis of growing agents from one body(part) to another, more fluid tranfer of the parasite that builds as it eats, builds from its wastes
42. structure that is powered by urine
43. structure that is powered by cum
44. structure in a cemetery that is powered by tears
45. structure that is powered by dead bodies
46. cell energy recycled and moved and die
47. bacteria giving off oil and spitting it out as a polymer base growth
48. investigations in food structures, aka inestinal structureing
49. meringue rigidization
50. calcification of particles
51. increased elasticity under heating (cheese/meat)
52.FUNGUS AMOUNGUS!
53. potato power
.....

GOZILLA(greglynn) VRS. KING KONG(ericownmoss)

2008-06-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

One thing I have to say is that Eric Own Moss is hilarious. Monday night at th Sciarc Gallery, there was a conversation between him and Greg Lynn about the current installation of the Blob Wall. The goal of the blob wall was to come up with a mortar-less brick. Amoung other things in the current public spectrum of architecture, this piece is relative to pop culture through its playful notions but what I would like to say is its potential for mass marketing and sub narration. What if each one of these units were made with googley eyes or had smiley faces much like everything in a Japanese Grocery store. What if it was a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and Greg Lynn Form? The blob wall brick (I wish we had a name for it) isnt far off from Murakami's "Mr. DOB."

Let's return to this intention of "brick". What is a brick? A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, laid using mortar, according to wikipedia. A "brick" from popular culture could be a character in role-playing and other games whose primary role is to sustain damage and act as a shield for weaker allies or just a game not far off from Tetris.

We are interpreting this "brick" as a structural element, though the installation did have a small collapse. Though "mortar-less" this brick did not snap into the next one or relate, it was restricted to a predestined form instituted by the modeling program. Now I do not want to assume here but if this path was taken then great.

What if the brick was used as the bases of a script, the brick was the unit that had its own reactions/wants/needs/desires programed in to its possible behaviors? Even Jonathan Borofsky's Human Structures start to address these points in there own evolution and realization. If the blob wall unit was allowed to expose itself and may be even dissolve into its self. What if he employed the Xfrog Program to let the evolution?

What my suggestion was that the actual structure served as the mortar, the membrane could have a reaction to itself and maybe grow on to its self. Or if an introduction of sunlight via sunlamps or etc and then embedded in the surface is a mold or some bacteria/fungus that spreads and grows exponentially with the sun. Just a suggestion.

for the moneysigns...

2008-06-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

McDonald's is really sprouting up some good ideas in the Chicago Area. This billboard advertising there now heath conscious menu is a growing a new green. According to the Chicago Business Times:

McDonald’s Corp.’s latest effort to promote its health-conscious menu items takes advantage of the saying that the medium is the message.

Green lettuce has been planted to form the words “fresh salads” on a billboard in Wrigleyville near the intersection of Addison and Clark streets to promote its four premium salads.

[McDonald's ad agency's] creative team worked closely with a horticulturalist to create a billboard that could start with 1½-inch spouts and grow into lush leaves. The garden appears to be safe from being plucked apart by birds because there is no place for them to perch and peck.

How leaffy! What if green cards were edible or plantible... Moneysigns green and growing. Why does that not feed the people on the streets?Where are the tomato plants?

not so proper propaganda

2008-06-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Notes from presenting this little ditty...
I presented it as a piece of propaganda's but its missing the dichotomy of the utopia/dystopia. Parade of information is the passive voice. So what now? Start to write stories. Aaron Bocanegra gave me the best advice I think. Develop what it means to be in these places. This totally makes sense to me as it is a reexamination and elaboration on the senses. Expressing it in real translated feelings and notions. What if you received post cards from these different places where the inhaborg was deployed much like the Greek restaurants in Floridian beach towns. This piece is too much on the surface right now and has to get into the grind. I completely agree with this as this could be called a TEASER and not the whole money shot. Other things - express the bottom emerging proliferation. What are the arguments (to be or not to be alive and encompassing?) This agent is not just a design tool
what do I want to do with this? Good question. Like so what we have all this and all this could be bricollaged together for form a "new", a third form/function/fatality. This needs to be imploded in the presentce and not to for get about the METABOLISM. I need to elaborate and really push this part because it is the ultimately defining factor. I need some flow charts!

Gregory Thorpe had some great advice for me also, as he has seen how I work from my days hunting glory holes. I need to antagonize my own design tendencies and escape and then oh yes.. return. I have to make it about the thing itself. not the representation. It is the matter that communicates its own being.

I am going to finally finish this list and get back to you. But till then.. more to digest.

verde machina

2008-06-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Elan Fessler proposed OPAM, the Organic Public Art Machine. This device is transnational, benign. OPAM is made from "smart" materials, predominately an organic, biodegradable, corn-based plastic. This organic-machine is a solar-powered, video projecting, transportable mobile ecosystem. This "urban phenomenon" could also be considered hippie terrorism.

Cell-ular Communication..

2008-06-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last year in San Diego scientists Shu Chien and Ying-Li Hu captured on video the intracellular version of a postal delivery service. Reported in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC), bioengineering researchers at UC San Diego published videos of a key message-carrying protein called paxillin moving abruptly from hubs of communication and transportation activity on the cell surface toward the nucleus. Paxillin, shown in the video above and the image below are highlighted with labeled with a red fluorescence marker to make it stand out in live cells.
Even without video evidence, scientists have confirmed over the past 10 years that higher organisms use paxillin as a transmitter of locomotion and gene-expression signals from several classes of growth-factor receptors to the nucleus. The agent of communication, the cellular cell phone.

Paxillin's malfunctions have been linked to a variety of cancers, tumor metastasis, and other disease processes. Tumor-causing versions of signaling molecules may attach to paxillin and disturb the normal adhesion and growth factor signaling steps required for controlled proliferation and cell growth. Human papilloma virus, which can lead to cervical cancer, produces a protein that binds to paxillin. That interaction may contribute to the carcinogenic potential of the sexually transmitted virus. *note, potential for a building out of AIDS
This filming of paxillin was via cells from the inner membranous lining of a cow aorta. They added genetically engineered proteins tagged with red and green fluorescence markers to the bovine aortic endothelial cells, grew them in tissue culture, and filmed them while they passed fluid across the cells’ surface in a simulation of flowing blood.

Paxillin is found primarily at focal adhesions, busy intersections of activity scattered around the cell’s cytoplasmic membrane. Focal adhesions are regions highly rich with receptors for growth factors (!!!) and they are also structural attachment points that link the extracellular world to the protein filaments and tubes that comprise a cell’s internal cytoskeleton.

Paxillin is the way to tap into the sensory action of the cellular. Now the challange is to try to translate their means of communication. What is the code that is paxillin is the messenger for? Hello Pattern Recognition!

live in jerky

2008-06-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

50 sheep stomachs...
by julia lohmann
imagine the walls of your house were beef jerky.
http://www.julialohmann.co.uk/

BUZZ WORD! TODAY!!!

2008-05-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

SELF-ORGANIZING SPACE

Self Organization - a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interaction among the lower-level component of the system. Moreover the rules specify interactions amount the systems' components are execution only local information with out reference to the global pattern.
(Self-Organization in Biological Systems)

What are the mechanisms and how they differ in biological systems verses physical systems.

Well it might happen in outer space. Let's look at the scales of self organization...

To more Elaborate on the first diagram here are is the relativity of the scales involved:

On a side note: everytime I tend to get an Idea about all this. I turn around and find that Mr. Roche was already there. Another hot shot to mention is Mitchell Joachim.

Words from Roche

2008-05-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

"To reclaim the scenarios and substances that condition architectr and reveal the contraditcions and fantasies that drive our societies, we need, on the contrary to draw on this vibrating, disquieting and voluptuously temporarily. Architecture is not something to be thought or produces for later, like the stander bearer for a morality. It can only be negotiated live, in its contingency on a situation and is solubility in a set of givens." FRANCIOS ROCHE_ (Science) Fiction & Mass Culture Crisis

"We are in the situation where we don't know what is going on, so we are in the city doing micro-architecture. If you start with a virus, you can change everything, you know, with the contamination system." (R&Sie)

What happens when you fall in love? and What ever you read and hear or see from this other party makes all the sense in the world to you?

It has me in a sticky position. Almost frustrating. But eyes on the prize. Ultimately, this exploration will be fulfilled through installations and a movie? I am working on a list of projects and will post them as soon as I reach a proper number.

I'll take some tissue to go!

2008-05-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

So for those who believe this could possibly be not a reality, scientists everywhere are progressing the possibility of cells growing and developing. As I see this, they are new mailable materials for the not the "built" but "GROWN" environment. The BBC has an article on the progress of a team at the University College London lead by Professor Robert Brown who have learned to cut down the time it takes to grow living tissue. Scientist currently make tissues to be used for operations such as skin grafts by building a scaffold of cells that are grown in the lab. Previously, tissue growth would take up to one and 12 weeks are required to grow enough for surgery. Professor Brown and his team experimented on making a tissue called collagen, which acts as a structural support for skin, bones and tendons. (Hello Structural support!) By sucking out the water using a method entitled plastic compression progressed the development of the collagen growth to just over a 30 minutes. Not only was the tissue made much faster but it also was stronger and more like real collagen than other engineered tissues.

Imaging grafting on a new layer of leather on to your body. It's the new form of pleat. That goes out to all the fashionistas and their biomimetic actions.

SO knock knock. Let's take the grafting and start to grow towards things in buildings and etc.

Seeds of Production

2008-05-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

To reach the Inhabitable Organism, or InhabOrg, we must map out the scale and the players in making the "monster" a reality. As this blog develops, new documents and maps of where and who these people are will become available. The range of scale goes from DNA and computational biology to nanotech material research on the micro end to the full range of architecture and urban context.

definitions::WTF?

2008-05-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

People have been coming up to me and asking me what is it I am trying to do. I am now embarking on my last semester and this will be the capsule for the information that I (and my fellow com padres) collect on the topics.

For those who might be confused dictionary.com provides us with their answers:

in·hab·it
–verb (used with object)
1. to live or dwell in (a place), as people or animals: Small animals inhabited the woods.
2. to exist or be situated within; dwell in: Weird notions inhabit his mind.
–verb (used without object)
3. Archaic. to live or dwell, as in a place.

—Related forms

in·hab·it·a·ble, adjective

in·hab·it·a·bil·i·ty, noun

in·hab·i·ta·tion, noun

or·gan·ism
–noun

1.	a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various vital processes.

2.	a form of life considered as an entity; an animal, plant, fungus, protistan, or moneran.

3.	any organized body or system conceived of as analogous to a living being: the governmental organism.

4.	any complex thing or system having properties and functions determined not only by the properties and relations of its individual parts, but by the character of the whole that they compose and by the relations of the parts to the whole.

—Related forms

or·gan·is·mic, or·gan·is·mal, adjective

or·gan·is·mi·cal·ly, adverb

So what is my take on the phrase in its entirety?
An inhabitable organism is an intelligent dwelling that governs itself and is reactive to its inhabitant.

inhabitable organism

2008-02-27T00:39:00.000-08:00

Programming scenarios: R&Sie(n)...
In Issue 8 of Praxis, the work of Francois Roche and Stephanie Lavaux is unraveled via their redefining architectural programming at the micro and macro scales thus to insturmentalizing the material processing of place. Their understanding of program synthesizes ecology, biology, and built form as both critique and catalyst. They use an evolving definition for program in architecture.
What is programming:
Architecture- a design brief of space requirements or activities
computer science- a sequence of coded instructions input into a mechanism that enable it to perform in a specified manner

biology- a sequence of coded instructions (as genes or behavioral responses) embedded with in the organism itself- integral to the building's life processes in relation to its biotope

By substituting the words biotope and scenario for site and design, R&Sie(n)... mess with the materiologies of the hyper-local. They code the intelligent material, the "genius materiae", the material of place, they spark a process to produces unanticipated and constantly evolving effects.

"Their uncompromising views and creations are highly experimental. Such elements as metamorphosis, fluid ecology, clones, biorobotics and advanced medicine play an important part. Their 'architecture non standard' is not static, but lively and amorphous. Their visionary exhibition 'I've heard about (a flat, fat, growing urban experiment)' shows an urban planning Utopia comprising a self-engendered,
independently growing biostructure." _

The article pin points out their project : Dusty Relief, a museum of contemporary art in Bangkok. The proposal exploits its context, using the highly toxic urban atmosphere. The dust, soot, and smog are now an integral part of the Bangkok's biotope and as an indigenous material that's modified the city's climate. The proposal juxtaposes the geopolitical architectural ambitions of a museum with the highly local site chemical specificity of its toxic micro-ecology. It produces a duality of co-existence with the pristine white-walled galleries to the polluted atmosphere. (WASTE=FOOD according to McDonough, yet this takes it to a new level. Less chic band aide, more reaction.) This building works because it announces to society, "yes, we human beings did fuck up the environment, now we need to use what we have," instead of just using hay for insulation and slapping on solar panels on the west side in a smog filled city, it is accepting the environment and working from there, re-adapting.

How does this work? The building has an electrostatically charged mesh cladding designed ot attract the fine particles in the air. As time passes, the dust continues to accumulate with carbon monoxide particles precipitating on the amorphous ectrostatic shell, augmenting the evolving particle landscape. Unlike most "architecture", the building attracts versus repel, absorbing and "feeding" off of its environment.
R&Sie(n)... set up the system for change and evolution to occur, not prescribing a fundamental construction. They are playing off of an organic rule set, not fighting nature but incorporating it, exposing it, and enhancing it.

We are going this way.

its alive...

2008-02-25T00:43:00.000-08:00

This is a blog dedicated to the collection of research on inhabitable organisms, biotech buildings. A truly sustainable architecture with a metabolism that feeds off the world we know...

so, more to come...