architecture commit suicide!

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...

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?

inhabitable organism_video 1 from nina marie barbuto on Vimeo.


This is the video that I made for my thesis.

more

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

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!

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

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

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

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....

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.