pee shit bricks...

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....

GOZILLA(greglynn) VRS. KING KONG(ericownmoss)

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.