Architecture Thesis Project: Floating City

In the beginning of last Fall semester, the thesis students were allowed to choose one thesis professor who they want to work with for their thesis project. There are seven thesis professors to choose from, and each of them present their own theme (generally broad topics) that students' project will relate to. That explained, I chose a topic about 'Performative and Responsive Architecture'. I have always been interested in wondrous devices, apertures, apparatuses, robotic systems that operates and moves. My interest in such area continued to grow as my interest in change in environment, culture, and society developed in last couple years. I am interested in converging these two topics in order to design a better architecture that performs and responses to its changing environment, whether the change is coming from the environmental threats like rise of sea level and natural disasters or the social changes and urban lifestyle.

The thesis I am proposing is a floating city. The proposal stems from the issue of swelling of population and swelling of sea water in London (but even in other coastal cities that are vulnerable to the same issues). The city will continue to grow where housing costs are already high and will be continue to become more vulnerable to flooding due to rise of sea level. It is not ideal to expand the city in suburban areas as the consequence includes overtaking the green belt and destroying natural habitats. It is best to keep the city as it is but expand on the water surface.

My research for this topic has been going on in different directions simultaneously. One idea that I have been researching on is, how does the building float/sits on water? Do buildings become like a boat? Or are they supported by stilts? How would they be different structurally from the buildings on land? Another idea that I am researching on is, how does such community function when their community is built on water? How does people travel around the community? What kind of economic opportunity does such community offer? What kind of living or lifestyle does it demand? How will such community be successful?

These are on-going questions I am dealing with right now, and I hope to find answers to these questions in the near future through my project. Stay tuned!

Deep Green Underwater Kite

Deep Green Underwater Kite

Swedish company Minesto's underwater kite resembles a child's toy as it swoops and dives in ocean currents. But since seawater is 800 times as dense as air, the small turbine attached to the kite — which is tethered to the ocean floor — can generate 800 times more energy than if it were in the sky. Minesto calls the technology Deep Green and says it can generate 500 kilowatts of power even in calm waters; the design could increase the market for tidal power by 80%, the company says. The first scale model will be unveiled next year off the coast of Northern Ireland.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030623_2029802,00.html #ixzz1Du0rBJLY

Adaptive Bloom

This project by Justin Goodyer of the Bartlett School of Architecture is called "Adaptive Bloom," which is a reactive facade driven by servos and a computer vision systems. The moving mechanical components were individually produced as single SLS prints. The project is not merely an aesthetic art piece of mechanical flowers, but rather an experiment of moving facade system which interacts with users. The project reveals great potential for interactive architecture, that can be assisted with advanced technology. 

Is our future a man-made Nature?

Today, I want to share with you one of the inspiring projects I cherish, 'The Transcendent City', a thesis project by Richard Hardy who graduated from Bartlett School of Architecture in London.

Here is exact quotes from Richard Hardy on 'The Transcendent City':

"The concept of a future sustainable city is developed for a society that is currently not responding effectively to environmental dangers. "Transcendence" in this case referring to a point when artificial intelligence has reached or surpassed that of the human.

The Transcendent City is an autonomous artificial machine that extends across the earth adapting to the natural eco-systems it encounters while deriving its energy from the renewable resources available at each particular site. The systems desire is to maintain homeostasis within itself whilst maintaining homeostasis within the greater system, Gaia. Its processes are engineered on the molecular scale by nano technologies controlled by molecular computers that monitor and analyse the environment.

The film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture questions whether the conception of artificial intelligence has been a necessity in human evolution and if we therefore should embrace emergent technologies to engage with problems of sustainability and the city."

First of all, his imageries are fascinating and beautiful, which makes this short video very pleasant and enjoyable to watch. Despite its beauty that reminds us of Hayao Miyazaki's animation movies (such as Haul's Moving Castle), this short film brings out a serious question of whether artificial intelligence is a necessity for human survival on earth in the future. With development of nanotechnology, biological-technology, robotic technology and so on, this future is feasible in the near future. This video portrays the greatness of man's creation of artificial intelligence which produces renewal energy, while it also shows the danger of the artificial intelligence surpassing that of the human. 

Is this our future?

Augmented Hyper-reality City

This was a student project done by Keiichi Matsuda, which portrays architecture not only as physical reality but as virtual/digital reality co-existing and even becoming the 'reality'.

Through this video and project, Keiichi puts out an argument that the contemporary architecture not only exist on the physical space but more and more exist on the 'synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organize."

Keiichi visions our future to become more dependent on the digital space and that virtual media will no longer be distinguishable from the real 'reality'.

I think this project is fascinating topic...if this could become true, then it will solve many of the sustainability issues (although not all) since many things will be satisfied virtually. For example, if you want your house to have nice marble tiles on the floor and your sofa to be genuine leather from Italy, it will take an instance to change them. However, the flaw I see in the 'Augmented City' is that it only deals with vision, which is only one out of five senses we have to make the synthetic reality to become just like reality. The marble tiles will not feel like, smell like, taste like( although you would've never tasted marble) its real property if the 'real' material which the marble tiles were projected on was wood, for example. But at the same time, such idea creeps me out that we will no longer be able to distinguish what is real or not--sounds like some sci-fi dystopian movie to me. Other than that, I think the project is very successful in that people can project and see information floating around me anytime I need or want.

Do you love sushi?

[bluefin tuna sushi in Japan]

[bluefin tuna sushi- sushi restaurant in New York] 

Do you love sushi? Do you love tuna?
Here is a bad news for you, sushi and tuna lovers--you might not be able to taste bluefin tuna again by next year!

Bluefin tuna is in the verge of depletion in the result of overfishing. The fish is unable to repopulate, resulting depletion after the fish is overly fished. The depletion of bluefin tuna means imbalance in the ecosystem and loss of livelihood for many who heavily depend on it. Despite the danger of extinction, overfishing is continued. Why? Because of our crave and demand. And fishermen continue to overfish because it brings them income. As the fish becomes scarce, the price sky-rockets and yet people pay that price to taste the last of bluefin tuna.

Meanwhile, Kinki University in Japan has developed a way to farm bluefin tuna, although it is still considered environmentally unsustainable. Basically, the system is to farm bluefin tuna in large cylindrical enclosures in the water from its birth. Its flaw is that those farmed tunas are fed with tons of small fishes captured from the wild, still stressing the balance in the ecosystem. The university is in process of investigating alternative ways to feed the bluefin.

The depletion is not an issue just for bluefin tuna. All of our favorite fish species are overfished everyday. We need to think of better ways to secure them from depletion. One option I advocate is eating alternative fish. By eating alternative fish species, we can alleviate the pressure on the popular fish species such as tuna, salmon, tilapia, cod, etc. But will our taste-buds be satisfied with other fishes replacing the good ones? We will have to find out. Meanwhile, let's keep our taste-buds out of bluefin tunas.

Welcome to Architecture Post-it

Hello everyone and welcome to Architecture Post-it!
I will be blogging about interesting topics in the scope of  architecture. This will be a fun adventure to discover how anything or just about everything can be related to architecture. Architecture used to be defined simply as a shelter for human. But our rapidly changing societies, lifestyles, climates, and resources are forcing architects to rethink and redefine what it can be and what it can do to cope with the ever-changing world.
While this blog will explore such new definitions of architecture, it will not be limited to being just about architecture. I am also interested in environment, business, politics, travel, and many other topics, and I will make sure to share with you anything I find interesting in the 'blogosphere'.

Hope you enjoy!