Huey-Dewey-Louie Climate Clock

This project, one of the three finalists in the ideas competition organized by the Climate Clock Initiative, San Jose, is a proposed self-building landscape that measures and tracks climate change, both local and global, over the course of the next 100 years. The concept and technical design will be further developed over the next couple of years, in particular during a residency at FUSE:cadre.

The Clock consists of three characters that construct themselves over the course of days, months & years forming a highly legible landscape record of climatic change & possible causes of this change. Biological materials are extracted directly from the environment to facilitate ongoing and future analysis.

 The Huey-Dewey-Louie Clock after 14 years

I. Accretion Mounds: Huey
Autonomously accreted daily from light & dark materials extracted chemically from the atmosphere, the thickness of each carbonised/calcareous layer is proportional to the degree of fluctuation of local environmental parameters, visible, like tree-rings, via colour gradations of the deposited material. The geometric trend of the stratigraphic conic structure is dependent upon measurements of climatic change so that, viewed from below, the sky is visible until its completion, at which point the date will indicate the relative 'health' of the global weather system - the later it closes each year the better the global ecosphere's 'health'.

II. 3m3 Samples: Dewey
Round the site will be 100 plinths onto which will be placed annually a sample of air hermetically preserved in a transparent box measuring 3m x 1m x 1m. At Year 0, 10,000 daffodil seeds will be cloned from a single genetic sample. Each year, 100 will be planted on site; at year-end, a single flower and 99 compacted into a block will be placed at the base of the sealed sample columns. The way this preserved plant material, genetically identical through 100 years, responded to its year's changing climatic situation, and the air samples, will provide useful material for future analysis. 

III. Cubic Data Packer: Louie
An autonomous machine, powered by solar panels & heat engine, grazes round the site moving 1 cm/day, guided by local temperature & wind conditions. It extracts local soil via helical blades & fuses this daily into small cubes, each face of which is stamped with a date & environmental or economic measurements chosen by daily popular public vote, including e.g. global CO2 level, atmospheric methane, rainfall, price of corn, or index of light crude oil - whatever contemporary humans determine to be important. The cubes through their encoded positions record both local & global daily environmental conditions.

Sustainable House Runs Off Spinach

The winning entry to the Cradle to Cradle C2C Home Competition is an incredible single family dwelling by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum that goes right to the core fundamentals of the Cradle to Cradle principles. Not only does the building run a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein, but it also produces more energy than a single family’s needs, allowing the excess to be distributed to neighbors. This radical shift, from centralized energy systems today, fosters community interdependence as neighbors benefit from the resources of others.

Visiting the High Line

It was a long shot from the outset: In 1999, two locals--Joshua David, a writer, and Robert Hammond, a painter--quailed at the prospect of the massive old railway structure being torn down by hungry developers. They lobbied the city to instead turn its surface into a park along the western fringe of the Chelsea neighborhood, some two stories above the street. Ultimately, they succeeded: The park itself is remarkably designed, a work led by landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, with architecture by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and landscaping by Piet Odouf.

But it's still a work in progress: So far, only a 2.8 acre stretch of the park has been completed, corresponding with the blocks between Gansevoort and 20th street. A second phase, between 20th street and 30th street, will begin construction in a few weeks, with completion slated for 2010. Together, those two sections will cost $152 million. A third, final section has yet to be developed. And the Whitney Museum is slated to open a new downtown branch below the first portion as well. 

 

Additional photos are available here.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape

Architecture is the triumph of Human Imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word 'order.' - Frank Lloyd Wright, 1930, 1937 

Here is a link to the U.S. Library of Congress' web page dedicated to the physical exposition "Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American landscape." The expedition opened in November of 1996 and closed in February of 1997.

The Natural Swimming Pool

ike many eco-friendly ideas, the natural pool comes to us from Europe where it is more popular.  Although the idea was born in Europe, natural pools can be coupled with the concept of New Urbanism, a back-to-basics planning idea emerging here in the US.  Many new suburban developments branding themselves as New Urban use swimming holes and ponds in addition to traditional design elements like porches and alleyways to create the feeling of an older urban neighborhood.  The idea is to become more transit and pedestrian oriented, eating up fewer rural acres in the process.

More information is available here.

Vienna's Gas Tank City

Vienna has set a new standard in brownfield re-development with the renovation of four gasometers now used a s modern living spaces. The structures, originally built in 1896, were used to store the gas that supplied Vienna.

Remnants of the industrial age, gasometers all over the world have been demolished, or simply abandoned and left at the mercy of the elements. But the people of Vienna thought it would be a shame to just wipe these once useful structures off the face of the earth, and came up with a way to give them new meaning.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vienna’s gasometers were the largest in the world, each 70 meters tall and 60 meters across. Now, they are some of the city’s most coveted living and office spaces. After natural gas started being used to power Vienna, the interior of the gasometers was completely removed, leaving only their brick shells.

The idea of transforming them into living quarters appeared as the result of a design contest, calling for new ideas on how to reuse old structures. Now, the gasometer apartment buildings incorporate the ideas of four architects, including the translucent roofs, the interior garden and the eco-friendly terraced structure.

Source: odditycentral.com

World's first sustainable city in Madsar, UAE

The international design firm Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) is has produced its plans for the world's first zero carbon, zero waste city powered entirely by renewable energy sources.

Masdar is a planned city located 17 kilometres from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates A government initiative, the city is being constructed over seven phases and is due to be completed by 2016.


The city centre includes a plaza, five-star hotel, long stay hotel, a convention centre and entertainment complex and retail facilities.


Additional renderings can be seen here.

Not to be outdone....

The same magazine (now retitled "Popsci") presents their new vision of the city of the future, which they target for 2030. Sustainability seems to be the new concept.

An interactive video description of the City of the Future is available here.

The City of the Future in 1925

This is the cover of a Popular Science magazine for 1925.  Apparently, the vision of the city of 1950 was much different than what was to be realized 25 years later.

Since the underlying text is difficult to read, I have included it here:

"Future city streets, says Mr. Corbett, will be in four levels: The top level for pedestrians; the next lower level for slow motor traffic; the next for fast motor traffic, and the lowest for electric trains. Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes, and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be airplane landing fields, according to the architect's plan."