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Blogging the future

Is it possible to create live architecture capable of regenerating itself just like live organisms do? Thanks to her studies, vision, and ambition, Rachel Armstrong has made this idea more realistic. In fact, by using architecture that grows itself, Armstrong believes that we will be able to save Venice, Italy from sinking.

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Rachel Armstrong has devised a way to bring architecture and biology together. She believes that it is possible to create chemically engineered building materials that can grow, self-repair, and respond to changes. These materials, Armstrong believes, could even be used to save Venice, Italy, one of humanity’s most beautiful cities which is slowing sinking in the ocean.

Armstrong refers to the current method of architecture as “old” and “Victorian”; inert objects such as concrete are used to construct our buildings and homes. While this may not seem problematic to most people, Armstrong does not consider this method sustainable. Instead, architecture should be connected to the natural world, and communicate with living matter. Since these materials do not naturally exist in nature, Armstrong is working to generate them from scratch. She researches “metabolic materials”, which are construction materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can be manipulated to “grow” architecture. These materials would be able to respond to changes in the environment and adapt accordingly.

Protocells, which are basically fatty bags containing no DNA and run by a chemical battery, are able to conduct themselves in a way that can only be described as living. They are able to move around their environments, undergo complex reactions, and follow chemical gradients. Using the protocell technology, Armstrong hopes to create sustainable, metabolic materials. Although this technology will take years to create and perfect, hopefully these materials will be used to save dying cities.

Venice, Italy is built upon wooden piles that have eroded over many years. As the beautiful city continues to sink, Armstrong hopes that the protocell technology will be able to reclaim the city by growing a limestone reef around the piles. These cells would be used for reinforcement purposes instead of just creating a reef in the canals.

Not only does this technology seem plausible, it would be a great innovation for architecture. Now more than ever we stress the idea of being as eco-friendly and “green” as possible; what better way to connect with nature than with this technology? It is our duty to try to salvage historical cities, and metabolic materials may very well be the answer to our problems. Furthermore, as our world becomes more technologically and scientifically advanced, it should seem reasonable to update some of our older practices as well.

More Info:

• http://www.rachelarmstrong.me/
• http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_armstrong_architecture_that_repairs_itself.html

“Civilization is not a static state. It’s a process that’s constantly going on.” For futurist Jacque Fresco, the great commitment of future design is to foresee, integrate, and to influence these changes in a way that improves the quality of life for both humans and the environment.

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Very few men exist that have succeeded, with their inventions and ideas, in leaving a significant mark on humanity’s history. Watching the Jacque Fresco’s interview with Larry King in 1974, a person is left with the impression of finding himself looking at a modern Leonardo da Vinci. The designs and projects that he shows to the public quickly reveal the personality of a great visionary of the future. Fresco is both a scientists, an architect, a designer, and an engineer; but most importantly he is a great philosopher, a man who has spent nearly a century studying our society and elaborating ideas that support and increase the well-being of mankind.

Beyond having taken part in projects having to do with both technology and science (from automated vehicles to biomedical equipment, in order to create real self-sustainable cities), he is also the founder of the Venus Project. The Venus Project is an organization that proposes a feasible plan of action for social change. Since 1975, Jacque has dedicated his life to social design in concrete ways, by promoting books, teaching at universities, and explaining his project to whomever wants to believe in a new civilization that is based on the wellbeing of mankind.

One day we will buy ourselves an apartment in a floating city. The city will be self-sustainable, energy efficient, and will have no negative impact on the environment. This is not a scene from a science-fiction movie; this is the world that Jacque Fresco has in mind. And this world is possible to create, even today. A world where students and researchers will be able to attend university underwater, and look out a window in order to observe the natural ecosystems of the ocean. According to the “social designer and futurist”, as Fresco likes to call himself, humanity already has in its hands the necessary tools to innovate and reconstruct our world. Science and technology alone are not enough: it is necessary to have an optimistic view, and the will to completely redesign our culture and our way of life.

On the Venus Project’s website, Fresco invites everyone to not dream with eyes open, because for the first time in human history we have the possibility to choose: to continue to destroy the our planet, or to carry out the dreams of the great men of the past.

More Info:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htag1ABr494
• http://www.futurebydesignthemovie.com
• http://www.thevenusproject.com

The Lilypad, designed by French architect Vincent Callebaut, is a city at sea, inspired by the houseboats and water lilies from the Amazon region. Each Lilypad city, accommodating about 50 thousand people, could someday be the self-sufficient home for displaced people in the future.

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MoreInfo:

• http://vincent.callebaut.org

Rotterdam-based architects MVRDV recently won the Gwanggyo City Centre Competition with their design of an incredible new city just south of Seoul, South Korea. Envisioned as a verdant acropolis of organic ‘hill’ structures, the proposed complex is a fully self-sufficient city for up to 77,000 inhabitants.

The Dutch firm MVRDV has designed a fully sustainable city in the center of Gwanggyo, which is located near Seoul in South Korea. The project, Gwanggyo Power Center, looks like something from the movies: is a series of large hill-shaped structures, with outdoor terraces and plantations for storing water. The vertical design and landscape will improve the climate and ventilation and reduce energy use and water. The concept provides space for housing, offices, shops, and educational facilities. An internal irrigation system stores extra water from the buildings and uses it to sustain these green facades.

The Gwanggyo Green Power Center is completely self-sufficient, and can accommodate 77 thousand inhabitants. Also, the project will also be effective in reducing dependency on automobile or train travel and building a strong sense of community. The estimated budget and deadlines are still not defined, but the project’s completion is scheduled for 2011.

The project is innovative and intriguing, and although it may seem a bit far-fetched, this city centers may become a new future trend. It is important to stress the need for self-sustainability and energy efficiency in our future cities, and the Gwanggyo Green Power Center is a great start.

More Info:

• http://www.mvrdv.nl

Professor Paolo Dario from the Sant’Anna School in Pisa, Italy has developed a project that will change the way we clean. The DustBot project consists of two robots, DustClean and DustCart that have the ability to clean and disinfect the streets, as well as keep track of carbon dioxide levels and air quality.

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We are in the year 2085 and our planet is covered in waste. Humans now live in a giant spaceship that orbits around the planet and life on Earth seems to have ceased. Does this remind you of anything? It is the world that exists in WALL-E, the movie from Pixar Entertainment. WALL-E is one of the last robots that collect garbage, and his mission on Earth is to gather waste and build mountains from it.

The future shown by WALL-E certainly isn’t assuring, and as we know, the waste problem is severe. Every year in Italy, a billion tons of garbage is created. Changing the situation is not an easy task, but there is a solution.

The DustBot project, coordinated by Professor Paolo Dario from the Sant’Anna School in Pisa, Italy, has developed two robots, DustClean and DustCart. DustClean cleans and disinfects the streets, while the DustCart moves around the city, picking up waste discreetly. The robots are equipped with a touch screen that demonstrates statistics about the air quality, and also has sensors which pick up the CO2 levels, oxides, and thin dust particles. The DustCart has a belly where it inserts the waste, and it debuted for the first time in Osaka, Japan, thanks to the collaboration of the bio-robot laboratories of the Sant’Anna school, and the International Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute of Kyoto.

Robots like the DustCart are projected to improve the quality of life for us, and also for the people in charge of waste disposal. The DustBot will bring the trash back into a warehouse, where the operators won’t be in direct contact with the garbage anymore. Humans and machines will work side by side in a way that is faster, more precise, and above all, healthier.

More Info:

• www.dustbot.org

French architecture firm, Mobil M, has transformed the Plaza Nueva Drugstore in Bilbao, Spain into an artistic display of creativity and interior design. Once a dull space, this pharmacy is now both practical and beautiful.

Today even the most boring of places are experiencing a complete renovation.

Banks, supermarkets, pharmacies, and post offices are not meant to be visually appealing locations. They serve a simple purpose, to provide us with services that we need to go about our daily lives in an efficient manner. However, this is soon going to change. Architects at Mobil M have transformed the Plaza Neuva Drugstore in Bilbao, Spain into a display of artistic inspiration. The once dull location (now a vividly colored and skillfully furnished one), started an artistic revolution. A person does not usually associate a pharmacy, or other stores of this genre with beauty, it is a place people go to when their bodies are not running at optimal conditions. This innovative concept will make visiting places such as pharmacies or convenience stores a cultural experience where one can enrich his mind.

The idea of creating a wonderful interior space in a lackluster environment can have positive effects on the community, as it introduces art into more arenas of society. This artistic movement will undoubtedly spread around the globe, as the first experiment in Bilbao has been labeled a success.

More Info:

• http://www.mobil-m.com/

San Francisco designer, Joanna Borek-Clement has created an innovative architectural urban design that could alleviate pollution and overcrowded streets. Sky-Terra is a structural system based on the concept of adding a new and eco-friendly level to major cities, adding new public spaces to already crowded cities.

Although skyscrapers might be beautiful, complaints have come from some of them ruining the horizon, by sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of a vast wilderness. Look around any large metropolis and you will note the same things: no room for expansion, pollution, crowded city streets, a vast array of buildings that take away sunlight from the avenues below. They cast an ominous, eerie shade on the city below, taking away the suns warmth, and replacing it with the shades chillier temperature. The need for public spaces is crucial in any busting metropolis.

Joanna Borek-Clement is a designer from San Francisco who has envisioned a new way of constructing high-rises using a new architectural design. Her design is inspired by the shape of a neuron cell, and would allow the streets below to be filled with parks, and recreational community buildings. Her idea shows buildings sprouting up from the ground, and branching out wider towards the sky, sort of like building an alternate layer far away from the ground. These interconnected towers would also be built of mass-produced materials that would allow for the conservation of critical energy and precious resources.

I like this project: it makes a lot of sense for the environment and for bettering the general life of city dwellers. I find that its practicality could lead the project to materialize into something concrete within the next several years. A new, intricate layer in the sky could better the quality of life for the ones who seek to stay below it.

More Info.:

• http://joannaborek.com/index_welcome.html

Carolina Pino, a student at NYU, has created what she calls Shellhouse Living Portable. They are traceable, portable shelters for the homeless. She created it to allow even those less fortunate to network with the world.

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Carton is a symbol of consumerism: a material that highlights the contradictions of the capitalistic world, divided by abundance and misery. It can contain food or objects of any type, and it can be thrown away and be recycled later on. The first carton boxes in history dated back to 1817, the year in which England used this material for commercial shipping. From that point on, carton has been present in our daily lives, sometimes being almost invisible.

But this time, it has been used as the main protagonist in the artwork of a young Chilean designer, a brilliant NYU student Carolina Pino – an artist splitting her time between Santiago, Chile, and New York. Her project is named “Shellhouse Living Portable.”

Carolina explains that her carton shelters for the homeless are the creation of a project that tried to capture something extremely economic by using technology: apparently something that hasn’t been explored, until now. The carton house is equipped with a circuit that transmits radio signals and transforms a simple box into a traceable internet device. Through the internet connection, the “shellhouse” is visible online and traceable inside of the city while navigating on google maps.

An inspired effort to aid the less fortunate of our community, this project can show new possibility towards the control and prevention of homelessness, while also helping those who live in the streets of our cities, and assuring them that they are not forgotten. Bravo, Carolina!

More Info.:

• http://carolinapino.net/
• http://www.shellhouse.org/