Researchers and engineers at the University of Essex in England develop robotic fish to help in monitoring levels of water pollution. They are able to move swiftly in the water and turn quickly just as normal fish, but as they swim they control that the chemical levels in the water are not perilous. They collect this information, and when they have enough data, they surface and transmit this data back to the main hub. Making sure that we know as soon as there is any contamination in our oceans and seas making containment of oil or chemical spills easier.
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Lichen Guo, a Chinese industrial design student, identifies the conventional washing machine as an unnecessary use of space. His design, the Dismount Washer, addresses this problem by combining the washing machine and the laundry basket together to create a compact and versatile washer. The dirty laundry capsule is mounted on a wall motor called an ‘energy stick’, which dispenses steam as part of the cleaning process.
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Conceived by the designer Kyung Kuk Kim, Wind Lamp is built with LEDs and powered by a specialized wind-harnessing generator that also powers other street lamps. Taking advantage of a beautiful curve found in nature, the lamp was created in the shape of a water droplet. Both beautiful and environmentally friendly this lamp will be used to light the underside of a bridge over the Han River in Seoul.
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Torafu Architects, a Japanese interior design company, has designed a new vase made completely of paper. Air Vase can be molded and reshaped freely by stretching, pulling, or compressing it providing opportunity for innovation and creativity every time. It is also colored on both sides to provide a particular and unique perspective of it every time you look at it. It can even be used as a cover for a glass vase to show off some fresh flowers.
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Matthew Gilbride’s Elements Modular Kitchen provides all-in-one kitchen shelving, with a focus on the living conditions of people living in 2050, when more people are predicted to be living in compact spaces in urban settings. The wall mounted device has diverse capabilities such as modes for cooking, refrigeration, air conditioning, and lighting. The Elements Modular Kitchen runs electricity wirelessly and the units can be placed together to work simultaneously. The modular shape allows for space and energy conservation through powermat technology.
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Designed by the toilet manufacturer Toto for Japanese housing company Daiwa House, the Intelligent Toilet offers an instant health check-up every time people use the bathroom. The Intelligent Toilet has the technology to provide urine analysis, taking a person’s blood pressure and temperature, and measure a person’s weight. The toilet, designed for the elderly and those concerned with their help, allows people to constantly monitor their wellbeing and even send the information to their doctors.
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In the future, the term ‘ziggurat’ will no longer refers to the temple towers of the ancient Mesopotamian: Timelinks, a Dubai-based pioneering environmental design company, has chosen it to describe the sustainable city of the future. Using the basic idea of a pyramid structure, Timelinks has created renderings of a 100% self-sustainable and totally environmentally friendly super-structure. The city is planned to house more than 1 million inhabitants and will be a true architectural colossus.
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American architect, Louis Kahn, is probably known best for building The National Assembly Building in Bangladesh, which brought democracy to the country. Unfortunately, the building of the National Assembly of Bangladesh took Louis Kahn away from his family more than he would have liked. 35 years later, Louis Kahn’s son, Nathaniel Kahn, pays homage to the great architect in his documentary, “My Architect”. During this making of the film, he interviewed the people with whom his father worked on the construction of the National Assembly. In this way, Nathaniel was able to discover how great a man his father really was.
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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.
“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.
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