This is a research journey, not a finished project. it will soon be transferred on a blog based architecture to enable comments and outside contributions.
I was researching in the biotech realm, looking for a new form of primitive architecture, combining high technolgy and a real-sustainable architecture.
Being architect to me means more to understand the system and the interactions within the sytem, to understand how things are generated, used, abandonned, recycled in open systems (dispersion). So it is more about the life cycle (ecosystem), the behavior of the building as a living form, the process of the making as a form of maintenance that architecture acquires a meaning.
Not what architecture is but how it lives and changes.
1. Life, Language
Now, before I get into a research I try to locate my area of interest by mapping the sujects and related issues.
My first interrogation is why do we study biotechnologies in a "Design Interactions" course at the Royal College of Art, London. What are we suppose to bring to this apparently remote discipline?
Most of the interactive designers use computer programming to communicate with matter, but what is the relation between organic matter and language? What links life and code?
I started looking how life is organised, looking at a wide variety of philogenetic trees and cladograms about evolution. Quickly I felt that these trees were being studied in a very isolated fashion, as closed systems, excluding hybrid procesdures for example.
I tried to clarify the relation between matter and language, from the original chemical components of life (as self-organisation) to the emergence of species, ethno-linguistic groups, programming languages. This cladogram draft permits me to map clearly the shortest path from matter to language (red line). Of all this complexity, interwoven histories, some simplicity should emerge...
The proximity of 2 elements on this tree also make the compatibility of the elements more obvious : compatibility of human and other mamals organ transfert, compatibility of 2 close-by computing syntaxes.
This cladogram is very simplified regarding the complexity of evolution, just a few branches out of the main path. I might continue this research here, feel free to advise me on this subject, if you know a software that does wonderful graphics of interwoven cladograms, I am interested.
This type of system visualisation are very clear ... but reality is not! The celtic tree of life scares me by its closeness.
In my mind life and evolution are very complex, messy, creative.
Rhizome
Cells
I though, the messynes is what keeps the world together, organised in a way, the roots that give coherence to earth. I binded the evolutionary trees of biology (living material) + linguistic (behavior, information) + computer architecture ("dead" matter) together, as an architectural model.
Binding together the evolution of biology, linguistic and computer.
2. (bio) Life - Death (tech)
Now, if we look at the work "biotech", a strong opposition occurs : "bio" for what is life, fragile that regenerates; "tech" that is man-made (from "bio"), industrious and destructive of "bio".
Architecture, like life, is organised material, somehow structure, but when you look at what people call "organic architecture" you can be disapointed when it comes to "more serious criterias" : in respect of Frank Lloyd Wright,Fallingwater considered a masterpiece of organic architecture can look like an offending massive concrete construction in the heart of the fragile forest. The politicians of architecture are now pleading for sustainable architecture but is this a suficient ambition regarding all the degradation human have done? Can't we even be industrious reversing our negative influence on nature? Does it mean that we shouldn't build anymore? Does it even mean we should destroy all technology? NO!
(Image 1, top left) We can try to copy-paste our technological habitat in a "natural context", like a house in a tree: is it sustainable? I doubt.
(Image 2, top center Angkor) Any construction we can do is going to be "taken back by nature, may it take thousands of years to erase the traces of our "genius".
(image 3, top right, Pakistan earthquake) Nature takes back what we built usualy much faster than we can think of.
(Image 4, Iraqi refugees shelter destroyed by american army) And when we would build something out of natural materials, will the rest of society accept the cultural shift? Would we be brave enough to build, maintain and thrive into this new habitat even practically? Are we ready to accept this new primitive looking challenge? Is there any serious alternative we can think of, regarding the ever disappearing ressources, the growing population, pollution etc?
Animals do succeed in living in nature with what we would look down as primitive technology. It will be like if we were living in a continuously broken environment, re-building everyday on top of the ruins of of our technology of yesterday, evolving, adapting our technology.
Animals spend a lot of their time doing the maitenance of their habitat: the squirrel just lives on the tree and plant (and forget) nuts, the spider daily reconstruct its net if necessary, the beaver branch after brach can build enormous dams. These daily efforts of maintenance might be the real price of a human sustainable architecture, accomodating the instability of our shelters. But, again, this doesn't mean we need to give up all technology, but rather to choose the ones we need to progress with.
3. Prototype 1 : vehicle - island
At this stage of the research I am very much dreaming about a real organic and technological architecture. I want to wave together the fabric of nature and the fabric of information : roots and network cables.
I need to build an invertebrate architecture, flexible, following the mouvement of it's environment, capable to grow and reproduce like a living organism. These are the reason for the vehicle-island to happen. And again came this question: "are we, human, vertebrated animals, ready to live inside/on top of invertebrated animals/architecture?".
The surface of water is where semi-solid material bits can easily spread/aggregate to form an unstable architecture.
I need to try this floating structure and see if it conform with life criterias: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, reproduction. Now clearly, if this structure is made of elements that are well adapted to its local environment than it will provide a host for technological elements to be implemented or to grow within the structure.
But is that really a good idea? What sounds necessary now becomes obsolete or even problematic in the future : landmines were used during the war but become a terrible threat in peace time. If I was embeding data relays (autonomous modems) in the crust of the vehicle-islanc, they might provide a soon to be obsolete technology...
The vehicle-island was an interesting experiment anyway: I could assemble it instantly (10 minutes) with very few tools, grow it while moving it around, divide it and still keep the coherence of a network in both separated parts. In many way it ressembles microorganism with asexual reproduction.
A similar research had been done in this department : Edge town by Ben Hooker. Also the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory of Professor Chris Melhuish.
It wasn't that difficult to build a floating structure with network cables, branches, grass, and I kept on researching who actualy did the same type of researches or used this technology better than I did. Also if they did, the people must have a goal, a function for such a structure.
The spiral island is the work of the british eco-pioneer Richart (or "Rishi") Sowa in the Mexico waters. The floating layer is mostly made of 250,000 bottles wrapped in large nets, topped by wooden structures, stones, and earth. The mangroves were planted to help keep the island cool and solid, and some of them rose up to 15 ft (5 m) high. The first island was broken by hurrican Emily in 2005, but a more recent version of the island is now a place where eco-researches and plain holyday good time are happening.
This is a great idea, but I am not sure about the bottles, at some point I think they might spread out again. Also the structure is rigid so it can be broken. A more "solid version" of the floating island is the floating harbour of Yokohama by Foreign Office Archtects (London).
Some larger oceanic floating project is the aquamar project, for transporting gigantic amount of water (1 Giga Liter) in very large flexible barges ( 670 metres long and 160 metres wide) made of polyester fabric . Many applications of such technology are possible. A similarly ambitious project the Skysails is a high altitude kitepropulsion system.Very interesting researches are made by Makani Power in this area too. I am dreaming of the day these wonderfull technologies will be combined, soon hopefully.
In the protected waters of the Titikaka lake (Peru) the Uros people live on islands they built themselves. They litteraly grow land with Totora plant, build swimming aid, boats, houses, sails, and various objects with it. For me this is a wonderfull example of utilisation of a local organic ressource.
[from Wikipedia] Argo is an observation system for the Earth's oceans that provides real-time data for use in climate, weather, oceanographic and fisheries research. Argo consists of a large collection of small, drifting oceanic robotic probes deployed worldwide. The probes measure the salinity and temperature of the ocean at depths down to 2 km. Once every 10 days, the probes surface to transmit the measurements to scientists on shore via satellite. The data collected are freely available to everyone, without restrictions. Sustained measurements by 3000 probes are planned. 3,006 probes were deployed and active in November 2007.
I admire this project as it is an effort to study our environment regardless of national interests, and the "flat operation" and data distribution but I would like to emit 2 constructive critics:
- the robot in the ocean, as an object, is a form of pollution in itself.
- the procedure : data sample collection, scientifcal study, project managment, fund raising, political decision, environmental action plan, is a too complex chain of event to face environmental damage. When pollution is detected, the robot should not only observe passively the pollution, but treat itimmediately by collecting it or providing pollution anti-agent to help nature restaure a state of equilibrium faster.
5. Site specific : Hackney and Stratford canals, east London
Also it might be very vain to set a too ambitious target from the beginning when even a simple task can't be executed. Life is specific, and seems to happen only where the conditions meet, so I decided to choose a site, the river Lee in Hackney and Stratford, east London.
This river and its canals are the most polluted waters I know around. There is a lot of floating materials, organic (branches, leafs, dead fishes), and plastics (bags, random objects).
What I observed surprised me: when plastics and organic materials are gathering they form a thick muddy mixture that quickly becomes a new habitat for vegetals, like a new fertile earth. Nor plastics nor pollution seem to be able to refrain the growth of vegetals, eventually plastic even provided some structure and flotation properties to the structure!
So I decided to accelerate the non-discriminatory process of aggregation of plastics and organic material, building a robot-collector. As I mentionned above, I criticized the project Argo for it's robot to represent themselves a form of pollution, and to be unable to "correct" the pollution they were observing directly; this is precisely what this prototype does : autonomously sense floating objects and aggreagate them in one place; after the work is done the robot biodegrades within the debris it has collected. The amount of collected "pollution" for aggregation is worth the additional pollution the boat non-recyclable parts represents.
After some more serious calculation, I concluded that with the existing technology is would be very difficult to have a satifying ratio of <pollution collecting efficiency - non recyclable parts additional pollution> especially when it comes to power harnessing and storage (solar panels, batteries...). Also the maintenance on such a robot is difficult, especially the propeller gets jamed with organic material during collection.
However, this experimentation made me realise that a severe form of graspable pollution can be tackled while doing an architectural project.
On site I observed that "naturally" floating debris accumulate in places. I thought a similar phenomenon must be happening on a global scale... And it does, in our oceans!
The ocean streams accumulates the organic and our chemical debris with the planctons that birds and fishes eat, the same fishes we eat. The combination of the sun effect and motion break down the plastic objects into smaller particles making them look like plancton, so birds and fishes eat them until their digestive system collapse full of plastic objects. The size of these garbage patch is immense and the potential threat collosal.
Thie first map, indicates density of pollution, the second the density of wealth : these two maps show how related are these 2 factors, but also indicates us that the money is where it is the most needed, moslty in our constructed landscapes, where most pollution is generated. [see urban farming]
We could change our habits, our even less painfull, we could change our products., this is where everyone gets involved. For plastics, we now have the technology for making biodegrable plastics:
Of course some rich countries care and try to tackle pollution with more technology: this is an anaerobic digestion facility, it transforms organic wet matter into - clear water - gax (buthane, propane) - and anaerobic digestate (solid earth-looking powder) that can be used as fields fertilizer. But don't be fooled, they do it mostly because the energy (gaz) the digestion produces is financially worth the treatment of the pollutives, when it is profitable we are green, and it should always be so.
Biogas holder
Anaerobic digestate
7. Change of function : aggregation of solid particles
The project that started as a pure architectural research fosters now multiple objectives and constraints : gathering solid element on the water to grow a hybrid form of organic and communication technology architecture. It is not about being particularly "eco-friendly" or "environmentaly concious" but rather to be just objective and compose with what is available and preferable.
8. Prototype 3 : Modified beaver
As we observed in the part 2. (bio) Life - death (tech), animals have a far greater ratio of <pollution collecting efficiency - non recyclable parts additional pollution> as they are entirely recyclable. This lead us to the third prototype : the modified beaver.
Our modified beaver collects organics materials and synthetic debris to build its habitat. Naturally the beaver doesn't like to collect such materials, but by domesticating it a little or modifying its nature it is ossible to think a beaver could helps us aggregate and filter our dirty water while creating more inhabitable land.
Than I thought, if beavers have a part of the answer, it might only apply for themselves: We human might have our own instinctive answer. So I looked at primitive habitat, such as caves, tents … and quickly came back to our most primitive habitat we all had: the placenta, inside the mother. This habitat is flexible, doesn’t clearly indicates, what’s top or down, the womb shape is carved directly from the inside by the “baby” with a scalpel to obtain a garment.
This might not be the direction I am taking, but by its simplicity in the gesture creating a form, it is a very inspirational piece of research to take further.
Prototype 4 : Morphogenesis, with Heidi Wikar and Elpida Orfanidou
For myself, it made clear that while doing a project I want to consider ways rather than goals, process more than objective to keep creativity and adaptability open along the way. Venacular architecture is the way in a globalised world, everything is availble but I must compose with what is available now, there is already so much possible.
Making architecture cannot be isolated from the context it is happening. Sustainable architecture is not a sufficent objective, we can help nature heal, accelerate the assimilation of the pollution we have produced while creating new competitive habitats for vegetals, animals and humans with high technology.
