The Space station consist of two distinct objects, linked via ETFE (magic plastic!), one on the roof of the buidling and has “legs”, the other is on one of the floor below, looking more like a smooth croissant. In both of them there are hydroponic vegetal cultures, people visiting, and potentially animals, turbines, energy harvesting systems… The air is flowing between both the stations pulsed by electrical propellers with solar-power sources, the hydroponic water is the building’s dirty water (when you wash your hands, this dirty water goes to the greens). One of the simple facts is that the mutual presence of human and vegetals is beneficial to both parts may it be about water or air quality, what is waste to one is nutriment to the other etc.
First I need to understand what are the actors and variables I will need to compute, sense and perhaps “control”:
The actors (also to be counted as variables), re humans, greens, pipes (I mean the installation in general as living organism), perhaps some fishes or birds, we’ll see.
As variables, there is also:
-Air (quantity, flow, and hygrometry)
-Water
-Light (sun, artificial)
-Nitrogen (as energy or nutriment
-Temperature
-Pressure
-I am sure I am forgetting plenty, let’s start with those…
The simplified practical objective of the installation is to optimize the collaboration between these actors and factors in a controlled environment. And now I dream that we can produce useful data for planners, architecture optimization methods, real-space program solutions… Exciting!
Proposition 1 - average nominal value, reset every specimen unit system.
My first observation is that these living things all have slightly different requirements : the human want to have this temperature, the green want to
have this temperature, the animals need this hygrometry … this implies that every life has its own nominal condition
When I look at our unit system, it is very physic centered : the temperature in degrees C, has its scale and division determined by the different state of water, 0˚C freeze, 100˚C boil and turn into gas, same for volume, weight, everything… But to me it doesn’t seem to be fair: if we are humans, our unit should be ourself, so the nominal temperature for human could be reseted to “0˚humanC”, and for this flower “0˚flowerC”, and when it happen not to be nominal, we’d know instantly and would tend to correct. OK, that’s one unit per thing, maybe it is a weak unification system, but practically we can use it in the station to calculate an average of the different actors nominal conditions, if for human nominal is 22˚C and for the flower it is 26˚C, than we may “democratically” adjust the temperature to 26˚C for example. We need to add to this calculation the tolerance of each actor and the order of priority in the comfort : you may want to give priority to human in a museum, but priority to greens in a green house …
I think this calculation is pretty easy and we can determine quickly what is the average nominal conditions we want to have in our installation. Important remark : it is easier to dissipate energy than to harvest, for example, for the pulsing of the air powered by solar panel, we need to have a surface of solar panel able to provide the nominal electric current in the worst light conditions, if we have potential, it is easy to reduce, if we have less, we can’t magically produce more … So that means, we need to potentially produce excessive heat, hygrometry, square meters of air pulse per minute than we would probably ever need … BUT I don’t like to think like that, the math should not be computed and energy dissipated, the mecanical passive model should work autonomously ideally …
Proposition 2 - medical assistance, federal organism
As much as plants, humans can be partially transplanted. What we are doing in this architecture is that we are hooking up human system - plant system - draining system (hydroponics) - air system together in an architectural form. Maybe we can hook up things even more directly :
like using a mask and a urinary tube, quite like James Auger work :
Or use something more poetical with very little electric current embodying the esoteric idea of collective conciousness (”oversoul?”) including humans, plants, animals … etc everything together …?
or it could be done in a more raw fashion : connecting a freshly cut plant (like a white blooded ficus) to a human body :
or more simply, just inject with human medical tool:
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