Progress...

Lately, our project has focusing on what is going to be happening 100 years from now. It has been both fun and a little scary speculating exactly what 100 years from now will be like. We have been working with two different quotes that we found. The "today" quote is:

"No oil crisis, says US energy secretary

Saturday 07 June 2008

The US energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, said Saturday there was no oil crisis despite a sharp rise in crude prices overnight and that he did not see a need to tighten regulation of the market. (Report: O. Fairclough)"

from:
http://www.france24.com/en/20080607-no-oil-crisis-says-us-energy-secretary-samuel-bodman


This quote is one of the scariest things that we have come across because it proves that there are still people (even US secretaries!) that believe that we can continue our way of life without any consequences.

Our quote for the future is:
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel." from Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is responsible for the transformation of modern Dubai.

Thus far we have speculated that due to the rising fuel prices, the ferry, which is the main mode of transportation between Kelley's Island and the mainland, will slow it's frequency of operation until it only runs once a week or a couple times a month. This will force the people who want to stay on the island to provide for themselves and those that do not want to become farmers will have to move to the mainland. Therefore, the farmland will begin to take over the abandoned areas of the island and the people that stay will have to work together in order to have enough food and supplies to survive.

Reading Response: The Third Landscape

Article given to us by Karl.

In the Third Landscape, Gilles Clément is being interviewed by Denise Bratton. In the interview the two discuss the concept of the "third landscape", or tertiary space that is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. This abandoned space is more or less left to itself (with the occasional passer by), and that is what makes it what it is. When left to its own devices, the landscape will cultivate itself naturally, without human interference. I would say it is the closest thing to "real" nature as you can get, but by saying that, I am conceiding that humans and their presence are unnatural, which isn't true. Nor am I saying that this is "raw, untouched nature", because chances are likely that the landscape is recovering/being affected by something humanity has done. However, humanities lack of intervention is what makes these abandoned places this idea of the third landscape - as soon as humans have an interest in it (and subsequently invest in it), the third landscape property disappears, similarly to the concept of Muzak, music that is supposed to be ambient and unnoticed, and when it does become noticed and turns mainstream, loses it's property of Muzak. The only way to have it is to not commoditize it.

"But we also photographed in-between spaces where biodiversity was very intense - leftover, unmanaged places." (emphasis added)

"It is necessary in terms of ecological balance to set aside large portions of space as Third Landscape, abandoned or transitional spaces whose fate is left un-decided." (emphasis added)

"The Third Landscape is not a garden; it is the genetic resevoir of the planet."

A thought occured to me, and it stemmed from the idea that these are passive places - places you cannot invest in at all, not even to cut the grass. You just leave them alone - so, is it possible to engage this space more actively? What opportunities could we draw from this space in our designs? Could these Third Landscapes be a natural buffer from flooding, similar to the wetlands? Wetlands, if left alone, could conceivably become Third Landscape. We utilize wetlands all the time to help our developments. How can we harness this "power" to fuel our designs?

Living Machines

During our discussion last Wednesday (9/17) we continued on our path of making something out of the 'danger zones'. This time our focus was mainly on the water in the site and how we could channel that water in a way to make it useful to us. We were playing with the idea of a hydroelectric power plant. Karl suggested the idea of living machines; as an alternative to generating power, we could instead filter the water through natural processes. I am familiar with living machines because I had to do a study on them in my engineering 100 class freshman year. I have posted some pictures of smaller scale living machines. A living machine begins with dirty water and through a series of natural filtering processes (ie. - plants, rocks, sand, fish, sun) you end up with clean water.

http://livingmachines.com/products/livingmachine/

From the website:

Living Machine^® systems are decentralized wastewater treatment systems that mimic processes found in wetland environments. Our patented technology uses mechanical and computer systems to enhance natural biological processes to treat wastewater.

Living Machine systems provide a more natural approach to wastewater treatment for communities, industries, academic institutions and government agencies. Using less energy than other onsite wastewater treatment systems, Living Machine systems provide tertiary treatment, allowing the water to be reused for numerous applications including irrigation, toilet flushing and wash water. Living Machine systems are frequently integrated into larger water reuse systems to increase water conservation, minimize wastewater surcharges and meet operational requirements.

In addition to providing an environmentally friendly, aesthetically pleasing and cost‑effective solution for wastewater treatment, Living Machine systems give communities an opportunity to enhance public awareness of sustainability through educational programs.

Worrell Water Technologies offers both the Tidal Wetland Living Machine system and the Hybrid Wetland Living Machine system to ensure that our Living Machine technology meets the specific requirements of your project. Living Machine systems can be scaled in size to treat a wide range of wastewater volumes and have successfully treated up to 200,000 gallons per day of wastewater for industrial facilities, resorts, communities and institutions throughout the world.

The living machines on this website are essentially gray water makers. They create water that is suitable for "irrigation, toilet flushing and wash water". Using strategies found in wetlands, they naturally filter the water while creating a wetland environment, something that is quickly disappearing. A wetland system introduced into the quarry area, which is inherently flat and absorptive, could prove exceedingly valuable if the area were to ever become developed.

Fossil Quarry Link

http://www.olanderpk.com/tops_site_005.htm

A quarry turned into a park.

Butterfly Boxes and Specimaps

To Karl's recommendation (and our excitement) we have begun cutting and pinning up our maps. We printed 11 maps and "dissected" them ("The land is dead - think of it like a dead frog. Who cares if you cut it? Who are you going to hurt? Cut the frog!")

Our results are varied - I personally focused on cutting the terrain in ways that exemplifies characteristics such as protection, isolation, "edges", and areas of transition. Much like the dragonfly wing that Karl refers to, which flexes from rigid to flexible space in a near seamless fashion, so too am I looking at the terrain in such ways. What are the "rigid" points? Where are the flexible points? Where is the transition? Can I even see the transition?


We have mounted our specimen maps (specimaps?) onto foam core, much in the fashion of butterfly boxes. Each map is a different creature, a different species of map, of terrain, with different characteristics, different means of survival. Though they may all march under the herald of "Marblehead", each map is now truly unique in its conception - no one map is truly like another. So does that not make each terrain a different space? Not the same space? While they all have ties to Marblehead, they are all different species of Marblehead. So inspiration will now come as a result of observation - what is there now with these "new species" of Marblehead?

Another exercise we are experimenting with as I type this is one of a collage of bio imagery underneath the map, scrambled and unknown to us both. We are going to blindly disect the map, not knowing what's underneath - much like a biologist introduced to a never-before-seen creature with unorthodox anatomy. What is underneath a mountain? What is under a lake? What is in the flat space?

David Gallo - Underwater Astonishment

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_gallo_shows_underwater_astonishments.html

I wonder...if an organism that is highly specific to its location goes to another location, it dies. Should that be the same with our architecture? Animals adapt to their surroundings, sure, but if you were to bring up a creature from the deep ocean and put it into shallow water, it would die by reasons solely involving its physiology. Should our architecture also be purely local, an architecture that is adapted to our surroundings - and would "die" if put anywhere else?

More later - Karl is here, studio is starting.


--Continued

The creatures in the video are all highly tuned to their surroundings. In the beginning of the clip we are presented with bioluminescent fish. They look beautiful, but they are used for practical purposes - to avoid being eaten, to hypnotise, different patterns, glowing eyes, patterns to attract, repel, confuse and ultimately survive.

Response: Biomimicy Gives Ideas to Artists and Engineers [and Architects]

The article can be found here:

http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=1269

The article talks about the concept of "biomimicry", a term used and championed by Dayna Baumeister, the co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute. As I type this response, the spell check is telling me that "biomimicry" isn't a real word. The word is of recent creation, and refers to the use of biological, "natural" things found in nature and using those concepts in the way we create functional objects, technology and the like.

The article gives a positive spin on the idea of mimicing nature, which is entirely understandable - nature could be argued to be the greatest engineer in on earth (hah hah), as it has used living, breathing organisms and the process scientists call "evolution" to essentially create over a long period of time the creatures we see on earth today. Darwinists understand the idea of "survival of the fittest", meaning creatures unsuited for life on earth due to some physiological, mental or emotional flaw will die, leaving nothing behind but the "healthy" specimens. To sum it all up, nature has already done the trial and error testing for us, and what we have on earth now is what has worked well on earth for a long, long time - so why don't we open our eyes and receive our surroundings more readily?

One thing that caught me up in the article was the idea that the supporters of biomimicry say that the answers their ideology brings to the table are "safer", "more efficient" and perhaps the most questionable of all, "more sustainable". While this could be the case in some regards, it seems that if we're, to use an example from the article, going to create a swim suit that mimics the scales of a shark, it would take a lot of resources, money, time, energy (oil, coal, pizza, energy drinks, etc) to create it. Once it's out, how many piles of coal will that swim suit sit on top of? How many barrels of oil? And, taking it to the next level, what about the mass production? What about these new textiles and fabrics - are they made in environmentally sustainable ways, or are they made with the mentality of "infinite consumption"?

Looking at the article more generally, it does offer alternatives to what we take forgranted in everyday life. The idea that an engineer who needs oil for lubrication seemed so simple, and yet, why hasn't anyone tried to change it? Perhaps it is a question of research and development (aka the money game), but it seems like we're in for a change in the very near future in regards to what we once considered "simple" solutions; soon, we will no longer just grab for the bottle of 10W-40 oil when the "check engine oil" light pops on.

Perhaps this will even be a new form of engineering - or maybe it will proliferate into the engineering discipline in its entirety.

New Beginnings - UG3 Studio

Greetings and Salutations,

This is my blog. Now mingling with the multitudes of blogs on the internet, this particular blog doesn't seem terribly profound. However, besides this being my first blog, it does have a special level of importance (especially to me) that the other blogs may not have. Essentially, this blog could very well contribute to my grade at the end of the semester. So, with that kind of motivation at hand, my goals and intentions for this blog are simple but will never be dull.

In this blog I plan to chronicle my exploits in my senior studio; my victories, my failures, observations, dreams, conversations. Anything and everything pertinent to anything and everything in studio that I can recall will, if I keep rigorous, be placed here on this site.

I suppose I should introduce myself, which in hindsight I should have done in the beginning. However, in an effort not to cut myself off creatively and just "write at the speed of thought," I'm just going to stick with it. I'm Andrew Skidmore, "Andy" if you please, and I'm a senior at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I'm from Olivet MI, a small farming community approximately an hour west of Ann Arbor, where, of late, in the summer, I live, work and play. I am in the Michigan Marching Band, Alpha Rho Chi professional fraternity, and enjoy talking about things that don't necessarily have answers. Answers are boring - they don't add to conversations. Ideas are what interest me. Ideas and questions.

So yes, today in studio, we got to meet Karl, our instructor for this semester. We circled up and discussed the project, the direction we would attempt to take, and even got our first assignment that is due on Monday. We are to take images from Google Earth and mesh them with "natural", "organic" images of the microscopic/nanoscopic variety to see if any interesting connections or effects are made. It feels strangely like the first project from my last semester - looking for connections. Perhaps I am more alert to the possibility this time around. Our assignment is to create 5 such scenarios with our partner(s). My partner is my good friend Emily Gruman, and we have much work to do in the next couple days!

I'm hesitant to begin "working" without Emily, but I will keep my eyes open for anything I see that excites me, and I will continually relay them to Emily.

Cheers,
Andy