Medio ambiente debe ser clave en el urbanismo

El experto Charles Waldheim visitó Medellín, Santiago de Chile y Brasilia para conocer más sobre los trabajos locales y, el cruce entre los procesos urbanísticos y el interés ambiental. FOTO CORTESÍA

Con la evolución de la arquitectura el paisaje juega un rol más representativo en las ciudades contemporáneas. Experto Charles Waldheim visitó Medellín para disertar y conocer más sobre el tema.

Medellín junto con Santiago de Chile y Brasilia forma parte de las tres ciudades latinoamericanas escogidas por los expertos de la Universidad de Harvard para plantear discusiones sobre las relaciones entre paisaje y urbanismo.

Charles Waldheim, experto en el tema y profesor de la escuela de diseño de la Universidad de Harvard, participó en Medellín en un encuentro realizado en el Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Mamm y que fue liderado por la Universidad de Harvard y el Centro David Rockefeller para Estudios Latinoamericanos.

El certamen denominado Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas (paisaje como urbanismo en las Américas) fue realizado por la Universidad Eafit, a través de su Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Ambientales, Urbam.

¿Por qué el interés en urbanismo y paisaje?

“En mi trabajo como arquitecto encontré limitaciones en la inclusión del urbanismo en profesiones como arquitectura e ingeniería y descubrí que había otros caminos, desde el paisaje en el campo norteamericano. Nosotros importamos el modelo español de construir la ciudad americana de la Ley de Indias, que le da prioridad principalmente a la arquitectura. Pese a que se trata de un modelo muy importante y las ciudades partieron de allí, este opera sacando la ecología, la biología de él. Se trata de un modelo puramente arquitectónico. Y la oposición entre la ciudad y lo que no forma parte de lo construido (los recursos) ha redundado en unas ciudades no tan sanas y sostenibles como podrían serlo”.

¿Cómo ve usted las obras de urbanismo en la ciudad?

“Colombia ha formado parte de la discusión internacional en los últimos 10 o 15 años. Y desde la Universidad de Harvard hemos tenido contacto y conocimiento directo con algunos de los proyectos y especialmente con Medellín. En los últimos años aparecieron una seria de oficinas que hacían algo diferente con el paisaje. Una de las prácticas conocidas muestra que el paisaje no está subyugado a otra disciplina, juega un papel primordial”.

¿Qué reconocimientos urbanísticos hará usted en la ciudad?

“Vamos a recorrer Parques del Río y las piscinas del complejo acuático de los juegos suramericanos, entre otros, donde la naturaleza y el componente ecológico o biológico juega un destacado papel, pero me gustaría ver y confirmar si ese componente biológico va más allá de la función estética”.

¿Cuál es el papel diferente al decorativo?

“Que limpie el agua, el aire, sea un buen lugar para que las especies habiten y puedan generar comida”.

En Medellín se mencionó que Parques del Río podría mejorar la calidad de vida de la ciudad. ¿Cómo incide el paisaje en la calidad de vida de los habitantes?

“Sin lugar a dudas generará un cambio y un bienestar en el medio ambiente, pero hay dos condiciones: 

• una de ellas, es que habitualmente la calidad de la vivienda alrededor de estos lugares no está en el mismo nivel del parque, del espacio público. Pero puede aparecer la posibilidad de que el diseñador pueda controlar la ecología con el diseño de la vivienda: los dos estén conectados. 
• Otro elemento presente en Latinoamérica está relacionado con el hecho de que el medio ambiente en el diseño está mas dirigido a lo estético, a la apariencia. Lo estético es importante pero, si tuviera más de biología, biodiversidad sería mucho mejor”.

¿Cómo las personas ubicadas alrededor de Parques del Río pueden conectarse más con él?

“Parte del problema es que se entiende la vivienda separada del parque. Se piensa uno disgregado del otro. Debe pensarse junto, que pertenecen al mismo sistema”.

Y qué se recomienda

“Planeación, políticas y darle potestad a los diseñadores para que esas relaciones entren a jugar desde el primer momento, para tenerlas en cuenta en los diseños y en la operación. Porque hay una tendencia a entender que cada predio lo desarrolla un arquitecto, un desarrollador de una sola manera y tiende a ser cerrado. Pensarlo de una manera más colectiva, más conectada”.

¿Qué ventaja tiene para el habitante que haya mayor conexión entre el parque y el ciudadano?

“Salud pública, si un ciudadano puede caminar por un ambiente no dominado por el auto. También hay calidad de vida. Existe buena evidencia que bajo este sistema se reduce la polución en la ciudad y la calidad del aire. El calor disminuye. Esto también da la oportunidad de que la ciudad consuma lo que produce ella misma, en vez de traer de afuera, insumos que aumentan la huella de carbono”.

¿Por qué está incluida Medellín en ese programa de conferencias y discusiones junto con Santiago de Chile, Chile y Brasilia, Brasil?

“En Latinoamérica ha sido lento el acercamiento a las prácticas que involucran el paisaje. Miramos una serie de culturas en Latinoamérica que tuvieran secuelas de paisaje o hubieran manifestaciones alrededor del paisaje a través de escuelas u oficinas. Se quiere mirar y verificar qué está pasando y, las tres ciudades seleccionadas muestran dentro del panorama las prácticas más alternativas en el marco general de la pregunta que nos estamos haciendo. Queremos entender la especificidad de cada cultura y conectar varios nodos, para determinar si la conversación puede ser más grande y que esas personas se conecten como en una red”.

¿Cómo se retroalimenta Medellín?

“Se ampliará la discusión que ya se ha tenido a través de una serie de comunicaciones. Además, habrá una página web donde se podrán vincular los proyectos y difundir este tipo de prácticas. También hay un tema de reclutamiento de profesores y estudiantes que puedan ejercer esas nuevas prácticas. Estudiantes que regresen a sus países de origen o profesores que generen la discusión alrededor de esa mirada”.

CONTEXTO DE LA NOTICIA

PARA SABER MÁS
BUSCA SOCIOS EN LATINOAMÉRICA

Charles Waldheim es un arquitecto norteamericano. El profesor de la escuela de diseño de la Universidad de Harvard realiza un trabajo enfocado en las ciudades. Uno de sus intereses particulares está relacionado con investigar cómo funcionan los sistemas naturales en las ciudades. En la Universidad de Harvard organiza grupos estudiantiles y de investigadores para explorar, analizar y estudiar ciertos temas que son del interés de la institución universitaria y del socio estratégico del caso de estudio. Busca socios en universidades, empresas y gobiernos para los proyectos.

ORIGINAL: El Colombiano
MARTHA ARIAS SANDOVAL

David Benjamin and the future of architecture

ORIGINAL: Azure
Elizabeth Pagliacolo

March 11, 2011

This creation of a new system of biofuel – with 80% less carbon emissions than petroleum fuel – involves design at multiple scales simultaneously, from DNA with a radius of about a billionth of a meter to the planet with a circumference of 40 million meters. (Nathan Smith, Bio Oil Workshop, Columbia GSAPP. Images are from Columbia’s Architecture Bio-Synthesis Project and Bio Oil Workshop

As biological technologies become more available, Do-It-Yourself inventors may engineer algae to create car grilles and catalytic converters that suck carbon from the air as you drive. (Nathan Smith, Bio Oil Workshop, Columbia GSAPP). Images are from Columbia’s Architecture Bio-Synthesis Project and Bio Oil Workshop

As it becomes possible to design cells as tiny, self-replicating computers, new forms of data processing and storage may emerge, such as embedding computing invisibly in our lakes and reservoirs. Cloud computing will become river computing. (Mike Robitz, Architecture Bio-Synthesis Class, Columbia GSAPP). Images are from Columbia’s Architecture Bio-Synthesis Project and Bio Oil Workshop

The co-founder of The Living, David Benjamin is blazing a trail in bringing synthetic biology to architecture.

Along with his partner at The Living, architect Soo-in Yang, Benjamin has already created paradigm-shifting projects, such as
Living Light, an interactive canopy in Seoul that reacts to air quality; and

Living Light (Seoul, 2009) from D B on Vimeo.

Amphibious Architecture, which communicates the level of pollution in New York’s Hudson River.

Amphibious Architecture (New York, 2009) from David Benjamin on Vimeo.

These projects entice people to participate in their environments in new ways, while making them aware of how they’re constantly changing.

At the Conversations in Design symposium hosted by the Interior Design Show in January, Benjamin spoke on the theme of crowd-sourcing as it applies to his firm’s projects as well as those by his students at Columbia University. Benjamin and his colleagues at Columbia developed a framework for students to share architectural tools, and he’s also created a new class exploring synthetic biology in architecture – a subject he’s been immersed in since participating in the National Science Foundation–funded Synthetics Aesthetics Project.

Azure sat down with Benjamin to discuss the brave new future of green architecture.

Why architecture needs to go beyond the blank page

In my teaching at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, I emphasize collaboration and open source design. This challenges the model of the architect as solitary genius and also the notion that each building has to be a one-off.

In the C-BIP [Columbia Building Intelligence Project] Studio that I teach with Scott Marble and Laura Kurgan, we created a framework for students to work individually to design a database of small-scale building elements, and then work in teams to combine a selection of elements into larger building designs. The teams start with modules of re-usable design intelligence rather than with a blank page, and they pick up where previous studios left off, rather than re-creating everything.

How synthetic biology can solve many persistent problems

Synthetic biology is a radical form of genetic modification. It is a new approach to designing new biological systems not found in nature. And some people say that in the near future, this technology will be the way we make everything, from medicines to fuels to buildings.

One example that is now being commercialized is a new anti-malaria drug. Synthetic biologists designed a way to combine 12 sequences of DNA never found together before and to create a new strain of yeast that could essentially churn out the anti-malaria medicine in a laboratory – without the use of the rare sweet wormwood plant. The new medicine is more pure and ten times cheaper than the old medicine, which means it could save millions of lives.

From the beginning, synthetic biology has been based on a framework from the field of electrical engineering. The idea is that if synthetic biology can develop a catalog of standardized biological parts – like transistors and capacitors in electrical engineering – then there can be a division of labor. Some people will be able to work on making new parts while other people will be able to work on combining the parts into devices and systems. This will allow for the creation of new medicines or new fuels or new building materials without starting from scratch.

This has some clear similarities with our database of building elements, but it potentially involves a wider spectrum of participants. The framework of synthetic biology may allow non-specialists – like architects, artists, computer scientists – to design new biological systems without learning all the details of molecular behavior. Just as non-specialists now combine electrical parts to make electrical circuits, soon they might be able to combine biological parts to make new organisms that perform specific functions. As biological technologies become less expensive and more domesticated, this may lead to an explosion of innovation similar to advances in computers after the domestication of digital technologies in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We may be at a transformative moment now, like the days of Apple Computer tinkering in the garage.

How synthetic biology can inform architecture

But so far, very few architects are working in this area. I am the only architect among six pairs of scientist-designer collaborators in the Synthetic Aesthetics Project, which involves conducting joint research (with funding from the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council in the U.K.) with plant biologist Fernan Federici in the Jim Haseloff Lab at the University of Cambridge, U.K. We are experimenting with synthetic biology and architecture in a real lab with all of the standard safety protocols.

Then at Columbia, we are creating an advanced architecture design studio to teach architecture students to conduct experiments and design with biology. This is part of a new lab I am starting at the School which will conduct long-term research on the intersection of architecture, synthetic biology, and computation. We have just started to work with a software company to develop new computational tools for architecture and synthetic biology.

Why we need to re-think “nature”

We definitely have to be careful with this technology for designing new living systems, but it’s not unprecedented from a philosophical view. First, people have been manipulating nature for thousands of years. Second, the technology’s already out there and the best way to deal with the risks is probably to increase awareness and knowledge, rather than outlawing it, which would just push malicious projects underground. Third, what’s most crucial for me – and this relates to Amphibious Architecture [developed by Benjamin and Yang at the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia, in collaboration with Natalie Jeremijenko] – is that the “do nothing” approach is not always the safest approach. In New York, the rivers have been damaged by years of pollution and development, and some public agencies say it’s best to do nothing at this point. But it’s actually better to remediate and experiment in order to re-engineer a viable eco-system, to re-introduce species, to build special reefs and piles so mussels and oysters can grow. In the case of synthetic biology, there are many urgent problems that the new science might be able to address. I’m not blindly faithful in technology, but I think at this point the benefits of synthetic biology far outweigh the risks.

How we will one day grow our buildings

Some of the first applications of synthetic biology and architecture may involve high-performance materials like carbon-sequestering concrete and self-healing silicone. But in the future, architects may be able to program the DNA of a seed so that it grows into a building. Then, instead of architects designing plans and sections, instead of bringing all of the construction materials from the factory to the site, architects might be able to design rules for growth and differentiation and material performance. And the new biological machine – the living building – might be able to use the nutrients of the land and the natural ecosystem to do both the factory manufacturing and the site construction.

In some ways, it’s tempting to wait until the technology becomes more advanced before we get involved as architects. But if we wait too long, there’s a risk in that too. Architects should help think about the frameworks and the protocols and the potential applications of synthetic biology. Architects should engage in the discussion about risks and utopian visions and design tools before these things get frozen and the design palette gets limited.

The thing that ties it all together for me is this sinking feeling I have that we’re at this crucial moment where we know what the stakes are, and what we need to do, but we aren’t acting. We’re still not acting intelligently about the crisis of climate change. Of course, a large part of our response as architects must be to aggressively use all of our known and existing strategies to increase the environmental performance of buildings. But I also think some architects should be searching for radical new strategies that might change our idea of what’s possible. Some experiments may fail, but some crazy ideas – like combining architecture and synthetic biology and growing buildings – may eventually change how we think about architecture, and how we live, work, and come together in cities.

How Would Nature Create A ‘Generous City’?

ORIGINAL: Triple Pundit
By Tamsin Woolley-Barker, Ph.D
By 3p Contributor | July 9th, 2013

Project Haiti Aerial – Credit – HOK by HOK Network, on Flickr

At the end of June, over 350 bio-inspired teachers, designers, architects, biologists, industrialists, and policy-makers gathered at the University of Massachusetts in Boston to ask, “How can humans create conditions conducive to Life?” Not just sustainable economies, cities, and production systems, but a regenerative way of life that creates biodiversity instead of destroying it.

At the 7th Annual Biomimicry Education Summit, and the first ever Biomimicry 3.8 Global Conference, a heady mix of dreamers and doers were trying to build our future the way nature would do it.

On the conference’s second day, a panel of notable architects and city planners asked “How would nature design buildings and cities that fulfill the ecosystem services of the original habitats they replaced?” This is the promise of “Generous Cities,” places where our buildings actually regenerate and improve our environment, much like other richly productive ecosystems we find in nature. Complex living systems like coral reefs and rain forests have been around for millions of years, shaped by natural selection into collaborative webs that are much more than the sum of their parts. Thomas Knittel of HOK and Chris Garvin of Terrapin Bright Green spoke of the need to engineer analogous ecosystems in our urban cores.

In New York, this vision is actually beginning to guide urban planning and architecture, thanks to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s ambitious Mannahatta Project, which reconstructed Manhattan’s environment at the time of European arrival. We now know that the biodiversity per acre on the island once rivaled that of national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains, with over 55 ecological communities, including forests, meadows, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds, and streams, and a rich and abundant community of wildlife.

Knittel spoke of his early training as an architect. Building designers, he said, are taught to get water “off the building, away from it, and keep away.” Everything outside a five foot radius “is a civil engineer’s problem.” Instead, he suggested we look at the way nature manages resources. Nature’s way with water, for instance, is to “slow it, sink it, store it.” In the Amazon rain forest, clouds form in the dry season, despite the shallow soils and lack of rain. Scientists have long asked, “Where does the water come from?” It turns out that some keystone tree species sink and store water in deep taproots. When conditions are dry, the water draws up passively, through transpiration, to the benefit of all species in the ecosystem. Knittel asked whether someday we could “design a building that creates a raincloud?”

Similarly, can our cities become carbon sinks, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide the way coral reefs do? Can they run on energy from the sun, wind, water, and heat of the earth, like rain forests and deep-water thermal vent communities? Can our buildings provide food and habitat for ourselves and other species (and not just cockroaches, pigeons, and rats)?

It’s an inspirational vision, and one whose time has come. The Bank of America building, for instance, emits air three times cleaner than the air it brings in. The newly planned Google building, also in NYC, will tap an underground stream for its water needs, while producing a surplus of energy to be fed into the city electricity grid. Green roofs will absorb water and carbon dioxide, while cooling the air.

Thad Pawlowski, an urban designer at New York City Department of City Planning Urban Design Division, then described New York City’s urgent search for ways to rebuild for resilience in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. New flood maps show that the city is dramatically more vulnerable than previously thought, and city planners know that flooding can and will get much worse. Suggestions have mostly been along the lines of “build walls to keep water out.” But nature doesn’t generally rely on such energetically and materially expensive solutions. How would nature rebuild?

Hurricane Sandy damaged Cape May National Wildlife Refuge (NJ) by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Northeast Region, on Flickr

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry 3.8 co-founder and author of the book Biomimicry, which launched the movement and gave it a name, took the mic and spoke with eloquence. “If you want to know how to rebuild,” she said, “Go to the shoreline. Ask what survived there, and why. Look for the survivors and replicate their strategies.” She painted a compelling image of humble grasses rebuilding dunes, and oyster beds acting as reefs, sheltering the land from impact.

This Might Be the Coolest Kite Ever

ORIGINAL: Wired

BY LIZ STINSON

08.23.13

Tomás Saraceno's Solar Bell is a massive kite made from carbon tubes and paper-thin solar panels. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno

The Solar Bell about to take flight. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

The structure was designed by Saraceno with the help of the Aerospace Engineering Faculty at Delft University in the Netherlands. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Much like scientists in the 19th century, Saraceno and his team had to experiment to get the right frame structure and angle of the solar panels. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Engineers worked to find the most lightweight materials possible to ensure that the structure would float into the air easily. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

The Solar Bell stands 5 meters tall, but Saraceno imagines that it could some day rise as high as 60 meters. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

A rendering of the full-sized Solar Bell, which would rise 60 meters high. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

The team constructing the Solar Bell. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

The Solar Bell in flight. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Testing the Solar Bell. Image: Camilo Brau, © Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Left up to Tomás Saraceno, the buildings of the future might look a lot like kites. Not just any kite, either. In his most recent work, the Argentinian artist re-imagines buildings as massive, shimmering pyramids that would lift off land and float in the air on a windy day. Commissioned to accompany the Maasvlakte 2 expansion of Rotterdam’s port, Saraceno’s Solar Bell sculpture is a fantastical look at what could be possible if air replaced land as the basis for future architecture.

It was inspired by a flying machine designed by Alexander Graham Bell.

Despite its futuristic aesthetic, the Solar Bell was actually inspired by a century-old flying machine designed by Alexander Graham Bell. You probably know Bell as the man who invented the telephone, but he was actually quite active in the early days of aviation when engineers were exploring how to make manned flight a reality. Bell’s tetrahedron-shaped kite concept looked to maximize surface area and minimize weight through the use of light, pyramid-shaped sails. The idea was to make a machine capable of carrying a man and a motor into flight, and though he did achieve that, Bell’s kite ultimately failed to inspire the future of manned flight.

Saraceno’s structure retains Bell’s general frame construction but updates it with modern technology and materials. The artist’s team worked closely with the Aerospace Engineering Faculty at Delft University in the Netherlands to figure out how to make the Solar Bell strong and rigid while being as light as possible. After tweaking and toying with various materials, they settled on carbon fiber tubing for the framework and flexible, paper-thin solar panels as the sails, which help to make the Solar Bell lighter than air.

The Solar Bell you’re looking at stands 5 meters tall, but the current sculpture is just a stepping stone to Saraceno’s much more ambitious vision. Eventually he’d like to see the Solar Bell reach 60 meters high, effectively turning it into an observation deck that would flutter above land or water supported totally by the wind. The idea is that humans will be able to steer and manipulate the position of the structure based on the distribution of weight. “I want to see people going up in it, climbing in it, using it,” he said.

The idea of a floating kite that people can ride isn’t so outlandish once you consider the source. This is, after all, the man who created a 27,000-square-foot net for humans to crawl around on. Saraceno, a trained architect, has always pushed the boundaries of how we view and interact with the space around us.

For now, his ideas are still just utopian concepts, but even Alexander Bell had to start somewhere. “Between earth and space, between art, architecture, ecology, meteorology and astrophysics, traditional borders that stand in the way of progress dissolve,” says Saraceno. “Playing is one of the learning processes in life. It is the cultivation of what we do not think is possible.”

Lifelike cooling for sunbaked windows

ORIGINAL: Wyss Institute - Harvard
Jul 30, 201

Adaptable microfluidic circulatory system could cut air-conditioning costs

A specially fabricated sheet of silicone rubber (PDMS) creates a network of channels that function as an artificial circulatory system. Water flows through those channels on hot, sunny days, which should help keep windows -- and the air inside buildings -- cool. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

Boston, Mass. -- Sun-drenched rooms make for happy residents, but large glass windows also bring higher air-conditioning bills. Now a bioinspired microfluidic circulatory system for windows developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University could save energy and cut cooling costs dramatically -- while letting in just as much sunlight.

The same circulatory system could also cool rooftop solar panels, allowing them to generate electricity more efficiently, the researchers report in the July 29 online edition of Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.

The circulatory system functions like those of living animals, including humans, which contain an extensive network of tiny blood vessels near the surface of the skin that dilate when we are hot. This allows more blood to circulate, which promotes heat transfer through our skin to the surrounding air.

The artificial circulatory system can cool a glass window pane significantly -- enough, if used throughout a building, to save significant amounts of energy and chop cooling costs. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

Similarly, the new window-cooling system contains an extensive network of ultrathin channels near the "skin" of the window -- the pane -- through which water can be pumped when the window is hot. The channels consist of long, narrow troughs that are molded into a thin sheet of clear silicone rubber that, when stretched over a flat pane of glass, create sealed channels.

"The water comes in at a low temperature, runs next to a hot window, and carries that thermal energy away," said Benjamin Hatton, Ph.D., lead author of the study. Hatton, who is now an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Toronto, was a member of the Advanced Technology Team at the Wyss Institute. He worked on the Adaptive Material Technologies platform led by Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., who is a Core Faculty member of the Wyss Institute and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Today's insulation and construction methods do a good job keeping heat from leaking through walls, but heat transfer through glass windows remains one of the major stumbling blocks to energy-efficient buildings. In large part, that is because the molecules in glass absorb the sun's infrared light, heating the window, which heats the air inside the building significantly.

The idea to cool glass windows when they get hot emerged from work on microfluidics by Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., the Wyss Institute's Founding Director, and his team working on biomimetic microsystems. Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Microfluidic devices circulate fluids through tiny, ultrathin channels and are typically used to build small devices for laboratory research and clinical diagnosis. In contrast, Ingber's team developed an innovative method to build large-scale microfluidic devices for organ-on-chip applications. They first use a vinyl cutter -- a computer-controlled device that cuts intricate patterns on large vinyl sheets -- to create a plastic mold. Then they pour liquid silicone rubber into the mold, let it solidify, and remove it, which creates the thin sheet imbued with long, narrow troughs.

The channels that make up the artificial circulatory system are visible when they're empty (left), but transparent when they're filled with water (right). Windows with this system installed would remain transparent. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

When Ingber's microfluidics team met with Aizenberg's adaptive materials team in cross-platform meetings, the idea emerged that this microfluidics technology could be applied to building materials to control heat transfer, much like capillary blood flow warms the feet of Antarctic penguins as they wait for their mates near the South Pole.

Hatton and the Wyss Institute team then created and tested a four-inch-square microfluidic windowpane. They found that when these channels were filled with water, they were also transparent to the eye -- which is just what people want in a window, Hatton said.

They then used a heat lamp to heat a pane with this vasculature to 100 F -- as hot as a window might get on a sunny summer day. Using a special infrared camera, they showed that the circulatory system could readily cool the pane.

The Wyss Institute team then worked with Matthew Hancock, an applied mathematician at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., who developed a mathematical model that predicts how the circulatory system would perform on normal-size windows. Pumping just half a soda can's worth of water through the window's circulatory system would cool a full-size window pane by a full 8 C (14 F), they calculated. The energy needed to pump water would be far less than the heat energy the water absorbed. This suggested that installing the cooled windows throughout a building would generate a big net win.

"The idea of using nature's lesson to create kind of a living skin on a building is a very important and promising direction for how buildings should and will be constructed in the future," said Chuck Hoberman, an award-winning U.S. designer, expert in adaptive architecture, and Wyss Institute Visiting Scholar.

"Our new window technology marries advances in microfluidics with creative thinking about adaptive architecture, and it's the sort of cross-disciplinary research that the Wyss Institute was designed to foster," Ingber said. "We are optimistic that microfluidic windows will go a long way toward helping us cool our homes and commercial buildings more efficiently."

Next, the researchers plan to team up with architecture researchers to meld their mathematical model with existing architectural energy-modeling software to see how much energy microfluidic windows would save if installed over an entire building.

This work was funded by the Wyss Institute. In addition to Hatton, Aizenberg, Ingber and Hancock, the research team included: Ian Wheeldon, Ph.D., a former Wyss postdoctoral researcher who's currently an assistant professor in the department of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside, and Matthias Kolle, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow on Aizenberg's team.

PRESS CONTACT

Dan Ferber

dan.ferber@wyss.harvard.edu

+1 617-432-1547

IMAGES AND VIDEO AVAILABLE

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

Alberta floods a wake up call to dangers of extreme weather: experts

ORIGINAL: Ottawa Citizen

By Elizabeth Payne, OTTAWA CITIZEN
 June 28, 2013

‘Water the new fire’ as a danger to property

Planners should learn from the Calgary floods and prepare better for devastating weather-related events, experts say. Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD , THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — The Alberta floods are Canada’s Hurricane Sandy moment, and should be a catalyst for badly needed changes to limit future damage from extreme weather, say experts on climate change adaptation.

“In many cases, the standards for where and how we build are completely out of date with a climatically changed future,” said Ian Mauro, Canada Research Chair in human dimension and environmental change at Mount Allison University. The Alberta floods, he said, should be a wake-up call that “we need to seriously rethink how we build structures, where we build structures and how we manage in emergency situations.”

Not only do cities and towns need to stop building in flood-prone areas, but infrastructure such as bridges need to be reassessed with extreme weather events in mind. The failing railway bridge over Calgary’s Bow River underlined the catastrophic potential of doing nothing, said Mauro.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “this isn’t fearmongering, this is a call to action to inspire people to build resilient communities to be able to deal with impending superstorms of the future.”

Water, is considered the new fire — it now accounts for more property damage every year in Canada than from fire. But, while many building and zoning regulations were historically developed to lessen the risk of fire, the response to water damage has been inconsistent and weak.

Many Canadian cities and towns, for example, don’t even have up-to-date floodplain maps, basic information they need to understand flood risks, says the chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Project Canada.

Blair Feltmate, an associate professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo, said there is an urgent need for new floodplain maps across Canada as a starting point.

“We are having more extreme weather than we’ve had historically and we have to know what will be the manifestation in terms of flooding and where the water will go. We need to know where we should build and where we should not build and we should not be building in areas where there is a high probability of flooding.”

The dangers of building in flood prone areas also need to be taken more seriously, he said. They are either poorly understood or cavalierly ignored in many parts of the country. “Municipalities have put more homes in places where there should not be homes. We can’t continue to do that.”

In some cases, he said, construction is allowed in flood prone areas because property owners and officials don’t believe there is any real danger. “We have management by disaster. In the absence of disaster, we assume disaster will not occur.”

Not only have many municipalities, including Calgary, allowed building in flood prone areas, but it is often premium property because of its proximity to water.

There are examples of municipalities that have bought buildings and changed zoning rules to keep infrastructure away from water, but those are rare.

Bruce Reid of the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority said a federal-provincial program to update flood plane maps has not been funded for years. The authority has managed to update many of its flood estimates, he said, even though some of the maps are out of date.


Some of the push to update infrastructure and policies to adapt to a changing climate is coming from the insurance industry. Impact Financial, which funds the University of Waterloo-based Climate Change Action Project, is paying for the construction of bioswales — landscaped storm water drains — in cities across Canada as demonstration projects in the hopes that governments will build more if they work.


© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

The House That Teaches: Derek Ouyang at TEDxStanford

ORIGINAL: TEDxStanford

Derek Ouyang is tackling global energy challenges by combining architecture, engineering, construction and human centered design.

Derek Ouyang is a senior at Stanford with a double major in architectural design and civil engineering. He is project manager of Stanford's first-ever Solar Decathlon team, which is designing and building a home with annual energy consumption and carbon emissions that net out to zero. The Decathlon, to be held this fall in California, is a U.S. Department of Energy international competition to design the home of the future. Ouyang is taking a Silicon Valley approach to sustainability: technically complex and efficient building systems packaged into a sleek, sexy shell. "It's not just about engineering the perfect, functioning home -- it's about designing a product that people love and empowering people to actually lead more sustainable lifestyles," said Ouyang.

Diogene by Renzo Piano at Vitra Campus

ORIGINAL: Dezeen.com

12 June 2013

Diogene. Photo by Deeze

Renzo Piano has become the latest high-profile architect to add a building to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, by completing a tiny wooden cabin with room for just a single inhabitant.

The one-room hut is named Diogene, after a Greek philosopher who rejected luxury and chose to live in a barrel, and is intended as a self-sufficient hideaway that can be used as a workplace or as a weekend home.

Diogene. Photo by Deeze

Renzo Piano first presented his idea for the minimal home in a 2009 edition of architectural magaine Abitare, proposing a living space of around two by two metres, with enough space for a bed, a chair and a small table. Following the publication, Piano was commissioned by Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of furniture brand Vitra, to develop the project.

"This little house is the final result of a long, long journey partially driven by desires and dreams, but also by technicality and a scientific approach," says Piano.

Diogene. Photo by Deeze

The completed cabin is presented as an experimental concept rather than a finished product. 

• Its exterior is clad with aluminium panels to protect it from the elements and 
• it uses solar panels, 
• rainwater collection and 
• a biological toilet to satisfy the usual requirements for electricity and water.

A pull-out sofa is fitted on one side of the space, while a folding table is slotted beneath the window and a shower, toilet and kitchen are also included. All together, the cabin is no wider than three metres and could easily fit inside a lorry. 

Exploded diagram

 "Diogene is not an emergency accommodation, but a voluntary place of retreat," adds Vitra.

The building opens this week at the Vitra Campus, where architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid and SANAA have all previously completed buildings. Hadid also recently returned to the campus to add an angular installation outside her Fire Station.

Design sketch

  

Other recent projects by Italian architect Renzo Piano include a flat-pack auditorium in Italy and London skyscraper The Shard.

See more architecture by Renzo Piano »
See more architecture at the Vitra Campus »

Here's a more detailed description from Vitra:

Diogene, a cabin designed by Renzo Piano and RPBW for Vitra

In June 2013, a further element will be introduced on the Vitra Campus. On a hill between the VitraHaus and the Dome, the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has developed Diogene, which to date is Vitra's smallest building ― but largest product.

Stanford scientists develop new type of solar structure that cools buildings in full sunlight

ORIGINAL: Zeit News

APRIL 24, 2013

A Stanford team has designed an entirely new form of cooling panel that works even when the sun is shining. Such a panel could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by radiating sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space

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Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car interiors that don't heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, maybe not any more.

A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space. Their paper describing the device was published March 5 in Nano Letters.

"People usually see space as a source of heat from the sun, but away from the sun outer space is really a cold, cold place," explained Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and the paper's senior author. "We've developed a new type of structure that reflects the vast majority of sunlight, while at the same time it sends heat into that coldness, which cools manmade structures even in the daytime."

The trick, from an engineering standpoint, is twofold. 

• First, the reflector has to reflect as much of the sunlight as possible. Poor reflectors absorb too much sunlight, heating up in the process and defeating the goal of cooling.
• The second challenge is that the structure must efficiently radiate heat (from a building, for example) back into space. Thus, the structure must emit thermal radiation very efficiently within a specific wavelength range in which the atmosphere is nearly transparent. Outside this range, the thermal radiation interacts with Earth's atmosphere. Most people are familiar with this phenomenon. It's better known as the greenhouse effect – the cause of global climate change. Two goals in one

The new structure accomplishes both goals. It is an effective broadband mirror for solar light – it reflects most of the sunlight. It also emits thermal radiation very efficiently within the crucial wavelength range needed to escape Earth's atmosphere.

Radiative cooling at nighttime has been studied extensively as a mitigation strategy for climate change, yet peak demand for cooling occurs in the daytime.

"No one had yet been able to surmount the challenges of daytime radiative cooling –of cooling when the sun is shining," said Eden Rephaeli, a doctoral candidate in Fan's lab and a co-first-author of the paper. "It's a big hurdle."

The Stanford team has succeeded where others have come up short by turning to nanostructured photonic materials. These materials can be engineered to enhance or suppress light reflection in certain wavelengths.

"We've taken a very different approach compared to previous efforts in this field," said Aaswath Raman, a doctoral candidate in Fan's lab and a co-first-author of the paper. "We combine the thermal emitter and solar reflector into one device, making it both higher performance and much more robust and practically relevant. In particular, we're very excited because this design makes viable both industrial-scale and off-grid applications."

Using engineered nanophotonic materials, the team was able to strongly suppress how much heat-inducing sunlight the panel absorbs, while it radiates heat very efficiently in the key frequency range necessary to escape Earth's atmosphere. The material is made of quartz and silicon carbide, both very weak absorbers of sunlight. Net cooling power

The new device is capable of achieving a net cooling power in excess of 100 watts per square meter. By comparison, today's standard 10-percent-efficient solar panels generate about the same amount of power. That means Fan's radiative cooling panels could theoretically be substituted on rooftops where existing solar panels feed electricity to air conditioning systems needed to cool the building.

To put it a different way, a typical one-story, single-family house with just 10 percent of its roof covered by radiative cooling panels could offset 35 percent its entire air conditioning needs during the hottest hours of the summer.

Radiative cooling has another profound advantage over other cooling equipment, such as air conditioners. It is a passive technology. It requires no energy. It has no moving parts. It is easy to maintain. You put it on the roof or the sides of buildings and it starts working immediately. A changing vision of cooling

Beyond the commercial implications, Fan and his collaborators foresee a broad potential social impact. Much of the human population on Earth lives in sun-drenched regions huddled around the equator. Electrical demand to drive air conditioners is skyrocketing in these places, presenting an economic and environmental challenge. These areas tend to be poor and the power necessary to drive cooling usually means fossil-fuel power plants that compound the greenhouse gas problem.

"In addition to these regions, we can foresee applications for radiative cooling in off-the-grid areas of the developing world where air conditioning is not even possible at this time. There are large numbers of people who could benefit from such systems," Fan said.

Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing"

ORIGINAL: TED

TED2013

Apr 2013

3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s; TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next development, which he calls 4D printing, where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that folds before your eyes, or a printed pipe able to sense the need to expand or contract.

Skylar Tibbits, a TED Fellow, is an artist and computational architect working on "smart" components that can assemble themselves.  

Skylar Tibbits, a TED Fellow, is an artist and computational architect working on "smart" components that can assemble themselves.

Why you should listen to him:

Can we create objects that assemble themselves -- that zip together like a strand of DNA or that have the ability for transformation embedded into them? These are the questions that Skylar Tibbits investigates in his Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a cross-disciplinary research space where designers, scientists and engineers come together to find ways for disordered parts to become ordered structures.

A trained architect, designer and computer scientist, Tibbits teaches design studios at MIT’s Department of Architecture and co-teaches the seminar “How to Make (Almost) Anything” at MIT’s Media Lab. Before that, he worked at a number of design offices including Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture, SKIII Space Variations and Point b Design. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Beijing Biennale.

Tibbits has collaborated with a number of influential people over the years, including Neil Gershenfeld and The Center for Bits and Atoms, Erik and Marty Demaine at MIT, Adam Bly at SEED Media Group and Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY. In 2007, he and Marc Fornes co-curated Scriptedbypurpose, the first exhibition focused exclusively on scripted processes within design. Also in 2007, he founded SJET, a multifaceted practice and research platform for experimental computation and design. SJET crosses disciplines from architecture and design, fabrication, computer science and robotics.

"The big idea is to create objects that can change after they are printed, making them self-adapting. The act of printing is no longer the end of the creative process but merely a waypoint."

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Quotes by Skylar Tibbits

“There’s new possibilities for self-assembly, replication, repair in our physical structures, our buildings, machines. … Imagine if our buildings, our bridges, machines, all of our bricks could actually compute.” Watch this talk »

Grow Energy - One Technology, Unlimited Possibilities.

ORIGINAL: https://www.growenergy.org/research/

Grow Energy is a pioneer in the creation of structural bioreactors and self-sustaining, localized energy production systems. Our Verde system is designed for existing buildings and homes, utilizing a safe and minimally-invasive combustion process to create electricity. Hydral has been developed for high-density properties and new developments, where a central biohydrogen reactor is built directly into the building's structure.

Algae Production

We have developed a unique family of photobioreactors, or panels, to grow specific algae strains that have high energy-producing properties.

System Applications

Our technology can produce electricity, heat energy, and even fuel for hydrogen vehicles - while also purifying water from building waste on-site.

Environmental Benefits

Verde + Hydral are unique energy producing systems that are not only environmentally-beneficial, but are eco-friendly to manufacture.

Algae Production

Algae produces electricity naturally through the process of photosynthesis. Algae, through cellular light collectors (pigments) and a dedicated apparatus called a photosystem, is able to extract electrons stored in water by using the energy from light. These electrons are transported into a final product, hydrogen, which is used to reduce carbon dioxide, leading to the production of energetic rich carbon molecules (lipids, sugars, proteins). Since the end of the 1930’s, scientists such as Dr. Hans Gaffron have attempted to efficiently harvest these electrons. And now, in 2013, Grow’s team of scientists have perfected a method of growing algae that yields an extremely high amount of hydrogen, primed to be turned into clean & sustainable energy.

Algae in Paris Revisited

ORIGINAL: Green Building Elements

BY GLENN MEYERS

JANUARY 25, 2013

On occasion we publish letters on Green Building Elements. In this case, Kstor, writing from France, is critical of the energy promises made by Ennesys and Origin Oil in a Jan. 11 post about growing algae on buildings using wastewater to then generate energy. In spite of real optimism to generate renewable energy using a sustainable infrastructure, the criticism here is articulate and should be carefully considered by those intrigued by the promise of algae.

Photo: Algae floating from Shutterstock

Kstor writes:

The idea of growing algae on buildings using wastewater is not new. As a matter of fact, it originates from the French architect studio X-TU back in 2008 (and they have a patent on it), which will soon deliver the first prototypes of their biofacade concept in cooperation with a world-class French public laboratory on microalgae controlled cultures (see recent press releases and articles in French about it).

The problem here is more what Ennesys tries to achieve, when they promise to cover 80% of the building’s energy needs thanks to microalgae productivities of 150T/ha (see many other articles and their press releases).

Those figures are just not correct, as any microalgae specialist will immediately notice. These kinds of productivity are theorical, and can only be achieved in lab conditions with a 12 h direct flow of photons and constant temperature, pH, nutriments, carbon inputs, etc… In outdoor conditions, the maximum productivity in Paris would be around 30 T/ha with the most advanced intensified PBRs – which they do not have – as a scientific article clearly demonstrate: “Theoretical Investigation of Biomass Productivities Achievable in Solar Rectangular Photobioreactors for the Cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis”.

It would be wise for Ennesys, and especially for their partners and investors, to “land on earth” and announce more realistic figures- unless they want to nourrish a greentech bubble…

Thanks for the letter. We invite Origin Oil and Ennesys to respond.

Thanks to Jean-Louis Kindler at Ennesys for this answer:

There is abundant scientific – both private and public – literature confirming the figures demonstrated a few decades ago by NREL / DOE in the US showing average yields in the range of 30 dry g/m2/day in outdoor facilities, not even using advanced intensified PBR’s (just type “microalgae yield per acre” in any search engine).

Your assertions are based on theories and furthermore on assumptions on our system’s configuration. Our system’s performance is being measured with our real size, outdoor demonstrator.

Green Building Elements (http://s.tt/1yWme)

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source of discussion

Origin Oil & Ennesys Use Paris Building Wastewater to Grow Algae for Energy

BY GLENN MEYERS
JANUARY 11, 2013

This post provides an interesting glimpse at a recently opened Paris building that generates energy from wastewater. The companies involved in this venture: Ennesys and Origin Oil.

Photo: Ennesys

OriginOil and its energy systems partner Ennesys unveiled this pilot project at the high-rise La Défense area in Paris, which has 37.7 million sq ft of office space, where they are fusing two essential functions of the smart buildings of the future: energy generation and wastewater clean-up. They have developed a solution that converts wastewater from commercial buildings into energy.

Here’s a short video

Jerry Schranz, part of the public relations team, informed me this system takes wastewater from the building (that is derived from bathroom waste water, kitchen water, etc.). This water is then used to grow algae, which is nourished by wastewater. The Algae Appliance invented by OriginOil scientists, processes the water and algae to produce methane, which is then used to power the building. Importantly, the flat panel bioreactors (where the algae grows) can be used on vertical surfaces, so skyscrapers are a huge area of opportunity for this type of energy production.

Algae Appliance invented by OriginOil

Photo: Ennesys

While the French government has mandated that new commercial buildings must produce more clean energy than they consume and purify or recycle water, OriginOil views these conditions as laying favorable ground for its technologies to be broadly adopted.

Congratulations to Ennesys and Riggs Eckelberry, Origin Oil’s CEO, on this demonstration of sustainable energy.

Photos: Ennesys grand opening