Expression

This is my final peresentation. Enjoy!

Expression con.

Expression con.

Expression con.

Building

Ok, so after some trouble loading these images up at home, I’ve come into uni and POW here they are. This is how my building looks at present. The images I’ve tried to produce are quite strong which an effect I was after was. I wanted the building to really show its industrial form, highlighting the detail in the structure and how it works as a machine. Industrial Form

Almost there

Ok, some I'm nearing the end of project three and to tell you the truth I'm quite happy with the way my building looks. I've been developing my project since project two and have now produced a slightly different building. The concepts are still the same and the form is very similar yet the spaces within the building have become a bit more accommodating, the new technology has found its place and the lifting and locking mechanisms of the containers have been resolved.

The biggest issue I think I'm going to have with this project though is not producing a great design but instead displaying it. I'm at present having a lot of trouble in the post predicting stage (due to a lack of knowledge) trying to communicate what I need communicated. The trouble with this design is that it is so complicated and its hard to graphically display the building in a simplistic way (like Wes Jones who I'm taking great inspiration from for this project). Below are some images of My current work and some Wes Jones stuff so you can see a comparison and understand my issues. This guys graphical displaying of works is second to none, it is simply amazing.



Wes's Style

I was hoping to show you my diagrams but once again BLOGGER is being a prick! so I will just have to up load them at a later stage.

This is pretty much where im at, at the moment. The building has almost fully taken shape with only minimal things needing tweeking now.

Kinetic Energy Harvesting

This is just a short blurb i found about a company who are currently working on ways of harvesting kintic energy. Its a bit over my head but you get the idea.

PMG FSH Free Standing Harvester
A best-in-class integrated wireless power solution, the PMG FSH combines electromagnetic vibration energy harvesting technology with a selectable suite of energy charge, storage, and management options. The harvesters convert unused mechanical vibration into usable electrical energy to power wireless sensor systems used to monitor critical systems. The PMG FSH has integrated drive circuitry for charging an external storage device up to 4ma at 5V while reporting power levels via a serial communications interface via 3-pin IEC-standard connector. Output is up to 20 mW. The PMG FSH mounts either using a magnetic mount or a center through hole. Intrinsically safe, certified versions are available, carrying ATEX and IECEx certifications; CSA certification is pending.



An electromagnetic-energy harvester converts mechanical energy (vibration) to electrical energy. A coil attached to the oscillating mass traverses a magnetic field that is established by a stationary magnet. The coil travels through a varying amount of magnetic flux, inducing a voltage according to Faraday's law.

Perpetuum realized the other more advantageous way is to move the magnetic structure (which is inherently massive) and keep the coil fixed. Hence increasing the power output and making the electrical connections more reliable. The resulting voltage can be regulated to convenient storage or usage levels.

The Perpetuum FSH outputs a "load-independent" DC current up to 4mA (based on source vibration). The output current supplied is the same whether measuring with a multimeter during installation or while charging a WSN storage capacitor up to 5V.

Perpetuum field deployable harvesters are designed to last at least 20 years without maintenance, easily outlasting other battery-only powered systems.

Scalable and frequency tunable, Perpetuum electromagnetic VEH resonators have been selected by the world's premier Industrial Wireless Automation Leaders.

Metabolism Architecture

Just some stuff similar to mine

Container Movement

Plug-in Architecture

With Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower (photo: Scarletgreen/Flickr) headed for demolition, the world will lose not just one of the few executed works of Japanese Metabolism, as noted earlier this month by Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times, but a rare built example of plug-in architecture. The Capsule Tower might at first appear no more than a quaint, dated vision of the future, but a look at its durable influence and vital legacy show an icon of growing historic significance whose loss will loom larger in the years to come.



The plug-in concept dates from an illustration by Le Corbusier for his 1947-52 Unite d’Habitation highrise apartment block in Marseilles, which in the words of architectural historian Kenneth Frampton “went so far as to envisage complete apartments being hoisted directly into position as prefabricated units, an idea depicted in a provocative photomontage where a godlike hand simply inserts factory-made dwellings into the frame, like stacking bottles in a wine rack . . . although this was not the manner in which the units could finally be fabricated and assembled.” (Le Corbusier, by Kenneth Frampton, Thames & Hudson, 2001, p. 156)



In setting his apartments back from the face of the concrete frame of the Unite d’Habitation (Photo: Rightee/Flickr), Corbusier not only created recessed balconies, but expressed the “wine rack” building frame and the opportunity for color to emphasize the individuality of dwellings. Both the unexecuted idea of modular plug-in units and the more easily achieved distinct expression of cellular units created their own traditions.



In the 1960s, the English Archigram group proposed individual buildings and an entire city made of prefabricated components attached to fixed infrastructures. Plug-in City, designed by Archigram’s Peter Cook from 1962-64, had an infrastructure with rail-mounted cranes that would install and replace prefabricated housing, office, and shop modules planned for obsolescence. The organically responsive, self-refreshing city would support change and growth. This organic quality gave the name “Metabolism” to a parallel movement in Japan which shared many of Archigram’s ideas.



A tower of plug-in “capsule” homes was designed by Archigram’s Warren Chalk in 1964. Inspired by space capsules, Chalk’s prefabricated dwelling modules would plug into a central shaft providing structural support, vertical circulation and services. Capsule living units would be replaced by a top-mounted crane as newer models evolved, using automobiles as an analogy. Of Archigram’s concepts, this one most closely corresponds to any of the few Japanese Metabolist projects actually to be built, Nakagin Capsule Tower.



Kisho Kurokawa‘s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo (photo: Scarletgreen/Flickr) was completed in 1972. The 8-foot by 12-foot by 7-foot tall capsules were prefabricated off site, installed by crane and bolted to one of two support towers. Each unit is a complete bachelor apartment with a single porthole window, reflecting Archigram’s space capsule inspiration. The flexibility of Archigram’s concept was never realized here, as none of the capsules was ever replaced.



Perhaps the most sophisticated descendant of Nakagin Capsule Tower is the prototype Industrialized Housing System designed in 1991-92 by Richard Rogers Partnership, architects, and Ove Arup & Partners, engineers. Commissioned by the Korean manufacturer, Hanseem Corporation, the system was intended to provide up to 100,000 apartments in various locations throughout Korea at a fifth the price of conventional homes. Apartment modules ranging from 139 to 837 square feet would be adaptable to individual lifestyles. Their installation would be ”carried out by computer-controlled cranes, much like those used to stack containers in ships”. (Tall Buildings, by Guy Nordenson, Museum of Modern Art, 2003, p.92) Modular units could be sited directly on the ground or attached to a tower core. In combination, as shown in the model above, exhibited at MoMA’s 2004 Tall Buildings exhibition (building 14), some of the cellular charm of the Italian hilltown or Greek fishing village emerges. The rich articulation and human scale of this compellingly developed design set it apart from the other 24 towers in MoMA’s exhibition.



The Micro Compact Home concepts, by Horden Cherry Lee Architects and Haack + Hopfner Architects, dating from 2001, include a “tree village” of 30 dwelling capsules mounted to steel columns and clustered around a central vertical circulation core. As noted in Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, by Barry Bergdoll and Peter Christensen (Museum of Modern Art, 2008), “An individual unit could be removed, whether for maintenance or replacement, without disturbing the structure at large, similar to Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower”. At 76 square feet, the ingeniously packed, perfect-cube capsules accommodate a surprising range of activities in less space than Nakagin’s capsules. A model unit was displayed last year in MoMA’s Home Delivery exhibition, which also featured Nakagin Tower.



Cranes of the Port Newark Container Terminal loom beyond a Bayonne, New Jersey, trailer park. Off the architectural high road, trailer parks have long implemented the ideal of mass produced dwelling units plugged into a fixed infrastructure. Trailers take the concept a step further by allowing homes to easily relocate from one infrastructure to another. On a separate real-world track, shipping container technology, with its industrialized capsules constantly rearranged by cranes, parallels the ideas of Archigram.



The firm LO-TEK, in its multiple Modular Dwelling Unit proposal of 2002, applies container technology to the mobile home precedent by way of a vertical support framework that would realize Le Corbusier’s wine rack analogy, with shipping containers retrofitted into homes serving as the bottles. LOT-EK’s concept includes drawer-like “subvolumes” that pull out from each container’s body, admitting natural light and creating activity areas larger than the containers’ 8-foot width. The vertical frames, or “harbors” include stairs, elevators and services. Harbors would be located in all major metropolitan areas to maximize mobility. The sustainability of this system begins with repurposing of containers and continues with mobility of dwellings. The naturally varied appearance of recycled containers corresponds to Corbusier’s use of different colors on the exterior of the Unite d’Habitations to identify individual dwelling units. Or as LO-TEK puts it, “The vertical harbor is in constant transformation as MDUs are loaded and unloaded from the permanent rack. Like pixels in a digital image, temporary patterns are generated by the presence or absence of MDUs in different locations along the rack, reflecting the ever-changing composition of these colonies scattered around the globe.” While many real projects, including a hotel, have taken advantage of containers’ stackable-by-design character, LOT-EK’s use of a separate frame would allow true plug-in flexibility.



Echoing Archigram’s Plug-in City, the cranes endemic to container yards would insert or withdraw living capsules. The fixed frame proposed by LO-TEK corresponds to Le Corbusier’s “wine rack”.



Freitag‘s shop in Zurich, 2005, takes advantage of the native stackability of containers. The company’s product line of bags made from recycled truck tarps is inspired by the same ideas of recycling, found-object-art, and industrial chic that inform container architecture. Enough notable examples and practitioners of this architecture, including work by pioneers like Wes Jones and Adam Kalkin, have emerged to warrant a book-length survey, Container Architecture, by Jure Kotnik (LINKS, 2008). The movement taps into the recent explosion of interest in prefab house design, which itself signals a growing public enthusiasm for the application to housing of mass production’s potential for quality control, economy, and consumer choice. This promise has always been central to the plug-in school of thought, and Le Corbusier’s vision of the house as “machine for living”.



Capsule in search of a host; the mass produced Loftcube, designed by Werner Aisslinger, has been helicoptered onto rooftops and hooked up to existing building services. The tiny scale of many modular house designs relates to plug-in architecture’s fascination with factory made object-like dwellings, and the over-the-shoulder look that modern architecture has cast on the automobile since Le Corbusier’s 1923 manifesto, Towards a New Architecture.



The Adolfo Reyes 58 apartment building in Mexico City, 2000-03, by Dellekamp Arquitectos, is not modular but adopts the appearance of stacked prefab units to individually express dwellings. This variegated approach is part of a recent trend that borrows from the plug-in tradition and, in this case, the aesthetic of container architecture.

The architecture firm Axis Mundi proposed this alternative design for the MoMA tower in Manhattan earlier this month. Like Nakagin Capsule Tower, the proposal has a pair of structural/service cores. The design would allow apartment owners to customize their units’ exteriors. In a nod to the origin of the new design’s plug-in heritage, the stair below the Marilyn Monroe image is adopted from Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, below. (Photo: matt2008/Flickr)

Lifting Ideas

At the moment I'm a little stuck on how to get my containers into place. To start with I had the idea that each container would move into place in a linear fashion yet since then have realised that if this building is to be successful then a system where each container can be introduced and removed without altering other containers is needed. I have had some ideas on how this may be possible such as track systems yet I think these will create an image of an over engineered building and may become too confusing. So at present I have a building which I'm happy with and a concept that is strong yet I need to figure out how to make the mechanical elements of the building work in a smoother manner which results in a clear and graceful understanding of the building and form.

Smart Glass Application

Smart Windows/ New Techknology

I have finally come up with a interesting way to integrate new technologies into my building in a manner that enhances the overarching themes.

My building is called expression and it's from this title that I came up with my new technology integration. What I'm planning on doing is harvesting the kinetic energy of building users, this will be done through a series of spring mounted floor plates that capture the energy of vibration cased by people walking on them. The energy captured during this event will then be used to power the smart glass windows (glass that turns from transparent to translucent when electricity is passed through)which cover the facades of the buildings. The idea behind this is that when the building is in full use the people within will generate a large amount of electricity which will then make the facades transparent but when there is minimal use and little energy being harvested then the facades will appear solid or translucent. This will express the usage capacity of the building highlighting it in full use and hiding it when it's not.

This concept is to use new technologies to express the buildings usage in a manner much like that of the containers on the face of the building. It is also about having a constantly changing perspective of the building, which give the building deferent characteristics depending on the use and involvement.

Project 2