Issue 01 project

Still from The Energy Pilots 2011 promotional video. photo: Koby Barhad, Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

In early 2011, an initiative was launched in the U.K. to confront the widely held belief that low-carbon energy technologies are not cost-competitivecost-competitive

related tag:
funding

Related Articles:
1. Hypercapital
by David Zhai and Simon McGown
A backup city for Tokyo. with fossil fuel offerings. The Energy Pilots research program set out to analyze a number of economic strategies commonly used in industries outside the energy sector. Each strategy was to profitably manipulate economic exchange mechanisms, unlike the low-carbon energy industry’s traditional service-for-flat-fee ($/kWh) model.

The research program’s central hypothesis, which guided its operation, stated that the development of new economic strategies and business models could financially advance low-carbon technologies to meet or exceed the affordability of fossil fuel businesses. The more difficult question that confronted the program was concerned with public acceptancepublic acceptance

related tag:
reception
of alternative business practices, many of which could potentially compromise the benevolent image of green energy companies. In an effort to study these reactions as well, The Energy Pilots established the following three-part method, which it made public at the U.K. Energy Research Centre’s Sparks Energy Symposium in late March 2011.

Energy Pilots representative presenting at the Sparks Energy Symposium in March 2011. photo: Ludwig Zeller, Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

The Energy Pilots began each of its case studies by identifying a business model outside the energy sector with analogous ties to a certain technology or business within the low-carbon sector. The model would be transposed to fit the energy business as closely as possible, with calculated organizational shifts and minor modifications to physical structures. The research program then constructed representative physical models that it hoped would approximate the interactions between members of the public and the new business. The program would deploy these representative devices in public spaces, in an effort to study responsesresponses

related tag:
participation

Related Articles:
1. Masdar City's Hidden Brain
by Gökçe Günel
When monitoring and modification collide. to its proposals. Early on, The Energy Pilots focused on five case studies that came to define the program itself—each directed by the program’s bespoke method.

FIVE CASE STUDIES FOR PROFITABLE LOW-CARBON ENERGY:

CUSTOMER STRATIFICATION MODEL
The first pilot was possibly the most implementable. The “Customer Stratification Model” borrowed business structures used in the banking and mobile phone industries, among others. Businesses in each of these industries stratify their customers into several pay rate tiers; from premium to basic. Customers paying a higher rate get enhanced services, while those paying a lower rate may actually receive artificially diminished services, like caps on minutes of phone usage. Based on this model, The Energy Pilots program architected a tiered structure for low-carbon energy providers, in which basic customers would pay a reduced rate and would be limited to evening and nighttime energy consumption. By securely shifting a large load to off-peak hours, energy companies would be able to avoid the use of peaking plants or expensive storage systems, saving costs and increasing the net profit from services provided. As a way to model and study the social consequences, the program proposed the system to possible users, along with a simple home energy storage device that could be plugged in overnight and harnessed in the morning for minimal energy needs, like making toast. Analysis is ongoing, though responses from base-rate customer groups were tepid in early studies. Cost saving may be a driving factor for adoption in lower income brackets.

ADVERTISING CAPITAL MODEL
The second test in the series proposed to offset costs by appropriating available infrastructure components as advertising channels, aptly dubbed the “Advertising Capital Model.” A number of advertising channels were put forth in early discussions between Energy Pilots researchers, including energy bill advertisements. But the option that called for the most involved investigation pitched a type of advertisement messaging akin to aerial skywriting. The aircraft itself was replaced by a wind turbine, adapted with nontoxic smoke emitters attached to the column of the structure. According to the design proposal, the smoke emitters would synchronously excrete billows of smoke, carried by the wind, to form smoke-pixel typography in the sky. These messages would be visible from great distances and thus would likely draw a sizable revenue stream.

Turbine printing schematic rendering. Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

As an unprecedented and experimental proposal, The Energy Pilots called for further investigation to help forecast social reactions to the hypothetical strategy. The program constructed a scaled-down representative device, featuring four smoke emitters, and reaching a height just under five meters tall. An Energy Pilots operator at the base could trigger the emitters individually to modulate the smoke patterns, approximating the visual effect of the proposed advertisements. Over the deployment period, public reactions ranged from intrigue to rage, with much conversation interspersed. On a particular deployment mission in London’s Victoria Park, a group of footballers were halted mid-game by the turbine printing demonstration, watching as the bubbles of smoke billowed out of the machine and drifted across the park. As the demonstration concluded, focus returned to the ball, and the match resumed. Wind printing deployments have now ended, and the results of the tests are being presented to energy researchers for review.

Energy Pilots researchers deploying the Wind Printer device in Victoria Park, London. photo: Daniel Adderley, Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

THRILL ATTRACTION MODEL
Platforms such as the U.K. Premium Bond system attract buyers by leveraging the psychological thrill associated with the chances of winning a prize. In this case, each time a bond is purchased, the buyer is entered into a lottery with a (1 in 26,000) chance to win £1 million. The Energy Pilots proposed that this same psychological motivator could be used to attract energy customers to a more costly low-carbon service, and devised the premise of a solar lottery. In this hypothetical system, a customer is entered into a lottery when they pay their bill, reframing bill payment as an entertainment activity.

The Energy Pilots research focused on precedent lottery programs to provide direction for the solar lottery. Many of these earlier lotteries amplified customers’ excitement (and therefore demand) by crafting a sense of fanfarefanfare

related tag:
spectacle
around the proceedings and selection of winning numbers. The Energy Pilots borrowed this strategy as well and developed early schematics for a solar lottery-ball tumbler. The tumbler was designed to be an add-on to centralized solar plants, using the excess heat generated by the plant to tumble oversized lottery balls atop the tower.

Solar Lottery schematic rendering. Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

Again, the program directed its effort toward researching social perception of this proposal, and did so by constructing a reduced-scale solar lottery-ball tumbler. The device incorporated a parabolic dish connected to a steam generator, which rotated numbered balls within a chamber and eventually dispensed the winning numbers at random. General reactions to the solar lottery were overwhelmingly positive, though correlations between mood and weather are suspected since the solar lottery-ball tumbler is only deployable on sunny days. A small but noteworthy minority of interactions with the public revealed a concern regarding the imbalanced nature of lotteries as funding mechanisms, since many participants have poor comprehension of the statistical likelihood of winning. Despite the high levels of interest, the social viability of this model is still being assessed by energy professionals.

Energy Pilots researcher testing the Solar Lottery Tumbler in Hyde Park. photo: Diego Trujillo, Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

ALTERNATE SERVICE MODEL
The fourth case study explored by The Energy Pilots program focused specifically on the needs of an emerging technology—the solar updraft tower. This uncommon technology generates electricity by capturing passively heated air under a massive canopy and channeling it up through a tower, rotating a turbine. Maintenance and operation of an updraft tower can be minimal, but construction of the plant requires large amounts of up-front capital. As a way to provide investors with an increased sense of stability, The Energy Pilots recommended a business model that could provide a concurrent revenue source unimpeded by fluctuations in energy prices.

Schematic rendering of an addition to the solar updraft tower. Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

The Alternate Service Model suggests that the solar updraft tower owner could provide an entertainment service using the exhaust from the plant, allowing visitors to launch objects of their choice out the top of the tower for a fee. Like the prior business models envisioned by The Energy Pilots, this proposal demanded intensive social testing before it could be confidently presented as a viable strategy for updraft tower developers. To test the public reactions, an updraft replicator was constructed using an industrial air chamber and launch tube. The assembly was used to launch items with public participants, often beginning discussions around the viability of this model as a funding mechanism. Interest in launching was very high, substantiating the efficacy of the business model. Researchers were surprised by the range of items that individuals reported they would like to launch. Suggestions by the public included items such as cremation ashes, love notes, and birdseed. After further consideration, many respondents grew uncomfortable with the thought of low-carbon energy services being subsidized by a service that would deposit debris in nearby deserts.

Energy Pilots researchers deploying the Updraft Replicator, with the Wind Printer visible in the background. photo: Daniel Adderley, Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

EXTREME TOURISM MODEL
A fifth and final study conducted by The Energy Pilots found inspiration in the likes of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space travel services. This model aimed to bring in preliminary capital from extremely wealthy patrons by offering a unique extreme tourism service. In this case, The Energy Pilots detailed a model specifically for operators of enhanced geothermal systems that run anywhere between 5 and 10 kilometers deep. The plan would open these geothermal facilities for exclusive “Hyper-Historical Tours” before being commissioned, capitalizing on the implicit scale and potential danger of traveling down into these subterranean shafts. This early revenue would drastically offset the cost of excavation, subsequently making energy virtually free for most consumers.

Schematic diagram of the proposed Hyper-Historical Tour. Courtesy of The Energy Pilots.

In order to examine social reaction to this proposal, a simulator was constructed and deployed in the vicinity of costly events taking place in London. Wealthy opera and theatergoers were offered a chance to test-drive the tour, with complimentary champagne in hand. After experiencing the simulated tour, many of the public participants were intrigued by the idea and suggested they would be willing to pay for a service like this one. When questioned on cost, participants felt it should cost less than Branson’s space travel service. There was no ethical hesitation voiced by participants in these studies.

THE ONGOING INQUIRY
The research conducted by The Energy Pilots program is still being analyzed, and the organization has yet to release decisive indications regarding its founding hypothesis. Meanwhile, the financial viability of low-carbon energy technology is still generally considered too low to implement at scales that would meaningfully affect the planet’s rising carbon levels. But some of the models developed through the program, though financially risky, could yet prove to be disruptive modelsdisruptive models

related tag:
disruption
in the low-carbon energy sector. Recently, several businesses have indeed begun to experiment with divergent business strategies that could challenge the conventional $/kWh model. ¹ ² ³

The most difficult question that remains unanswered by The Energy Pilots asks where our society’s collective moral compass will point if we’re presented with ethically challenging routes to low-carbon energy futures. We will almost certainly have to make compromises to correct our course toward viable climate. Are we willing to live with smoke advertisements filling our horizons, solar lotteries luring us, or detritus in our deserts? What cultural sacrifices are we willing to make to reach a state of low-carbon energy generation? What is a sustainable future worth?

–

Elliott P. Montgomery is the founder of The Energy Pilots, a project he developed while at the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions program. In this and his other works, Montgomery uses speculative design methods to probe social and environmental implications of emerging technological scenarios. He currently teaches design strategies at Parsons, The New School for Design and has practiced as a design consultant for clients such as Autodesk, GE, LG, Honeywell, and the NYC Department of Education. His work has been exhibited at institutions around the world, including the Museum of Art and Design, the Shanghai Powerstation of Art, the Cite du Design International Biennale, and The Storefront for Art and Architecture. Montgomery is a former design research resident at the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, a Core77 Design Award Winner, and an Andrew Carnegie Scholar.

1. Dean Kamen was issued a patent in September of 2011 that enabled LED advertising on inflatable wind turbines. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/09/inflatable-wind-turbine.html ^
2. Energy Plus aims to lure customers with air miles, while manipulating energy rates to turn a profit. This company is not working exclusively in low-carbon energy, but proposes a model that could be seen as ethically challenging to many. https://www.energypluscompany.com ^
3. Bjarke Ingels Group’s design for a waste-to-energy plant called Amager Bakke, which incorporates a ski slope, broke ground in early 2013. http://www.archdaily.com/339893/bigs-waste-to-energy-plant-breaks-ground-breaks-schemas/ ^

An interview with Cory Brugger

How Morphosis manages to take risks.

Half-Acre/Half-Life under production, and public opening, November 2012. Photograph courtesy of the author.

BIOPLASTICS!
Where that little word “plastics” was once synonymous with cheap abundance, pop-futurist aesthetics, and a promising career, “bioplastics” might be today’s equivalent, now that the toxic reality behind that initial optimism has caught up to us. Bioplastics implies a similar material and formal progressiveness mixed with a comforting appearance of environmentalism—it’s good for us, but we get to keep our bad habits. But what exactly counts as a bioplastic? Must it be 100% derived from plant material to earn the “bio-” designation, or are synthetic agents permitted? Are all plastics included in this category compostable? Biodegradable? And under what conditions (of heat, pressure, and bacterial flora)? And what might these qualities offer for architecture?

A prevalent bioplastic resin, polylactic acid or PLA, is derived from many starches, but corn is emerging as a primary source. A major industry player, NatureWorks is owned by Cargill, the largest corn producer in the world.¹

QUESTIONING “BEST PRACTICES”
The notion of “best practicesbest practices

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best practices
” in design means employing design elements that by definition pose the least possible risk—selecting among the materials and methods that have known properties, applications, and results rather than questioning their origin or composition. They are “black boxes,” in the parlance of Bruno Latour, delivering reliable results without making their contents known. One of the critical roles of architectural research, then, might be to question the premises that underlie those best practices, and interrogating the idea of material performance rather than operating within the assumptions offered by a field that has long since solidified particular attitudes toward material. Asking questions through research is a means of opening the many black boxes that appear throughout design practice—whether a product handed down from the building industry or a persistent disciplinary claim. The best questions, then, are those that attempt to disclose the technical criteriatechnical criteria

related tag:
criteria of performance
and cultural values attached to a practice or an idea. “What is this?” can be a useful question in producing knowledge about a given thing, while “Why do we care?” prompts us to position that knowledge in the world.

A base recipe of sugar, corn syrup, and water cooking to hard-ball phase. Photograph courtesy of the author.

BIOPLASTICS?
(De)composing Territory (2012–13) is an experimental project that emerged from a curiosity about the growing industry of ecoplastics—their mysteriously coded variations, their source materials and additives, their relative environmental merits, and the cultural conditions around their evident popularity. There’s a satisfaction in being told the coffee lid or food container you’re using originated in a Midwestern cornfield, and relief in believing that it will disappear. This disappearing act will happen later, of course, at an engineered lag that will not inconvenience us. (Premature loss of rigidity plagued early corn-plastic products like disposable cutlery and trash bags, which often began to disintegrate while still in hand.)

The built-in impermanence that is fundamental to bioplastics as a class is at the center of this research. In order to find latent potentials of contemporary bioplastics—and to disassociate them from ready-made products where their use is predetermined—the project staged the full life cycle of bioplastic production and decomposition, from making to unmaking. This process involved some unlikely techniques for the designer–researcher, such as sourcing corn syrup in bulk, cooking a range of recipes, forming molten substances into various shapes, and observing their decay under different environmental and material conditions. The dual sites of experimentation, then, were the kitchen and the field.

Early structural test of cast and inverted panel. Photograph courtesy of the author.

IN THE KITCHEN
Tapping into a network of resources² exposed an array of DIY approaches to producing bioplastics. Existing recipes for starch- and sugar-based plastics formed a starting point from which a few “standards” were refined for a repeatable process with (mostly) reproducible results. We positioned ourselves as strictly agnostic observers, maintaining an attitude of “not-knowingnot-knowing

related tag:
uncertainty
” as we tried recipes iteratively and tested the result (mostly in the form of witnessing their failures of structural integrity). It required a leap of faith to imagine that the countertop procedures of mixing and cooking ingredients all easily found in a grocery store, might have any direct architectural consequence. Scaling upScaling up

related tag:
simulation
production from the capacity of an electric hot plate to larger batches cooked on a propane keg burner yielded larger components; but the real discovery (via many sticky failures) was not a matter of scale but a matter of understanding where design could have agency in the process.

Prototype for a bioplastic component with a structural spine with flanges more vulnerable to the elements. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Failed structural form on a humid day in the studio. Photograph courtesy of the author.

LEARNING THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
Shifting attention from a set of desired forms produced from controlled casts, the design research took note of what was actually contributing to the end product’s variable qualities. What led to a more or less rigid, more or less self-structuring, more or less attractive bioplastic? On the one hand, there were the controllable variables: cooking temperature, proportions of starches to water to stiffeners, length of the reaction time in the pot. But what became apparent by further repetition of the cooking-forming-cooling process and better control over these techniques of making was the degree to which additional variables, of which we had little control over, affected the results. Environmental factors such as ambient room temperature, direct sunlight, humidity, and (most dramatically for the “field test” installation) wind introduced another level of complexity in both the production and subsequent stability of the material. Rather than attempting to curb these environmental agents, we allowed a sort of loose feedback between recipe-adjusting, form-making, and the effects these external agentsexternal agents

related tag:
externalities
brought on. Experimenting with bioplastics in the kitchen suggested a design approach in which environment becomes a co-producer of an architectural experience.

Prototype composed of two recipes in full sunlight. Photograph courtesy of the author.

The “field test” installation moved the full cycle of production (and decomposition) on-site. Photograph courtesy of the author.

IN THE FIELD
In the material experiments, quality had an explicit relationship to the energetic and chemical interactions occurring throughout the bioplastic’s making, and unmaking, suggesting an architecture generated through a series of phase changes. To test this premise at a larger scale, and in a less controlled setting, the bioplastic production moved from kitchen to field. If the decay of an architectural material is anticipated, or even expedited, what would that mean for the spaces, landscapes, or territories these delineate?

Following the initial cooking tests and iterative prototypes, Half-Acre/Half-Life (2012) was a live field experimentlive field experiment

related tag:
real world laboratory
and public installation sited on the grounds of an educational farm. More than fifty handcrafted bioplastic panels enclosed approximately half an acre; like a porous fence, this temporary structure implied a pentagonal figure with an uncertain temporality. Environmental circumstances, such as rain and heat, all contributed to the speed at which the sugar-based plastic broke down, dissolving the territorial boundary.

Design entered the process as a way of directing this process of decomposition such that the bioplastic panels’ limited temporality would have some sort of agency, defining a site, producing space, and attracting various forms of curious creatures, human and nonhuman.

One of more than fifty site-cast panels in Half-Acre/Half-Life. Photograph courtesy of the author.

DESIGNING WITH UNPREDICTABILITY
This project developed from an ongoing interest in environment and urban systems, where architecture becomes a kind of interface that opens onto more extensive social and material landscapes. Within this framework, research provides a basis for determining how and where architecture might intervene, but in a way that resists the sense of causality that often afflicts architectural research. What’s interesting about this work is that things are repeatable to a point, but the inherent variability of things “in the field” demands a partially indeterminate attitude toward research—and indeed architecture always finds itself in a variable field of some kind, even when it pretends to occupy the neutral space of the laboratory.

(De)composing Territories is an attempt to advance the idea that experimental making can be one means for opening up the black boxes of design practice. If we think about and study architecture’s products and materials beyond their most evident use- and performance value, we might begin to understand the architectural things that we interact with daily as suspended moments within a longer series of phase changes, each with different qualities and capacities. Allowances for ephemerality or unpredictability place pressure on the idea of the designer as the author of particular qualities and effects. To position the designer as both author and investigator invites a productive instability from which to produce architectural knowledge.

Half-Acre/Half-Life. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Custom and repurposed kitchen tools aided in scaling up to the half-acre enclosure, while also lending an aesthetic to the production as a public event. Photograph courtesy of the author.

1. Royte, Elizabeth. “Corn Plastic to the Rescue.” Smithsonian Magazine. August 2006. (September 24, 2010) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plastic.html?c=y&page=1. ^
2. For more on the science of industrial bioplastics and suggestions for homemade versions, see E.S. Stevens, Green Plastics: An Introduction to the New Science of Biodegradable Plastics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). ^

Research team at work in the improvised site kitchen. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Meredith Miller is an architect and co-founder of MILLIGRAM-office. She is an assistant professor at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, University of Michigan. milligram-office.net

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was funded through the Research Through Making Grant Program, 2012–2013, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Design, University of Michigan; additional support from the Office for the Vice President of Research Productions Grant, 2013, University of Michigan. Installation site provided by Domino’s Farms. Research team: Nate Oppenheim, Peter Halquist, Lizzie Krasner, James Graham, Delia Guarneros, Laurin Aman. Cookbook graphics: Nick Safley.

Real Time Urbanism is an experimental method that tests an approach to cities experiencing conflict in the here and now. In the context of the Middle East, cities are often sites of protest, violence, and destruction but also places where societies and communities continuously reinvent themselves. Moreover, working in the Middle East, we often encounter spatial realities and built environments that challenge our existing models of urbanity, with extremely segregated and conflicted urban spaces, edge cities sharply contrasted with untouched landscapes, new construction embracing a tabula rasa, and highly eclectic urban spaces void of public life. They are sites of [sidenote tag="real-time testing"]immediate action[/sidenote] and reaction, where tactics prevail over strategies, where urban design becomes a [sidenote tag="performance"]performance[/sidenote] rather than an intervention. Real Time Urbanism considers the extremely temporary condition of urban environments in the Middle East and specifically cities in Israel/Palestine. Our works of urban action, in education and professional practice, can be seen as small-scale, yet with far-reaching interventions with varied social and urban impact. This project focuses on the context of an ethno-nationally contested environment and investigates the local implications of a society torn by political disputes within general issues such as climate change and social protest. - ON THE WAY TO THE SEA, BAT-YAM On the Way to the Sea transforms a no-man’s land that serves as a passage between city and sea into a place in and of itself. Passing through the site, a series of carefully positioned frames between the city edge and the seashore host an array of collective or intimate moments. Movable elements attached to the frames such as benches, tables, shades, and screens invite passersby to engage with the space in real time, creating opportunities for citywide events, a birthday party, a barbecue, and watching the sunset, while unexpected actions turn the project into a merry-go-round or a ground for meditation. The project operates as a piece of open-ended urban infrastructure. People can complete and reinvent the space, add plastic chairs to allow for more seating at the tables, stand on the benches, spin the tables, and sometimes turn public space into a private family affair.

Playing by Sunset. Photo: Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Movable lazy chairs by sunset. Photo: Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Bat-Yam residents testing out the furniture. Photo: Els Verbakel. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Open Air Cinema. Photo: Els Verbakel. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Plan drawing of the passage from city (right) to sea (left). Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

RIVIERA SEASIDE GALLERY, BAT-YAM
An abandoned nightclub that housed a bustling night scene in the city of Bat-Yam, Israel turned into a seaside art gallery and artist colony within only a few weeks over the summer of 2011. A 1,200-square-meter grid of concrete columns became a space for artists to reside and develop on-site art both inside and outside the gallery. Due to budget and time limits, we stripped the building’s interior walls, and opened the space up to the sea letting the beach seep inside. Blurring beach life and art culture, the gallery became a hybrid of Coney Island-inspired neon signs and sand floors that evoked synagogues in the Caribbean along with their temporal qualities. The floor of stabilized sand, the rough interior, and the open façade create a space where you can visit exhibitions in a bathing suit with an ice pop. The opening exhibition very suitably invited Israeli street artists to intervene in the gallery, which was painted over a few weeks later. Like the tides of the sea, the gallery space opens and closes to different groups of artists and visitors, continuously transforming itself yet not completely erasing the traces of past events.

Entrance to the Gallery Space, with graphic design by Anna Geslev. Photo Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

The Gallery’s front porch with graphic design by Anna Geslev. Photo: Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

The abandoned nightclub before the intervention. Photo: Elie Derman. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

The Gallery’s opening street-art exhibition with graphic design by Anna Geslev. Photo: Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

The Gallery’s opening street-art exhibition with graphic design by Anna Geslev. Photo: Yuval Tebol. Courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

URBAN DUNE-SCAPE, RISHON LEZION WEST
Our design proposal for a new urban district in the western part of Rishon LeZion, Israel aims to combine dense urban environments with the endangered dune landscape along the Mediterranean seashore. Although new neighborhoods are continuously under construction, the urbanization process yields a high ratio of unbuilt spaces waiting for future development. The project developed a toolbox to provide an infrastructure for the growth of an urban dune-scape in bits and pieces. Each element in the toolbox, whether relating to high-rise housing, streetscapes or landscapes, contains the DNA of the proposed urban spaces as a whole, forming a hybrid between the natural and the artificial, between city and landscape

Building Rights and Density Study for Rishon LeZion West. Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Vision for a Congested Urban Dune-Scape, Rishon LeZion West. Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Building Block Strategy in 4 Steps, Rishon LeZion West. Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Toolbox: inhabitable dunes, dune-scape hybrids, and urban ecosystems, Rishon LeZion West. Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

Vision for an Urban Dune-Scape, Rishon LeZion West.Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

COLORFUL CITY, EAST TEL AVIV
Our plan for East Tel Aviv prepares the area for the planned construction of approximately 2 million square meters of predominantly office space in the near future. While the area currently consists of low-density residential neighborhoods, abandoned industrial buildings, car dealers, office towers, and a few public buildings, the programmatic transformation will drastically influence Igal Alon Street, the main traffic spine, which currently serves as a thruway. In an attempt to turn Igal Alon from a road into a street, the plan developed a series of tactics to introduce interactive programs in the “waiting strip,” an area between the street and the future development that will start working according to the future vision for the street in anticipation of the office towers to come.

From White City to Colorful City: preparing East Tel Aviv for the construction of 2 million m2 of predominantly office space.Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

From White City to Colorful City: Existing buildings that will remain in the future compared to future built volume on Igal Alon Street only.Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

The principle of the waiting strip that will host interactive and collective programs in anticipation of future construction. Credit: Derman Verbakel Architecture.

_From White City to Colorful City: Vision for an Active, Livable, and Lively “Alternative Tel Aviv” in which the waiting strip can be implemented immediately in anticipation of future construction. Image courtesy of Derman Verbakel Architecture.

–

Els Verbakel is founding partner of Derman Verbakel Architecture and a professor at the Technion, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. Els obtained a PhD in Architecture at Princeton University, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University and a Masters in Civil Engineering and Architecture from the University of Leuven.

Project Credits

On The Way To The Sea, Bat-Yam
Architects: Derman Verbakel Architecture; Location: Bat-Yam, Israel; Client: Bat-Yam Municipality & Bat-Yam International Biennial Of Landscape Urbanism;
Completed: 2010; Photographs: Yuval Tebol

Riviera Seaside Gallery, Bat-Yam
Architects: Derman Verbakel Architecture; Location: Bat-Yam, Israel; Graphic Design: Anna Geslev; Client: Bat-Yam Municipality; Completed: 2011; Photographs: Yuval Tebol

Urban Dune-Scape, Rishon Lezion West
Architects: Derman Verbakel Architecture; Location: Rishon Lezion, Israel; Client: Rishon Lezion Municipality; Completed: 2013

Colorful City, East Tel Aviv
Architects: Derman Verbakel Architecture; Location: East Tel Aviv, Israel; Client: Tel Aviv Municipality, Design Development.

By Phu Hoang, MODU

Uncontrolling weather control.

Fundamentally geared as an exchange cycle of spatial questions and ideas pointed toward the future city, Studio Sangue Bom has been deeply engaged with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, since 2009. As an Advanced Architecture Studio at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), our prime objective has always been to deliver projectionsprojections

related tag:
projection
that may spark new forms of dialogue and reach far beyond typical realms of architectural participationparticipation

related tag:
participation
. In doing so, Studio Sangue Bom has been privileged to perform a wide variety of experiments with new operational models and exchange formats, all of which have been instrumental in boosting and recalibrating its drivetrain.

Most recently, and as a key component of the much larger Studio-X Rio RdP Initiative, Studio Sangue Bom VI focused on an absolutely incredible slice of the city called Rio das Pedras (RdP). A super lively informal community on Rio de Janeiro’s West Zone, Rio das Pedras is one of the fastest-growing communities in the city. Ranked the third largest favela in Brazil, with an estimated population of between eighty thousand and a hundred thousand, its urban fabric is remarkably dense, diverse, and rich, with a seemingly endless array of extreme spatial permutations. While most informal communities in Rio de Janeiro are primarily located on the steep incline of its hillsides and mountains, Rio das Pedras is predominantly situated on a flat, extensive marshland at the edge of Tijuca Lake. This terrain condition has perpetuated a host of complex structural and infrastructural challenges, perhaps most notably including buildings that sink into the ground as they grow in height over time and an extensively polluted river (Rio das Pedras’s namesake) that dumps raw sewage into Tijuca Lake.

At the same time, Rio das Pedras carries a cultural vibrancy that is unique within Rio de Janeiro, as the great majority of its population is either first- or second-generation Nordestinos, people from Brazil’s northeastern states. Coupling this special charge with its approximately four thousand thriving businesses, a dynamically complex real estate system, its key location in the West Zone, and inevitable growth, it becomes clear that Rio das Pedras is poised for a future that has yet to be fully imagined.

Developing and delivering ideas for a new type of “Market-Matrix +,” Studio Sangue Bom VI held its midsemester mixer in March 2014 at CAIC, a municipal high school in the heart of Rio das Pedras. With thirty stellar students as our primary critics and collaborators, we set out to spark a productively chaotic exchange session as our initial handshake with this amazing place.

Rio das Pedras

Population Estimates: eighty thousand to one hundred thousand.

View over Rio das Pedras to Panela Rock.

Uniquely dense and diverse, Rio das Pedras is primarily growing vertically.

Compressive spaces permeate much of the fabric.

Rio das Pedras textures and flavors

With its external boundaries quite fixed due to complex historical/occupational negotiations, density will only increase over time.

(left) Studio Sangue Bom VI deep inside Rio das Pedras. (right) Noah Z Levy lugging the key gear to fuel the RdP MEGAMIX.

What types of spatial futures can we imagine here? (The fundamental question for Studio Sangue Bom VI.)

RdP MEGAMIXER Players.

Kick off!

GSAPP students present projects through facilitators to CAIC crew.

Excitement + Nerves = Careful Initiation. Spatial questions, terms, hunches, and projections begin the exchange.

(left half) Facilitator rotation. (right half) CAIC student rapidly selected to present GSAPP project to new facilitators.

Without any hesitation whatsoever, this super-impressive CAIC student presents the project he just learned about with his own twist on the spatial potentials at hand.

Calculated versions of dream scenarios and programs were read into the spatial depictions and notational maps through this round of presentations.

Self-initiated reference sketching in relation to reorientation /potential flexing of spatial construct.

Customized clusters of exchange and input.

New arrangements begin to generate their own dynamics

Shift again.

Orbital shifts, amplification of productive chaos…

Spontaneous Beat-Box/Freestyle MC session about the project at hand.

Two hours into the session: chaos achieved!

Full mix force.

More hip-hop.

SANGUE BOM!

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Raul Corrêa-Smith is a Carioca who was born in New York. An Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at GSAPP, Coordinator of Studio-X Rio, Studio Critic of Architecture and Urbanism at PUC-Rio and co-founder of Faíscas (www.faiscas.org), Raul currently lives in Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro.

Keith Kaseman has lived in numerous places and cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Prague (CZ), New York, Alexandria (VA), and Philadelphia. He is a partner at KBAS (www.kbas-studio.com), co-founder of Faíscas (www.faiscas.org), and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at GSAPP. Keith currently lives in Knoxville, TN.

Studio Sangue Bom VI
GSAPP Spring 2014
Studio Critics: Keith Kaseman, Raul Corrêa Smith and Noah Z Levy
Students: Jinglu Huang, Limeng Jiang, John Kim, Elizabeth Labra, Young Jun Lee, Yubo Liang, Dina Mahmous, Andrew Nicolaides, Tiffany Rattray, Diego Rodriguez, Tianhui Shen.

A situation room, installed by the authors at Columbia University Avery Hall in December of 2010 to monitor and deploy urban failures. All images courtesy of the authors.The Atlas of Failure imagines caricatures of contemporary urban fables like Mumbai, India; Juarez, Mexico; and Detroit, Michigan; and mobilizes them as new urban proposals. Existing failuresExisting failures

related tag:
state of exception
become testable hypotheses for future urbanisms. The cartoon becomes a valuable tool for diagramming cities. As these cartoons are assembled in the context of history and geography, it becomes clear that cities themselves are not failing; their drivers of change are merely superseded by new ones in the face of crisis, only to fail again in more interesting, exciting ways. Failure is almost never an end, but a hinge. The Atlas uses failure as a productive portal, sometimes flipping the architecture into a new order, and at times revealing the logic of inherent mitigation techniques.The Atlas is a qualitative complement to Buckminster FullerBuckminster Fuller

related tag:
Buckminster Fuller
and John McHale’s World Game (and the supporting World Resource Inventory), which supposed that world resources could be evenly distributed across the globe and end the need for conflict.

A page from the Atlas charting global trajectories of urban failure.The Atlas supposes that recombinations of existing urban ideologies could also be evenly distributed throughout the globe in order to generate resilient architectures for supporting existence amid conflict.A concrete definition of “failure” remains elusive, but several typologies emerge after looking at the histories of cities in crisis. Points of inflection in the growth rates of these cities characterize how each city reacts to disaster, inequity, and political unrest. The fallout of these decisions, strategies, successes, and failures is not tied to geography or trade alone. Failure is fluid, constituted by a network of complex interwoven forces.

A page from the Atlas comparing 3-D representations of population growth and associated world crises in our test cities.The Atlas draws form from reactions to failure. We have found that a majority of catastrophes are urban; architecture can neither predict nor account for them at the scale of a single site. Our fixation on crisis is not a grim one; rather, we wish to expose how contemporary architecture might anticipate reactions to impending upheaval.We have developed a genealogy of failure using the venerable Choose Your Own Adventure book series as a model for simulatingsimulating

related tag:
simulation
multiple hypothetical urban failures on a specific urban site. From this we have developed a codex of possible responses to a few of the contemporary paranoias that turn hostages into hosts.

These alternative futures are simultaneously critiques of contemporary socioeconomic and geopolitical attitudes and proposals of new architectural tactics that find their inspiration from unexpected sources. And now, for a fun gamegame

related tag:
games
, the hypothetical development of a site in the tri-state area:

This project was initiated by Kyle Hovenkotter and Trevor Lamphier in a studio taught by Laura Kurgan at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in the fall of 2010.

Kyle Hovenkotter is a designer and strategist in New York City. Currently, he is working with nbbj to design experimental, future-flexible workplaces for the tech and healthcare industries. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute. His independent work focuses on the impacts of globalization on cities at their breaking points. He holds a Masters of Architecture from Columbia University, and a Bachelors of Arts from the University of Washington.

Trevor Lamphier is an architectural designer in New York City working with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, contributing to both their art and architecture practices. His work co opts the familiar and redeploys it as an instrument of both design and critique. Previously he has worked as a Teaching Assistant at Columbia University GSAPP. He holds an Masters of Architecture from Columbia University, and a Bachelors of Design from the University of Florida.

After the stores have closed, cycle-rickshaw wallahs, who have spent their day ferrying passengers in three-wheeled man-powered cycles for extremely low wages, find a place to prepare dinner and sleep in Chandigarh, India’s abandoned plazas and emptied parking lots. They unpack cooking supplies and bedding from concealed locations like high ledges or indiscriminate plywood boxes secured to fences. Some store their belongings in crates tied to tree branches. Yet by 10 a.m. the following day, when the parking lots of these commercial districts begin to fill, the rickshaw wallahs have already begun vacating the area. They’ve packed and concealed their belongings, leaving few visible signs of their presence. Chandigarh, a capital city in northwestern India, is known around the world by architects and urban planners as the most extensive built example of the urban planning ideals of Le Corbusier. Although Chandigarh behaves like any city, emptying and filling daily with converging populations, it also exemplifies the systemic patterns by which communities remain blind to one another. A rickshaw wallah is rarely seen asleep, and because of this, the problem of his homelessness is somehow less real to the city’s public, which vacates these areas at night. As residents move through Le Corbusier’s “The City Beautiful,” a modernist utopia planned in the 1950s, they are either transported or trailed by a community of people who are largely invisible: the cycle-rickshaw wallah. The following images document my research of this community of rickshaw pullers and a subsequent collaborative signage project I developed with a local rickshaw union. My work attempted to understand the Chandigarh rickshaw wallahs by separating what they are from what they appear to be. They appear to be transient, but many have worked in the city for decades. They appear to be disorganized but have structured, if unconventional, unions. They appear to casually break traffic laws but must contend with confusing and out-of-touch policies. By identifying this separation, my goal as a designer and student of architecture was to understand how Chandigarh’s urban design is implicated in this process, how the design of a city might distort appearances. If urban design has the ability to distort or conceal our public image, it follows that design must also have the ability to clarify it. With this in mind, the signage project, developed with nine members of the New Kranti Rickshaw Workers Union, intended to [sidenote tag="witnesses" post1="2027"]make more visible[/sidenote] the appearance of the rickshaw puller in Chandigarh. What is his name? Where does he come from? How long has he been working? How far has he come?

In open spaces within the cities, rickshaw pullers find places to park their rickshaws and store personal belongings and cooking supplies. This photograph was taken in the early morning, before the rickshaw wallahs concealed their belongings and left for work. All photos and drawings courtesy of the author.

(left) Chandigarh’s singular architectural style has created omnipresent architectural details. The ledge located above the columns at left has become a handy place for immigrant workers to hide their bedding. During the day it is out of view, and when the market closes, it is only an arm’s reach away. (right) Chandigarh’s wealth of trees has afforded the city many things, including storage for the belongings of homeless residents.

(left) Signs were partially painted on-site in Sector 17. The nine members of the New Kranti Rickshaw Workers Union decided what details to display on one side. The name of the union and the founding year were displayed on the opposite side. (right) Portrait of Shravan Kumar, a cycle-rickshaw puller since 1995.

Lateral elevation of a cycle-rickshaw cart showing detachable sign.

Photograph of Shravan Kumar’s detachable sign.

Translation of Shravan Kumar’s detachable sign.

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John Buonocore is a designer, carpenter, and prospective architect. As an undergraduate architecture student at Columbia College, Buonocore became interested in the ways architecture can be used as a tool for public advocacy. After graduation, he was awarded the Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellowship to research homeless populations in Chandigarh, India, and exhibited “Pulling People: Chandigarh’s Working Homeless” at The Tunnel Gallery, Barnard College.

By Quilian Riano

Conflict as catalyst.

by Jordan Geiger

The netherworld of the Phantom Tollbooth Plaza.

Editors' Notes:

Issue 01 project

Five Ways to Fix an Energy Business

Design Forward, Reverse Engineer

Bioplastics!

Bit by Bit

If The Dust Never Settles

Sangue Bom

Choose Your Own Catastrophe

Rarely Seen Sleeping

Which Public?

Niagora