Press Release
Solar Skin will soon be published in a new book titled Design Ecologies, edited by Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein to be published by Princeton Architectural Press.
The book presents an overview of contemporary ecological practices in architecture, landscape architecture and community design. Through emphasis on social, material, technological, and biological strategies, the book will examine potential innovations in environmental design, presented through a series of essays and case studies.
Project Description
Solar Skin is a lightweight unitized system of inflatable solar components that zip together to form a temporary skin that can provide an inefficient building access to the benefits of sustainable engineering without renovation.
The units are 4ft length x 2.5ft width and are comprised of white foam cylinder eye shaped perimeter pieces that house an inflatable polymer with the inside lined with thin film solar cells printed on mylar.
The structure can either be installed as a tensile member, in which the wires are fed through the foam tubing or with flexible lightweight structural tubing that can be integrated onto any existing structure or stand alone to create a temporary shelter.
Project Participants
Greg Taylor, Rachel Glabe Taylor, Lauren Taylor White, Stephanie Taylor
Contact Info: www.studioformwork.com
Project
The concept was developed for a competition call for solutions for providing relief from global warming temperature increases and impacts.
Press Release: Studio Formwork has just released the designs for a lightweight inflatable solar skin.
This SOlar skIN is made of lightweight inflatable polymer and foam tubing that is 2 1/2 feet long and 1 1/2 feet wide. The panel has a solar mirror parabolic ellipse collector on the inner tube of the inflatable polymer skin. The top is made of translucent polymer and foam pieces that morph the shape of bones are put in place to add durability. The piece is lined on the outside with high density foam that is coated in a shiny white resin finish similar to the construction of a bicycle helmet, but the foam is slightly less rigid. The foam tubes hold the steel cables so the SOlar skIN can be put on the side of a building or on top as a tensile type structure. The skin panels fit snuggly together and seal to create a waterproof, high tech, lightweight, architecturally stimulating skin that can be used in new construction or old to enhance its visual siteline. The SOlar skIN , which is under patent production, will insulate and harness electricity for the building it skins at a fraction of the cost of solar panels. SOlar skIN is incredibly efficient, sexy and affordable.
We are currently doing renderings for those interested in seeing if the solar skin is something that would work for your building.
Please contact us for a quote.
Title: Solar Waterpod Water Filter and Heating Unit With Inflatable Tent For Evacuees and Refugee Camps
Designers: Studio Formwork - Greg Taylor, Lauren Taylor White and Rachel Glabe
Project Description: The solar waterpod is an affordable emergency relief filtering system, floating tent system that can provide an easy way for families to escape in a flood or shelter themselves and filter, transport and heat water and food.
The waterpod is based on protecting people from water that can kill them, not only by drinking it, but also from flooding. It uses an inexpensive, but advanced four stage process including carbon microbial filtering. The inflatable skin turns into a floating tent and the waterpod can filter flood water.
This unit is important because (1)it provides a lightweight, affordable way for people to keep a disaster relief unit with them that can help them escape a flooding house. The pods can also be equip with location devices to ease rescue mission(2) It has an advanced, but inexpensive water filtering system that can completely remove all harmful materials. (3) The water filtering system can be use on flood waters while it is floating safely in your inflatable tent, which makes for increased safety in trying to access drinkable water. (4) It can harness the power of the sun to boil water and to cook food. (5)It can provide victims, such as Katrina victims, access to private shelters with their own filtering capabilities, which makes for a much more capable experience in relation to the exposed sleeping cots that they were given in the stadium. (6) It is important for individuals in developing nations for the access to a sheltering system and clean water (7) The inflatable pod technology is lightweight and inexpensive enough to create a floating hospital for natural disasters like floods, tsunamis or earthquakes. (8) It is important for people of refugee camps because the waterpod is easier to transport than carrying large awkward jugs (9) The storage capabilities allow for making less trips to water wells, which could keep the refugees safer from the rape and other types of attacks such as those seen on many of the women of Darfur who are attacked when they leave their village to get water. With the waterpod, they can trap rainwater in their parabolic solar petal reservoir. They can also filter and store up to 6 gallons of water at a time. There was a limit to the amount of water the women could carry. This makes them able to carry more. (10) It is important because global warming is making weather more extreme and we are all going to need to have a back up shelter and water filter system in case of emergency, just as many built bomb shelters back in the day. We will have global warming waterpods to ensure our preparedness and safety.
The renderings illustrate the concept because they present the problem of how Katrina victims were forced to live and how refugees live as well. These photos show what types of problems the waterpod can solve. The Katrina victums had only cots and no private shelter, people could have been save from drowning had they had a floating tent as part of their emergency kit. The people of Africa, many from Darfur in the pictures, are only sheltering themselves with sticks and tshirts strung from trees. The have to walk miles and carry heavy awkward jugs and when they come back, even that water may kill them. The waterpod is a step by step process that can save lives and help day to day living on many levels. The renderings aim to show that anyone can store the waterpod because it is only 3 feet tall and it is made of durable high density foam with air pod pockets that make for a skin that is soft against the back of someone who has to carry it or sleep on it. The renderings also show how the technology can be used on a large scale as an inflatable hospital and floating family pod that are connected flood victims in New York.
Business Plan:
MISSION STATEMENT
The Solar Waterpod mission is to help provide assistance to families who would like protection in case of a flood, shelter and privacy in case they must evacuate to a stadium like structure and it comes with 3 gallons of fresh water and the ability to filter any dirty water such as flood water into potable water so it is an excellent disaster relief unit. It also has many purposes in poorer countries, where many live in self made structures of cloth, sticks and cardboard. The waterpod inflates into a tent that can be used as a shelter system or used an escape pod in case of emergency.
COST
The cost for producing our first prototype of this waterpod model is 350 dollars. The skin of the egg and the tent are made of foam and inflatable plastic, which is inexpensive to produce at 75 dollars per unit. The stage 3 advanced water filter called the carbon microbial filter is what removes the last layer of any diseases or contaminates that the water contains and it costs $125. That is the only piece that we will be purchasing from a manufacturer. The other filters were designed with the least amount of cost in mind. The attachments like the wheels, pull handle, water nozzle, storage tanks, hoses and coils are inexpensive pieces running around 60 all together. The solar parabolic petals can be made of the same foam and air pods, but lined on the inside with mylar covered by a thin film coating. These will run about $80.
TARGET MARKET
The target markets for the waterpod is first to sell it to governments to be distributed when a flood or natural disaster hits. This could be done in large quantities that could drive production cost down. We anticipate that with economies of scale we could get the cost to about $150 per pod. The second target market is to individual households as a disaster relief unit. The third target market is to large scale non profit and other humanitarian project funds that cater to places that are in real need such as Darfur.
PERSONAL MISSION
As a team we are very interested in seeing this project get funding. This is not just a project for us. It is something that we would like to do with our lives. This would allow us to make our humanitarian mission of micro architectural solutions for climate refugees a reality. The prize would be allocated in the following ways. We would like to spend the first $350 on the prototype, then get additional pods produced to begin the business for $5000. The next $500 to build our fundraising marketing campaign. We would like to go government agencies with our concept. $3500 specifically to go to Darfur to distribute these pods. The money would be spend to get this as a business off the ground.
Description of Images
Diagram of Waterpod - This image show how the inside of the waterpod functions and what the exterior of the waterpod skin and inflatable tent are.
Waterpod Stages - This image shows how the waterpod is transported. The outer skin of the pod can be inflated to create a floating tent.
Floods and Water - Thise diagrams show our current situations. The one on the left of the map shows how many areas were flooded last year alone. This map, in contrast to 2006 was much worse. The other bar graph details the world’s access or lack thereof of potable drinking water.
New York Floods - This image shows how in the event of a flood people can expand the exterior skins of their waterpods to transform into a tent that can float and house up to 6 people. It shows how the waterpod filtering system gets nestled into the center of the floating tent and can provide the family with potable water directly from the flood water.
Floating Hospital - This image shows how you could use this high density durable foam with inflatable air pods to make larger scale floating structures as well such as hospitals.
Katrina Refugees - This image shows the basic needs of Katrina victums that were not being met that the waterpod aims to solve.
Darfur Refugees - This series of images is used to describe the current conditions of refugees and how they could benefit from a shelter system and an easily transportable waterpod.
Title: Evolo Architecture Competition is coming up Feb 2008
Designers: Above: Marcin Pilsniak from Poland
Designers: Below: Previous winner Mitchell Joachim and Nori Oxman
Project Description: Get Your Computer Game On - Cause the Evolo Competition is coming up! eVolo Architecture competition is open to architects, engineers and designers who want to explore their wicked side of funky architecture. The Skyscraper 08 competitions aims to bring about competition entries that explore the idea of vertical density, particularly in light of the mass sprawl of skyscraper buildings that is being seen in developing nations. These buildings should address environmental and social implications, but do so in an organically stimulating way. Your game must be on to enter this beast, as the competition is fierce. This post featuers last year’s third place winner Mitchell Joachim and Neri Oxman.
How To Build A Profile:
For all you aspiring architecture students out there, there are some shining expamles of things you must put on your resume to be competitive in this industry. This person’s profile is particularly impressive. Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D. New York, New York, United States Dr. Joachim completed his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Architecture: Design and Computation. His dissertation is entitled: Ecotransology - Integrated Design for Urban Mobility. He is faculty at Washington University and Columbia University. Prior to MIT, he accomplished two master’s degree programs: Harvard University MAUD, and Columbia University M.Arch. His BPS was fulfilled through SUNY at Buffalo with honors. Currently he is Executive Director of the nonprofit organization Terreform and Partner with Michael Sorkin Studio. Formally as a researcher at the Media Lab Smart Cities Group, he collaborated with his advisor William J. Mitchell on the General Motors/ Frank O. Gehry Concept Car. In parallel with Gehry Partners in Los Angles, he actively worked as an architect on the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project. During his time in Cambridge, he has been the Moshe Safdie and Associates Research Fellow award winner and a Martin Family Society Fellow for Sustainability. Previously he has been an architect at Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners in New York.
Find Out More: If you’d like to learn more -Evolo Architecture Competition.
image from Mitchell Joachim and Evolo Architecture Competition
by lauren taylor white
Title: The Make It Right Project Founded By Brad Pitt
Designers: Morphosis, Pugh + Scarpa, Adjaye, Construct, GRAFT, MVRDV, Shigeru Ban, BNIM, Kieran Timberlake, and 5 Local Architecture Firms
Project Description: Newsflash: Brad Pitt sees destruction and wants to make change. In reaction to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the government’s inability to solve the problem, Brad Pitt has stepped up to create the MIR Make It Right Organization, which is building green homes on a large scale for victims of the hurricane. The Make It Right site states the project ”settled on the goal of constructing 150 homes, with an emphasis on developing an affordable system that could be replicated.” The project is located in the Lower 9th Ward and aims at “proving that safe homes could and should be rebuilt,” Brad Pitt hopes that this project will be a catalyst for recovery and redevelopment throughout the Lower 9th Ward and across the City of New Orleans.
The Pink Project: He perceived the visual potency of pink houses as a metaphor. Working together with GRAFT, the idea was born to merge film and architecture into an installation that would bring immediate global attention to a pervasive local issue. The idea is that the pink signifies that “they have not been forgotten.” The MIR site states that “the simple legibility of the pink monopoly house reassembled from smaller individual components intentionally focuses attention on a problem of manageable scale, allowing the individual to physically participate in the installation through donations.”
Technical Critique: It is difficult to review a project like this with anything but high regards. So, without sounding like there is too much sunshine being blown, let’s just say, this project ROCKS. I think it is fantastic that Brad Pitt is showing the world that architecture can be used to help save humanity, not just to make it look shiny. He has assembled teams of architects from around the world who have experience with environmental design and other sophisticated projects. This is not just about the victims of Katrina. It is about how people should continue relief efforts long after the news has dropped the subject as the hot topic of the week. This project has shown a dedication to practically helping people. It also sheds light on how green building can be an affordable and ACHIEVABLE goal that we should strive for. For anyone who is interested in helping out with Katrina, I urge them to contribute to the Make It Right Foundation. It is going to be a landmark project in humanity relief efforts.
Find Out More: If you’d like to learn more - check out Archinect’s articles on the Pink Project. Here’s what Archinect is saying about the project “Make it Right is a non-profit organization, founded by Brad Pitt, to act as a catalyst for redevelopment of the Lower Ninth Ward. The organization emphasizes Cradle to Cradle (by William McDonough) ideals, healthy living, and quality design.”
image from Make It Right Project By Brad Pitt
by lauren taylor white
Title: Auralab From France Splits Into 2 Rendering Houses In France
Designers: Luxigon and Labtop
Project Description: Newsflash: “Auralab renderers in France have split into Luxigon and Labtop. Auralab has produced work for OMA (Office For Metropolitain Architecture, HDM and REX,” states Christoph in his post on Anarchitect. “After seven years of fruitful collaboration, Thomas Series and Eric de Broches des Combes, cofounders of the architectural rendering firm Auralab decided to go seperate and to split into Labtop and Luxigon.
Project Architects: If you are interested in the work of OMA with Rem L. Koolhaas (1944) specifically you can read the OMA Architecture Fan Site, which is done by a fan of the company keeping track specifically of their latest works. OMA designed the buildings and Labtop slash Luxigon have translated thier vision.
Technical Critique: OMA has a reputation for creating “pleasures of visual intelligence”. Their more recent designs are pushing the use of color in static white backgrounds. The contrast creates for interesting rendering effects and gives a nice refreshing change from the current all white trend that Rhino has made more popluar in the recent years. Their work appears to be as creative as as a project you would see in a top graduate school, but it gets realized, giving the aspiring younglings hope for developing an addiction for striving for the virtually unobtainable art of stamping your name on buildings like this.
Rendering Tips: In a post by Arjun Bhat, a blogger student from HDS Harvard Design School discusses the former Auralab and the tricks they use to make their renderings look real. “Back at my old firm, we stole a guy from Auralab - a complete rendering urberfirm. He let me in on some simple trade secrets (altho he wouldn’t give up the juicy stuff) utlines aren’t just for the toon/cell shaded effect. A big reason a lot of rendered images just don’t feel “real” is because of all the perfect right angles we make in the models. In real life, there is no such thing as a perfect right angle — things weather, edges get rounded. By using an extremely light pen thickness and overlaying either specific parts of a final rendered image, or the whole thing, you can simulate the slight shadow effect that comes from these weathered edges. I believe Auralab uses a program called “Illustrate!” to get their hidden line images done (its a great tool for those of us 3dMax junkies who otherwise lack an option to render to vector format). Another technique (which your tutorial touches on) is learning to render shading/ outline /reflections/ highlights/ and deep shadow all on different layers, so when you composite them in photoshop, you can really tweak the way your renders feel. If you would like to learn more about creating great shadow effecs - here is a great tutorial.
images from OMA Mexico 5, Auralab, and Luxigon Blog
by lauren taylor white
Project Title: Urban Sprawl Condeser
Designers: Sugar Inc. Marc Boles, Kristof Crolla, Giulia Foscari, Arturo Lyon
Project Description: “This proposal is an urban system that condenses sprawl into a three dimensional high-rise network through a radical ground to volume relationship. The aim of this project is to incorporate the way in which cities inherently behave as living organisms in order to allow urban space to emerge,” as listed on the Architectural Association site, written by the designers. Archinect discusses additional works by this team.
Technical Critique: This project is an eye catcher, but it is not surprising since Marc Boles and Kristof Crolla went on to work for Zaha Hadid. Sugar Inc. states that this project is both based on algorithms that combine randomness and environmental forces that drive a new typoloy. Randomness does come through, but I must admit, it is quite elegant. This project looks like string theory, with an occasional influence of DNA strand thrown in. It appears to be modeled in Rhino, as a set of strands that act as the support structure for the system. There is little emphasis on the floors or circulation of the high rise, which I find disconserting, but not to the point of distraction from the point of the project. The people who live here can float up to their spaces, after all, which is quite cool in an imaginary way. I can appreciate that. I like to leave things to the imagination. Who needs circulation when you have so many cool looking strands. This work is unique and the technique is advanced. I would be interested to find out about what algorithms they applied to this computer model that created their effect. I rate this as uber cool despite the fact that the woman in the rendering would be the size of king kong. In this world, I suppose we could all live happlily ever after, though.
The material research is based on Candy Floss which is a lightweight fibrous structure that grows and evolves over time, embodying a three dimensional parcelling system capable of nesting adaptive open architectures.
images from Architectural Association by Sugar Inc.
by lauren taylor white
Project Title: Werner Sobek’s House 129
Designers: Werner Sobek & The Lab For Lightweigth Structure University of Stuttgart
Project Description: “R129 is a prototype in development at the Laboratory at the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design at the University of Stuttgart. The skin will be coated with an electrochromic foil, which allows the entire envelope to be made opaque, either in sections or as a whole.” as described by Architectural Record.
Technical Critique: Anytime skins and coatings are mentioned, my ears perk up. Smart materials are going to be necessary in our future and this project presents new options for this concept. They coat this glass with electrochromic foil which the We Make Money Not Art Blog states is the “skin” of the building that consists of a transparent plastic material and the structural frame is fabricated from carbon box sections. To prevent radiation of heat into the interior (in summer) and to the exterior (in winter), an electrochromatic foil -which can be controlled electrically- allows the envelope to be darkened in sections or as a whole. The external surface of the envelope also carries solar cells that reduce light transmission by only 20% but supply a large part of the electrical energy demand of the building.” This is an interesting concept and the delicate simplicity of the thin dome surrounding this space are alluring, but the question is whether it is truly a livable space. I am a big advocate of environmentally friendly design and care deeply about the future of our planet, but I wonder if people will really be willing to live in a fish bowl. I am all for giving up comforts, but privacy isn’t first on my list. Esoteric arguments aside, the rendering technique is subtle, yet elegant. It is difficult to model shapes that peel away from the structure and they have done it well. If you are interested in learning this type of technique it is called projecting onto surfaces. Click here for a link to the tutorial.
images from Architectural Record by Werner Sobek’s
by lauren taylor white
Designers: Sci-Arc professors Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu
Work Title: Density Fields
Project Description: Defying classification as either sculpture or architecture, the piece will flex with a gesture that extends imaginary lines of force beyond the small courtyard, seeming to pierce buildings and features in the neighborhood. An “extreme cantilever” built from aluminum and polypropylene rope will hover over the courtyard of Materials & Applications (M&A) in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The Materials and Applications Space wrote in their coverage of this project that the ”installation consists of two basic materials: (1) an aluminum frame extending up from the ground and out into the space, and (2) a series of fine, tensioned cables pulling the cantilever in the opposite direction — forcing it to hover above the ground.”
Technical Critique: These materials and their method for bringing these pieces together is stunning, isn’t it? The tensile appears almost as if it is woven by a beautifully large silk worm who came upon this sculpture in the middle of the night. It appears as if it is really going beyond the extreme of stability, yet its materials are so delicate that it makes you want to forgive the piece for its subtle awkwardness. The thing that always fascinates me is how one goes from the sketch stage to fabrication. It is the single thin tensioned cables acting as detail pieces that make this piece extraordinary. Usually tensile is stretched over the steel as solid fabric, but this effect is unique and delicate. It will be interesting to see what the Oyler Wu Team has in store for the future.
images by The Materials and Applications Space
post by lauren taylor white
Project: Maximillian’s Schell Installation
Designers: Gaston Nogues and Benjamin Ball
Project Description: I just started this section because I would like to identify who I think are going to be the major players in tomorrow’s landscape. My first pick is a guy I worked with at Gehry named Gaston Nogues. He worked for Gehry for year, doing the various sculptural projects that pushed Gehry into the product and furniture design space. Gaston has teamed up with a fellow Gehry colleague, Benjamin Ball to form the Ball-Nogues Studio. Both graduates of Sci-Arc, their creative expression and uninhibted use of materials is emerging as a new form of creative sculptural expression. The project that first caught my attention was their Maximilian’s Schell Intallation. It is a vortex shaped temporary outdoor installation done at the Materials and Applications gallery in Los Angeles. They describe this project as it is “warping the flow of space with a featherweight rendition of a celestial black hole.”
Technical Critique: The project is constructed of tinted Mylar that is a beautiful trasparent yellow color. The shadow is not just a structure for shade, it reflects a beautiful sea of shades of yellow all around the space it covers, making the visitor feel as if he or she is in the vortex itself. It is one of those projects you see and say, wow, I wish I did that and… how the *$&% did they do that? Gaston and Ball clearly have a clever grasp of materials and they are not afraid of doing large scale pieces. They use Catia for rendering the object and then have the pieces fabricated. It is a not only a science to get this correct, you need to have incredible forsight for how it is going to hang in the space. This type of project shows that there is not only creativity behind the piece, it shows that there is an understanding of geometric modeling, and a grasp of real life fabrication. This piece is brilliant. I love the more recent work they are doing as well. They are getting recognition from Dwell, Icon, Metropolis, Surface and Architectural Record just to name a few. Keep an eye out for these guys - they are going to be a force.
*images Ball-Nogues Studio
The work that architects are going for projects in Dubai are incredibly creative. Above is a picture of Zaha Hadid’s Sheikh Zayed Bridge which the International Design Forum on Dubai says “has the prospect of becoming a destination in itself and potential catalyst in the future of urban growth”. This is a reflection of what is Dubai is representing as well. It is a futuristic destination that will inspire creativity in all architects. Dubai has become like the Disneyland for the architect’s imagination to come to life. In the article Skyline of Tomorrow by Steven Zachs discusses how the creative projects are not just pretty pictures. The are buildings that are also being built to be environmentally efficient, following the LEED standards and pushing the boundaries of modern architecture to respond to the future of our world. He includes many pictures of Dubai projects that are happening right now including the signature towers by Zaha Hadid, Foster and Partners, OMA, the list goes on.
This blog aims to investigate the concept of whether this project will actually aid in proposing a solution for global warming. The first thing that comes to mind is the skin of the overhang. The use of greenery to fill and act as shading is more efficient than using glass. The round shape and size seem to give the idea that you could be living under the sea. All in all I feel that this project is an interesting approach to our inevitable future.
