AD Futures #4: SPARC (archdaily.com)

By Amber P

HiDrone - 1st Prize Awarded London Architecture Gallery International Competition 2008

SPARC is a team of international architects at the MIT based in Boston, MA, with a multidisciplinary background at the MIT´s Media Lab. This has resulted on a continuous research on smart/responsive environments applied to the world of architecture, design, urbanism and landscape architecture.

This new relation between technologies and built spaces has opened a wide array of possibilities, that we are just starting to see. And that´s why I choose this practice for this week´s AD Futures.

Profile

SPARC, a team of architects at MIT, is a Boston based research practice dedicated to exploring the world of architecture, design, urbanism and landscape architecture through investigations of design techniques and material technologies with regard to their affect on global culture. We explore the relationships between the body and space through performative designs. SPARC’s commitment to design innovation has its foundation in the accumulative experience of its founders:

Sergio Araya, Architect, MIT
Orkan Telhan, Media Artist, MIT
Duks Koschitz, Architect, MIT
Alexandros Tsamis Architect, MIT

We work on projects at different scales ranging from object design to landscapes. We often collaborate with artists, designers and innovative consultants in the development of inventive solutions for multifaceted projects.

Research

SPARC’s research investigates methods to design and fabricate architecture with different levels of “embedded behavior” or responsiveness by combining different physical material properties of new designed “smarter” composites. This investigation is part of the fundamental interest of SPARC in exploring the relations between body and space through performative design, where designed material becomes an active interface between people and the built environment.

The process for distributing material properties is applied to explore the possibilities of embedding smart behaviors for built components. Aesthetics and function are implicated by this reorganization. SPARC contributes to the professional discourse and the industry, by providing a repertoire of design and building techniques.

HiDrone

1st Prize Awarded London Architecture Gallery International Competition 2008

HiDrone is an adaptable architecture gallery made of hydraulically operating pistons that are virtually and literally reconfigurable, filling and releasing water recycled from the Thames River. HiDrone has two states. When closed, it acts as a 3D screen. When open, it creates occupiable space. The piston operates distinctly at various scales ranging from display unit and furniture, all the way to enclosed, occupiable space. These pistons are pre-stressed with springs, which, when filled with water, assume a closed position. By controlling the amount of water released from the units, the volume of the object acquires different configurations.

In a closed state, the fiber optic light emitters act as voxels programmed to produce visual effects and 3D images for the city of London. In an open state, the pistons form floors, ceilings, and furniture depending on their configuration, creating variable spaces: a cafe, gallery, amphitheater, etc. Depending on the programmatic and climatic needs, the HiDrone is reconfigurable and reprogrammable throughout the course of the year, generating ephemeral public activity as it docks along the river’s edge.

Cutting Edge

1st Prize Awarded Gillette Landmark International Design Competition, 2009

Cutting edge is a sculpture made of 51 stainless steel “blades” stacked on top of each other. Cutting edge suggests an interplay between the materiality of the hard edges and the perception of soft volumes arrested in the metal structure.

Soft shapes emerge as a result of the moire effect created by repetition, and change their appearance when viewed from different vantage points. The repetitive use of “blades” is similar to the way Gillette has used the idea of repetition as a main part of its brand identity.

The proposed structure is made of laser-cut, polished stainless steel plates. Each plate is bent to its shape, polished and stacked in place using spacers made of cylindrical bolt assemblies. The cutting patterns will be generated by flattening the 3d geometry and will be provided by us to the executive party.

10 Best Architecture Songs

This is taken from Cesar Dubó's Flavor Wire (Flavorpill’s Blog). It shows the very best songs related to architecture. See if you agree, or add more of you favs:

1. “Government Center” by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
The only anthem to bureaucracy - and the architectural altar at which all lesser bureaucratic buildings worship, Boston’s Government Center- we’re aware of. Richman and Co. confirm that, even with “a lot of great desks and chairs,” the best way to animate a space is with a dance party.

2. “Don’t Worry About the Government” by the Talking Heads
Architecture as savior: “My building has every convenience, it’s gonna make life easy for me.” If the Bauhaus had a theme song, it’d be this one.

3. “Brick House” by the Commodores
Yes, architecture can be sexy. Brick houses might not really be the hottest buildings out there, but we admit it’s hard to rhyme anything with Guggenheim.

4. “Who Do You Love?” by Bo Diddley
That’s one creepy house.

5. “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles
A song about hipster apartments, falling in love, and bad seating arrangements (hasn’t she heard of Ikea?).

6. “White Room” by Cream
A song about loneliness in a crowd and loneliness alone - and, OK, maybe cocaine? - this one moves between the train station and Clapton’s empty apartment.

7. “Little Room” by the White Stripes
The room in question is definitely a modernist affair. White walls, surely, with maybe a red-trimmed window in the corner. The song’s about how any room can be a prison, and how the grass isn’t always greener, real-estate-wise, no matter what Craigslist says.

8. “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
A love song to suburban domesticity. Bo-ring, but that’s the point.

9. “Mansion on the Hill” by Hank Williams
Architectural envy. Also a metaphor for McMansion soullessness, before it really existed.

10. “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash
The problem with architecture altogether: It doesn’t change, and when it’s bad, you’re stuck inside like Jonah. Outside on the train, “Those people keep a-movin’, and that’s what tortures me.”

Spiralling Skyscraper Farms for a Future Manhattan (Inhabitat.com)

by Mike Chino

As the world’s population continues to skyrocket and cities strain under the increased demand for resources, skyscraper farms offer an inspired approach towards creating sustainable vertical density. One of three finalists in this year’s Evolo Skyscraper Competition Eric Vergne’s Dystopian Farm project envisions a future New York City interspersed with elegantly spiraling biomorphic structures that will harness cutting-edge technology to provide the city with its own self-sustaining food source.

When considering the future needs of our cities, few urban designs address the world’s burgeoning population better than vertical farms. By 2050 nearly 80% of the world’s population will reside in urban centers, and 109 hectares of arable land will be needed to feed them.

Designed for the Hudson Yard area of Manhattan, Eric Vergne’s Dystopian Farm aims to provide New York with a sustainable food source while creating a dynamic social space that integrates producers with consumers. Based upon the “material logic of plant mechanics”, the biomorphic skyscraper is modeled after the plant cells of ferns and provides space for farms, residential areas, and markets. These organic structures will harness systems such as airoponic watering, nutrient technology and controlled lighting and CO2 levels to meet the food demands of future populations.

In addition to infusing dense urban areas with CO2-consuming green spaces, Vergne envisions the structures as dynamically altering the fabric of city life: “Through food production and consumption, this skyscraper sets up a fluctuation of varying densities and collections of people, bringing together different social and cultural groups, creating new and unforseen urban experiences that form and dissipate within the flux of city life.”

This year’s Evolo Skyscraper Competition resulted in an incredible crop of 416 projects from designers, architects, and engineers in 64 different countries. Their website currently lists the finalists, boiled down to three winners and 15 special mentions.

+ Dystopian Farm

+ Evolo Skyscraper Competition

Green Container Housing Demo in Thailand

Designers Site-Specific and Buatalah Studio were asked to design an exhibition around the theme of ‘Green Home Effects’ for a Bangkok home show. According to Site-Specific's website, "to build an earth-friendly house is not as simple as placing some solar panels on your roof."

What they came up with was the concept for exhibition that circled around the 4R’s - reduce, reuse, recycle and renewable. The model home featured many examples of earth-friendly living including the use of grey water, growing your own food and being car smart. It was constructed of 4 reused shipping container and prefabricated modules. The home was designed for the family of three and it is roughly around 100 sq.m. (~1000 SF)

The Designer, Site Specific, "is a research company founded by Chutayaves Sinthuphan to investigate who we are as human through the means of architecture and gastronomy," two topics dear to our hearts.

Judging by the posts on his site, he has been studying the container housing scene closely and has added a significant contribution to the genre.

More pictures and an excellent collection of container housing posts at Eco Living 101 - Model Home. Thanks to tipster and Bangkok architect Jay Laohapong.

Playgrounds in the sky

From Modern Mechanix (very retro)

PLAYGROUNDS IN THE SKY

Here is MI’s hold plan to fight juvenile delinquency and get kids off the street.

THE scene is your city on a sticky, sweltering twilight in midsummer. Lights are beginning to wink on and kids are starting to gather in the streets after the evening meal.

A few years ago this was the danger hour in your city. You remember it well—the nightly muggings would begin about now and young girls would be afraid to venture out alone. Beatings were commonplace and gang wars, fiercely fought with knives and zip-guns, were a frequent occurrence. But things are different now.

Look at the kids emerging from their homes. Instead of congregating at the candy store and pool parlor hatching * up new forms of violence out of boredom, they are now heading for the center of the block. They funnel into a large entrance and are swallowed up inside.

Follow them. They tile into elevators and are whisked upstairs. The doors open and they step into a fantasy land.

There, a few yards from the tenements where they live, on their very roofs, in fact, is a regulation-size baseball diamond with real springy turf! But the kids aren’t interested just now—they played ball all afternoon. Instead, they enter the locker room and in a few minutes are cavorting noisily in a big, broad and very cool swimming pool. Afterwards, they troop onto the ball field, where chairs have been set up, and watch a movie under the stars.

What’s it all about? “This magic land for kids doesn’t exist in my city,” you say. No, it doesn’t—yet!

But it darn well could! It could exist in your town and in hundreds of other communities throughout the nation. Every city could construct huge, all-encompassing playgrounds and recreation centers, using the enormous, readily available space now going completely to waste on the rooftops of their congested areas!

The erection of these play centers on the nation’s rooftops is Mi’s plan to counterattack juvenile delinquency. Granted, it’s a bold, dramatic proposition. It might also, at first glance, border on the impossible. Immense and breath-taking, yes—but impossible? We don’t think so at all.

Does the idea intrigue you? It should because teen-age terrorism is costing you many hundreds of additional tax dollars every year, not to mention the hours of worry for the safety of self, family and property.

Already a million youngsters get into trouble with the police every year. The Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee has just made the startling prediction in a report that by 1960 the figure will skyrocket to 2,250,000!

Listen again to the authorities: “If communities throughout the nation provided more wholesome recreational facilities for their young people, delinquency could be curtailed.” This comes from FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and his conviction that recreation is a big answer is echoed by judges, child guidance experts and police officials from coast to coast.

MI believes the obvious solution is in rooftop playgrounds. No miracles of engineering are needed. Technically, with the know-how we possess right now, no insurmountable problem exists. Declares Henry Kohler, a prominent New York architect who is editor of the Bulletin of the Brooklyn chapter of the American Institute of Architects: “Certainly it can be done. Even though roofs are of different heights, even though some buildings are narrower than others, there is no limit to the size of the playground which can be built. You can build a gym up there or you can construct a center big enough for a baseball field, grandstand included!”

Mr. Kohler, who spent four years with the Seabees designing athletic areas of all types for military personnel in the South Pacific, points out that a 200×250-foot center would be ample to contain all the necessary facilities.

The floor would be a reinforced concrete slab built up from the highest level. Let’s explain: Suppose the site selected consists of five apartment houses—three of them five stories high, two only four stories high. From the top height of five stories, steel supports could be spanned horizontally, meeting similar supports which come up vertically from the lower height of four stories. The reinforced concrete floor is then constructed upon these supports.

The concrete slab would contain radiant heating units for two major reasons: this is the best way of heating a large area and no other plumbing for heating purposes would be necessary. And there is a third reason which the teen-agers would say leads all the rest: In the winter a refrigerant such as freon could be put into the tubing. This would freeze water and the kids would have themselves a fine skating rink.

Now suppose the roof area of the five apartment houses is too small—suppose the entire area just doesn’t add up to a 200×250 playground. Have we met an impasse? Not at all, says Mr. Kohler. The answer: Cantilever out. This means that horizontal supports are extended outward from the edge of the roof and cantilever supports are introduced from the sides of the building.

When the dust of construction work clears away, what will the finished product be like?

There would be a baseball field for the playing area. Wooden flooring could be applied in sections over the turf and in a short time the baseball diamond could be transformed into a basketball court, a floor for a track meet or a dance floor. Along the sides removable stands could accommodate hundreds of spectators for neighborhood tournament games.

There would be a swimming pool, showers, locker rooms and even a solarium. There could easily be an ice skating rink in winter, as previously explained, tennis and handball courts, a raised stage for amateur theatricals, ping-pong, shuffleboard and gymnasium equipment.

Off to the sides, behind huge folding doors, there could be separate, smaller rooms. These would be studios for arts and crafts, painting, sculpture, photography, music and rehearsals. There could be a wood and metal working shop, a library and study rooms.

The total cost for a playground like this? An estimated $1,000,000, and a bargain at the price.

There would be some problems to surmount, of course. Legal questions, such as liability in case of accidental injury, would have to be straightened out in advance. Zoning problems would have to be handled. Code requirements of the local departments of housing and buildings would have to be met. Money must be raised.

Recently, four reform school teeners appeared before a youth forum in New York and, sitting behind a screen to protect their identities, advised their elders on how to deal with kids. Their unanimous conclusion: More young people would stay out of trouble if they were loved by their parents and “had decent l and interesting places to play after school.”

Anyone who has ever had a taste of the misery, degradation and boredom of an alley adolescence can testify that this is a realistic suggestion. The clincher came when the New York State Attorney General told the youths that their suggestion was the same as that offered by a panel of social workers and public officials not long before at a hearing on the problems of juvenile delinquency.

How about it? Had a bellyful of terror in your city’s streets? Then why not give rooftop playgrounds some long and serious thought? •