Rumoer 73 : Futurity | Bout | Tu Delft

periodical for the Building Technologist

73. Futurity

LETS DESIGN THE FUTURE TOGETHER

Are you driven to design the environment of tomorrow?

Ben jij gemotiveerd om de omgeving van morgen te ontwerpen?

Let’s meet.

www.inbo.com

RUMOER 73 - FUTURITY 2th Quarter 2020 26th year of publication Praktijkvereniging BouT Room 02.West.090 Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Julianalaan 134 2628 BL Delft The Netherlands tel: +31 (0)15 278 1292 fax: +31 (0)15 278 4178 www.praktijkverenigingbout.nl rumoer@praktijkverenigingbout.nl instagram: @bout_tud Printing www.druktanheck.nl ISSN number 1567-7699 Editorial Committee Aditya Soman Anagha Yoganand Akash Changlani Fredy Fortich Javier Montemayor Leos Kiana Mousavi Prateek Wahi (Editor-in-Chief) Sophie van Hattum Cover Page Future role of an Architect in 2000 as

envisioned by Villemard in 1901.

Source: www.upworthy.com RUMOER is the official periodical of Praktijkvereniging BouT, student and practice association for Building Technology (AE+T), at the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft (Delft University of Technology).

This magazine is spread among members and relations.

Circulation: The RUMOER appears 3 times a year, with more than 150 printed copies and digital copies made available to members through online distribution.

Membership Amounts per academic year (subject to change): € 10,- Students € 30,- PhD Students and alumni € 30,- Academic Staff Single copies: Available at Bouw Shop (BK) for : € 5,- Students €10,- Academic Staff , PhD Students and alumni

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For more info contact BouT: info@praktijkverenigingbout.nl If you are interested in BouT’s sponsor packages, send an e-mail to: finances@praktijkverenigingBouT.nl Disclaimer The editors do not take any responsibility for the photos and texts that are displayed in the magazine. Images may not be used in other media without permission of the original owner. The editors reserve the right to shorten or refuse publication without prior notification.

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The Rumoer Committee is open to all students. Are you a creative student that wants to learn first about the latest achievements of TU Delft and Building Technology industry?

Come join us at our weekly meeting or email us @ rumoer@praktijkverenigingbout.nl

72 | Kit-of-Parts

CONTENT Articles 06 Leave your Mark, Mark the Change -Maarten Inge Housz, Physee Technologies

16

10

The path toward simulation-based Architectural design -Rhys Goldstein & Kean Walmsley, Autodesk Research ; Divyae Mittal, MSc. Student, TU Delft

34

Simple solutions for complex issues -Di Fang, ABT (Oosterhoff Group)

38

Trash Track -MIT Senseable City Laboratory

Projects 16

United Plastic Nation -FREISCHAERLER arch

22 Architectural Hybridization -Ujjwal Dawar 44 Green Float -Masaki Takeuchi, SHIMIZU Corporation 52 To infinity & beyond -Agatha Mintus 62 The Spherical Mirror Facade -Sorba

BouT

52

4

28

EMERGEN|SEA|:Bout Symposium -Yarai Zenteno

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Board 25 Signing Off !!!

-Aditya Parulekar

Editorial

EDITORIAL Dear Reader, It is with great pleasure I introduce you to the last Rumoer issue elaborated under my lead. I would like to express my gratitude to our sponsors, authors, and my dearest committee members for their contribution in Rumoer. I would also like to thank my board members for giving me critical feedback and support to improve the quality of publication continuously. With this, I share my wishes and success to the next editor in chief for taking Rumoer even further.

Global challenges such as Climate change, scarcity of materials and resources, the rapid growth of population, will shape the way we think and design our environment. While the continuous progression of technology in design trends such as robotics, optimization, IoT, and machine learning is challenging the traditional roles of a designer.

Therefore, issue 73rd will focus on the future of the designers. Is their role changing radically and adapting to such uncertain scenarios? Or how design and the designers are shaping the future?

With the plethora of global challenges and different design trends, does the designer of today see the future as a ground for providing answers or posing more questions?

The issue includes the contribution from academicians, industry partners, design firms, and graduate students who envision the future role

Rumoer committee 2019-2020

of designers. The issue also incorporates various innovation leaders from MIT, Shimizu Corporation, Autodesk, ABT to investigate the different perspectives in the building technology fraternity.

The 73rd issue fit well amidst the pandemic, which has engulfed the entire globe and has forced the authorities to take severe actions against the spread of COVID-19. The situation has disrupted the FUTURITY of our lifestyle, and it will undoubtedly have an impact on the professional aspects of society. With this issue, we hope to question our future as a designer amongst these global issues and trends.

I hope you enjoy reading it !!

Prateek wahi Editor-in-chief | Rumoer 2019-2020

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Leave your Mark, Mark the Change Maarten Ingen Housz, Physee Technologies

Explorations into the possible future roles of architects are as hip as they are necessary. Worldwide, architectural institutions, associations, faculties and the like have hosted lectures, conferences and even games on the futurity of the architectural practice, oftentimes resulting in case-studies and lookouts for each identified role.

During these efforts, possible roles of the architect are often explored and defined relative to other specialized, commercial or political stakeholders in construction. Sometimes, it seems that exploring the architect’s role is, in fact, a search for relevance in an industry that doesn’t automatically assume anymore the added value of the architect’s skill and architecture as its product.

How useful the discussion on the architect’s role may be, for aspiring architecture students it may only add uncertainty and confusion to the one question that keeps them busy anyway: When I’m able to do anything, how will I shape my profession?

Experiment with Purpose You are young, intelligent, creative and a little

You’ll probably have your answer as soon as you can look

perfectionist. You have an eye for details, ideas and ideals.

back on a substantial career.

You know enough about everything to make your design

In the meantime, as an experiment, try to design your

work, but working on designing everything is enough and

architectural detail with either one of the following

to spare. The world around you demands that you take a

purposes in mind and follow it blindly:

standpoint. Preferably one that remains within budget.

Conceptualism has helped you to limit your options and

•

Drawing attention and clearly Leaving your Mark in the built environment

guide your design, but your curiosity beyond this principle remains.

• So, how to go about it?

6

Solving a societal problem and clearly Marking the Change in the built environment

Scientific

and

Mark the Change technological

advancements

in

an

For the second principle, forget about yourself and focus

economies of scale dynamic have fragmented the

on societal challenges and changes that are needed

complete building construction supply chain into

to solve them. For centuries, your predecessors have

highly specialized companies, all delivering a specific

delivered structures that fulfill the needs of society.

component or service to the built environment. The

Castles, housing, towers, factories, and all other creations

amount of professionals that can possibly contribute to

that humankind has used to seek shelter, live, reign,

the built environment is only increasing. Most of these

express identity, produce, save, exploit and inspire, were

people will know more than you about the functionality

intentionally designed and constructed.

Company

Leave your Mark

and possibilities of the components and services that they’re delivering.

As you know, some of these human activities are currently under threat and they need you to respond:

However, you are in the privileged position to combine them all into one structure. You have the ability to

•

Seeking shelter is under threat, as people are

materialize and construct an idea in a coherent way. If you

increasingly migrating, moving to cities and growing

wish to keep grip on the integrity of your design and Make

out of poverty. All while the world population is

your Mark, you should surround yourself with suppliers

growing. The need for affordable housing is imminent.

in an early stage of your process and choose a way of working with them: •

•

time indoors, cut off from their environment that could provide them with fresh air, water and sunlight.

Take suppliers’ components and/or services as a

Day to day living needs to be reconnected to the outside

basis of your design elements and tools and push the

world while ensuring comfort.

boundaries of what’s possible with them.

• •

Living is under threat, as people spend most of their

Saving is under threat, as buildings and the

Invent details, make mock-ups and challenge

construction industry are responsible for around

suppliers to mass-produce them

30% of global energy consumption and around 40% of global CO2 emissions, while extracting many

Leaving your Mark means taking the lead in making an

materials from the earth. We need our industry to

impactful design.

consume less.

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Make it comprehensible by solely focusing on Marking

computational.

the Change and activating your specific skill that has

More important are the design elements, where 4.0

just taken off: the ability to design a sustainable and

technologies refer to digital, material, physical and

responsible built environment using integrated 4.0

biological building functions, expressed respectively by

technologies.

for example smart sensors, transparent wood, geothermal installations and green walls. These elements can be used

Of course, there are the design tools like the already

together to conceive structures that are reproducible,

widely propagated visual programming and “older”

healthy, comfortable and energy-efficient. Maybe even

concepts like FabLabs, 3D printing, CAD and BIM. All

self-repairing?

these tools have proven themselves and have ended the digital illiteracy of most designers for good. Design and

Marking the Change means taking the lead in designing

architectural production processes are now inherently

impact.

Example: the building envelope

integral

unique original

Impactful Design provoking

Innovation without Compromise changing

conceptual

Leave your Mark

relevant

challenging comfortable

conformist functional

Don’t end up here sufficient

reusable

flexible

Designed Impact scalable sustainable

just

Mark the Change Figure 1. Leave your Mark, Mark the Change © Physee

8

The near-endless possibilities that sensors, data analysis and systems control now give us, force us to think about how we can harvest smartly from outside climate conditions and how we can redesign the part of a building that has traditionally cut us off, "protected" us, from the world around us; the building envelope.

When architectural engineers, building physicists, facade contractors and suppliers combine forces, the building envelope can be turned into the main climate control platform of the building. Following this, the future of energy-efficient, comfortable and healthy buildings and climate systems can be purely based on time-, location- and activity-specific human demand and natural supply. Like a human skin, roofs and facades will locally sense both demand (inside) and supply (outside) of all aspects that determine the energy-efficiency, comfort and healthiness of living and working environments.

Company

Innovation without Compromise Of course, details and constructions that either Make your Mark or that Mark the Change were never separated. But ensuring an integration will remain challenging. When succeeding, it will bring you to a sweet spot: Innovation without Compromise. Here, the design and the solution are merged and they strengthen each other.

Indeed, maybe this brings us back to tectonics in architecture, but that’s another topic. More important is that a new generation of buildings is arising in which elements like electrification and control of sound, light and air are the main drivers behind things like facade detailing, office space set-ups, wall texturing, HVAC dimensioning and so on.

” As for me, I hope to see a future in which designers, architects and architectural engineers are the master-integrators of sustainable 4.0 technologies provided by specialized suppliers. It is our shared

Figure 6. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Maarten Ingen Housz B.Sc – Architecture M.Sc – Industrial Mangement

Maarten Ingen Housz studied Architecture (BSc) at TU Delft and, after changing his perspective, Industrial Management (MSc) at KTH in Stockholm. He has since taken on commercial/ technical roles at building envelope solution providers in

responsibility to transform our industry into the most

Sweden and the Netherlands. At PHYSEE Technologies, he is

eye-catching, responsible and sustainable one.

currently co-developing the PHYSEEbility Check, a parametric

Let us use these times to prepare for collaboration,

analysis and sales tool that quantifies and visualizes the

acceleration and impact!

project-specific benefits of PHYSEE’s SmartSkin solutions. m.ingenhousz@physee.eu

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73 | Futurity

The path toward Simulation-based Architectural design Rhys Goldstein, Principal Research Scientist, Autodesk Research Kean Walmsley, Platform Architect & Evangelist, Autodesk Research Divyae Mittal (Student, M.Sc in Building Technology, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft)

The role of the designer will go through radical changes in the future. Yet the primary goal will stay the same: to make the built environment good for people. Architects will still want to make buildings and cities visually pleasing and easy to navigate. They will still strive to make individual workplaces productive and free of unnecessary distractions. They will still try to make social areas vibrant but not excessively crowded. Objectives like these will mostly remain the same. How designers pursue these objectives, on the other hand, will change.

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Introduction

the tradeoffs between one design and another, hopefully

In the future, a large selection of computational analyses

preventing the most user-unfriendly designs from being

will be readily available to evaluate designs based on

built. The same technology will allow designers to consider

various measures of human experience. Computers will

a far greater diversity of options than is currently possible,

help designers answer questions such as the following.

which should lead to better environments and improved

How will people experience a built environment? How

wellbeing. New space analysis tools are already starting

will they travel from one place to another? What will they

to change the design process. Yet these tools only scratch

see? What will they hear? How much daylight will they

the surface of what is to come. As the analysis of human

be exposed to at various times of the day? Will they be

experience begins to incorporate the time dimension and

comfortable? Will they be healthy? Will they have privacy

systems modeling approaches, architectural design will

when appropriate? Will they feel socially engaged when

become a largely simulation-based discipline. Here we’ll

appropriate? Computer-generated insights pertaining to

explore this transition by looking at a few projects led by

human experience will increase architects’ awareness of

Delft University and Autodesk Research.

Currently, efforts to quantify human experience in built environments tend to focus on geometrical analyses, ignoring the dimension of time. A well-known example of such an analysis is the isovist, the region of space visible from a single point. The name isovist comes from the space syntax community, which has pioneered a wide range of analyses based on the geometry of building floor plans and urban neighborhoods. As of the past few years, isovists and other spatial analyses have been used to compute metrics for generative design projects, a notable example being the layout of Autodesk’s Toronto office. In this project, the arrangement of meeting rooms and working areas was suggested by a computer in order to minimize visual distractions and maximize views to the outside, among other goals.

To help architectural researchers and designers pioneer their generative design workflows, Autodesk Research recently developed the SpaceAnalysis package for the Dynamo parametric design tool. SpaceAnalysis performs pathfinding, visibility, and acoustics analyses from which various experience-related metrics can be computed.

The tool uses a grid-based approach for all three types of analysis. Travel barriers, visual barriers, and sound barriers such as walls and columns are represented by severing connections between neighboring grid points.

This results in a lattice suitable for various types of calculations. The grid-based approach makes it easy to feed geometry into the SpaceAnalysis tool and interpret the data that comes out.

Academic

From Space Analysis to Simulation-Based Design

By Rhys Goldstein and Kean Walmsley

Although much can be achieved by analyzing space alone, certain human experiences can only be fully captured through the simulation of scenarios involving events

Figure 1. Autodesk’s Toronto office is an example of generative design based on spatial analyses. The arrangement of meeting rooms and working areas was suggested by a computer to meet several objectives, such as maximizing views to the outside.

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Figure 2 (Top). An example of pathfinding and visibility analyses produced in Dynamo using the SpaceAnalysis package.

Figure 3 (Bottom). Example of day-today activities being simulated over time.

The simulation shows customers (yellow) and employees (purple) moving through a hypothetic hotel. Green glowing effects indicate windows being opened to cool the indoor environment.

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But there is a wide range of human experiences that emerge in all types of built environments as people go through their day-to-day activities. Most day-to-day scenarios are not captured by existing simulation tools, and designers are not always aware of the impact of their designs on the human experience. Incorporating time is the next step in the progression toward simulation-based architectural design.

Systems Modeling for Built Environments

By Rhys Goldstein and Kean Walmsley Buildings and cities should be regarded not as physical structures, but rather as systems that continuously progress from one state to the next. The design should account for processes such as human perception and decision-making, weather, light, thermodynamics, sound, transportation systems, and building control systems. If computers are to help a designer analyze a built environment as a system, we must be able to simulate these types of processes and the interactions between them.

Simulations are often developed in an ad-hoc manner.

One starts by modeling one aspect of a system, then adds another aspect, and another, and another. Every time a new aspect is added to the simulation, the code becomes more complicated and difficult to work with. Before long, the simulator becomes so unwieldy that no one is

willing to enhance it further. Progress slows to a halt, and eventually, someone decides to rewrite everything from scratch. And then the process repeats.

Academic

that unfold over time. For example, analyzing travel paths can give one a sense of which areas in a building may become congested. Yet to confidently predict when and where crowding will occur, and how severe it will be, it is necessary to simulate people moving through a building over time. Crowd simulation tools exist and are used to design transportation hubs and analyze building evacuations.

To help researchers move beyond ad-hoc practices and adopt a more scalable approach to simulation development, Autodesk Research has been investigating modeling theories that date back to the 1970s. On such theory is the Discrete Event Systems Specification or DEVS. The main insight behind DEVS is that more-or-less all simulations involving the advancement of time can be represented in a common form. This form is essentially a state machine, except that the state is augmented with time variables.

In an effort to make the theory easier to interpret, researchers at Autodesk designed a symmetrical version of DEVS involving four types of ports and four types of event handlers. Two of the ports are flow ports, which are similar to the ports used in dataflow visual programming tools like Dynamo and Grasshopper. These ports are associated with event handlers that are executed at the beginning and end of a simulation. What distinguishes DEVS from dataflow programming are the two message ports and their associated event handlers. They work as follows: 1. messages from other models trigger unplanned events; 2. time variables within the model are used to trigger planned events; 3. planned events can send messages to other models.

This mechanism allows communication between simulation models to be coordinated by a single modelagnostic simulator.

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The vision is to have different experts work on models of people, models of weather, thermodynamics models, control system models, etc., then connect the different models together and simulate entire buildings or urban communities. At Autodesk Research, we wanted to make this systems modeling approach available to the architectural research community, so we developed an open-source framework called SyDEVS. The framework allows people to implement models in our symmetrical version of DEVS, connect them, and run simulations.

SyDEVS is written in C++. It is available at https://autodesk.github.io/sydevs/.

Figure 4. This symmetrical version of DEVS is intended to provide a common form for all simulation models.

Case Study: Distraction in Office Environments

By Divyae Mittal Studies show that humans typically spend 87% of their lifetime indoors. Half of this time can be considered spent at institutions like schools, offices, and leisure places.

Thus, it is quite clear that the experience of occupants in these institutions plays a vital role in their productivity and performance. One such example is the modern workspace. In the last 50 years or so, there has been a rise in the number of open-plan offices. This rise is attributed to increased financial returns associated with that type of space. At the same time, these offices are also considered very distracting and noisy.

An often-cited reason for these distractions is noise due to employee interactions and movement. The evaluation of such a problem is done right now through a postoccupancy survey, which makes it difficult to make any design changes due to the high cost involved in later design stages. So, what if we can predict the user experience of the space in the early design stage? What if we can analyze the spatial layout considering user movement patterns, personalities, and reactions?

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Figure 5. The view of the selected case study. Source: Author

Figure 6. Case Study with the paths analysis of occupants from different work desks to meeting area and pantry area.

The pathfinding component of the SpaceAnalysis package is used to trace possible paths for the

employees in the office layout. The paths are used in the SyDEVS framework to perform user movement.

The studies about human perception to sound, the interaction between employees, and the reaction to the disturbance provide a logical framework to perform the simulation using cause-effect loops.

Thus, the simulation workflow, which now takes only movement and sound into account, holds the possibility of extension into aspects like energy modeling, environmental analysis, and thermal behavior of users.

Systems modeling frameworks like SyDEVS, combined with SpaceAnalysis tools, will provide architects with a way to study their designs through the simulation of different scenarios and activities.

Rhys Goldstein is a simulation expert

Kean Walmsley is a platform architect

Divyae Mittal is a master student

at Autodesk Research who specializes

and evangelist working for Autodesk

pursuing Building Technology track

in

Research. He blogs and tweets about

at Faculty of Architecture and Built

of

developing with Forge, AutoCAD and

Environment, TU Delft. He is primarily

simulation to architectural design. His

other Autodesk technology, especially

interested in improving user experiences

main interest is helping designers create

with respect to the Internet of Things,

in the built environment through modern

more compelling and sustainable urban

Generative Design, Virtual Reality, and

technology. He is trying to make it

environments by modeling buildings

Augmented Reality. Kean co-developed

possible by combining knowledge of

and cities as systems. Rhys is the lead

the SpaceAnalysis tool and has written

computational design, simulation, and

developer of the SyDEVS framework

extensively about its use.

psychology.

modeling

programming,

paradigms, and

visual

applications

Academic

In a graduation thesis project at the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, Divyae is trying to develop a simulation workflow by combining SyDEVS, SpaceAnalysis, and an acoustical simulation package with studies of environmental psychology. The recent development of agent-based modeling allows such evaluations to be performed, using pre-existing data and theories from psychological researches at an early design stage. Each agent is given behavioral traits or rules according to collected data, and simulation is performed to study patterns and cumulative results that may arise during the actual use of the space.

and was part of the team that created the SpaceAnalysis package for Dynamo.

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Figure 1. United Plastic Nation, Streetscape

Projects

United Plastic Nation An Architectural Polemic

FREISCHAERLER arch, Germany-Australia

Looking up a newsfeed in 2017, one might have been thinking to see a perfect recipe for Armageddon: Wars, poverty, environmental destruction.

Three subjects covered the news for months: the refugee crisis with millions of people being displaced from their homes, the pollution with (micro-)plastics of our rivers and oceans, and kind of a financial crisis, at least for some - the publication of the so-called “Panama Papers”, which unveiled the dimensions of illicit money being transferred to offshore tax havens by the world’s richest and greediest.

In that time the United plastic Nation (UPN) concept was initiated by an open competition call. Designers were asked to imagine an island of 1km2, not dedicated to any specific use or programme, the island could be anything and be placed anywhere.

Concept Idea In that context, we felt the answer to this brief couldn’t just be a tropical paradise or a designer’s superstructure fantasy but rather had to employ the tools of architecture to tackle some of our most pressing issues. What if we could take greed, ignorance and violence and create something positive? What if we could turn ocean garbage into the promised land? What if we could turn refugees into citizens? And why can’t we turn tax criminals into social investors?

So we programmed our island as the antipode - an evergrowing structure made out of ocean plastics, floating with the ocean currents and slowly turning circles around the globe, creating a safe haven for the displaced and dispossessed and the squirrelled away fortunes of the world's richest alike. The floating refugee tax haven plastic smart eco future metropolis, so to say.

Figure 2: First Sketch

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Facts The sheer dimensions of these issues are shocking. About 65 mio. people are currently displaced, a number equal to the population of Great Britain. An estimated 100 mio. tons of plastics are swimming in the oceans. Growing every year by another 8 mio. tons, a mass equivalent to 1000 Eiffel towers. And then there is this huge amount of money - some conservative estimated 2 trillion $ US total - which is deprived from official budgets and can not be used anymore to fight these and many other issues in the world. A sum bigger than all the value the world’s largest economy can generate in one year, about 1.15 times the GDP of the USA. Staggering numbers, but also proof that drastic action is needed and that the idea is theoretically viable. A medium sized country could be populated with the number of people in most urgent need of a safe place to live in. There is enough plastics in the world’s oceans to build entire cities. And last but not least an entire nation state could be financed with profits from the tax evasion industry.

Figure 3. Concept Diagram

Description The UPN is initiated with the deployment of small floating platforms into international waters. These platforms are equipped to collect plastics from the ocean surface and filter it out of the deeper waters. The plastic is then cleaned and refined in order to be used as building material. Fully automated swarms of robotic drones continuously print this material layer by layer into an inhabitable structure.

Eventually, an ultra dense urban fabric measuring 1km2 in size evolves. The first district of the United Plastic Nation.

While growing, the island passes by all continents and collects its colonists. It links regions of poverty and despair with regions of wealth and prosperity. It occupies the space in between physically as well as on a socioeconomic level, thus providing a safe haven for those who had to run from despair and don’t have any access to prosperity. The gravity of the crisis demands fast growth.

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Figure 4. Travel Route of the UPN.

Positioned in international waters, the UPN is bound by no national or supranational laws, thus enabling it to function as a tax haven and generate revenue. This will facilitate the first phase of growth, at a later stage the industry can be diversified. The UPN’s connectivity to all regions of the world, its cultural diversity and architectural peculiarity, its dynamic and highly motivated population predestine it for industries like logistics and transportation, culture and tourism, innovation and science.

In the plan view the districts of the UPN develop in an exactly concentric shape. Parallel, they grow equally in height and depth, under and over the surface, gradually rising in height and density from the outer perimeter to the center. On the one hand the island’s design is governed by a rigid, quadratic, 3 dimensional grid. On the other hand its ever-growing nature and its modular DNA creates a structure that is continuously in flux.

A clear hierarchy is horizontally imposed. The district develops linearly alongside the increasing density. From the outer breakwater and industrial ring, with recreational and residential zones in between, to the commercial, public and cultural center in the middle of the island.

The vertical zoning develops complementary. Starting at the bottom with the industrial plastic processing facilities at the deepest point and the banking servers directly above where the light is sparse and the temperatures ideal for cooling. Followed by the public zones on surface levels and the residential areas above. The top layer, where sun exposure is best, is reserved for aquaponic farming.

Projects

When the first district has reached its capacity at 100,000 inhabitants, more islands are built. At this stage the UPN becomes attractive not only to those without a choice but also for those who seek opportunities. Ultimately a global network of floating cities circles the oceans. A society of true urban nomads is created, not moving from city to city, but moving their city themselves.

Yellow: Wave Power Plants/Breakwater - Green: Recreational Park White: Residential-Purple: Industrial/Harbour-Blue: Political/CulturalRed: Financial/Commercial

Figure 5. UPN Zoning Map

Several transport networks are woven throughout the city. Multiple forms of transport are provided, from metro tunnels under the surface, boats on the surface, pedestrian zones and bicycle highways to a drone network in the skies.

The island’s design is optimised to withstand the conditions on the high seas. The circular shape offers no weak point to the waves, the organisation along the vertical axis provides stability and balance, like the keel and the mast provide stability in sailing boats. The structure always stays afloat and can’t capsize.

The concept can be realised with existing real world technologies or with those which will be available in a near future. The collection of ocean plastic is currently successfully tested with several prototypes. The advances in robotics in building are rapid and this technology will soon reshape the whole industry. Drones are already part of our all day life and can be easily combined with AI and swarm intelligence. 3D printing is increasingly implemented into the building production and has already

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been used to print entire houses out of plastics. International cyber linked high speed finance has been a reality for a long time and consists nowadays essentially out of server farms and algorithms. The concept of harvesting the wave power has been around since 1890. Several working wave power plants have already been built and some also function as a breakwater. The urban farming industry is quickly evolving and even though it’s still mostly in a start-up phase there are already a few large scale urban farms in operation.

As fantastic as the concept of a floating plastic metropolis might sound, it employs a fundamentally architectural approach on a technical, spatial and functional level. Like any structure, the UPN is based on simple physical laws and has to adhere to its own idiosyncratic rules and constraints.

The goal is to demonstrate that not the idea of a floating plastic mega metropolis is outrageous, but the scale of the global crises we as humans cause. At the same time the concept gives proof that we not only possess the knowledge but also the means to resolve these crises.

Figure 6. Schematic Section + Functional Diagram

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As convincing as this concept theoretically may sound, there remains a bunch of unresolved questions. Technical ones such as the structural integrity, quality, durability or toxicity of ocean plastics can probably be resolved with clever engineering.

Far more pressuring are ethical questions though. Do we want to undermine international jurisdiction? Are we not amplifying the crisis when we promote tax evasion? Are we creating a floating trash slum, an offshore refugee ghetto? Eventually, we have to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a world in which the United Plastic Nation is the best solution or if it is not too late to deal with the mess we have caused in front of our own doorstep.

“Ten years ago United Plastic Nation – a sentient, forevermorphing floating city fashioned from plastic bags, fake news and dark web transactions - would be laughed off as fiction. Yet today, FREISCHAERLER’s concept feels freakily prescient, in a William Gibson-kind of way.”

Competition Projects

Or as Rory Olcayto, former director of Open City London puts it:

Critique

2020 © FREISCHAERLER arch

That said, our objective in this project was not to seriously propose a quick fix to problems of global scale and complexity. This concept is not meant to be built, it is meant to contribute to a public debate. We see this work as an architectural polemic. A critique of the existing conditions with the tools of an architect: scaling, contextualising, transforming and visualising. Ultimately we hope to provoke thought and debate. And even more importantly, to instigate optimism, create a positive attitude and to inspire out of the box thinking.

Figure 7. UPN Skyline

F R E I S C H AE R L E R arch is a German-Australian architecture & design collective based in Berlin and Melbourne. It was founded by Noël Schardt and Bjørn Mündner in 2010. Both have a Diploma/M.arch degree in architecture from Technische Universität Berlin and some 10 years of practice in architecture, interior & corporate design and conceptual thinking.

Noël and Bjørn have extensively travelled and collected work experience in many different countries, always trying to incorporate this knowledge into their projects. Projects varying Bjørn Muendner

Noël Schardt

Dipl.Ing Arch.

M.Arch, B.Arch

in topic and size reach from a resort hotel design study in China, to Universal Music’s staff canteen in Berlin, to a mud brick + concrete house prototype in Burkina Faso and various concepts for revitalising industrial sites. www.freischaerler.archi

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Architectural Hybridization Ujjwal Dawar

United Nations has projected that the current world population of 7.3 Billion People is expected to increase and reach 9.7 Billion by the year 2050. This draft increase in population will lead to more consumption of resources creating immense land pressure in cities. In the past few years many innovations such as vertical cities, floating cities, etc have been implemented to reduce this land pressure.

Hybrid infrastructure could be another key innovation to control the expansion of cities and reduce this land pressure, the idea, is not to design more but rather to re-think the current process of infrastructure design to make it more efficient and sustainable.

Introduction Today, a hybrid building is understood as a building in

This graduation project focused on identifying this

which certain contrasting functions come together and

language of architecture and then hybridizing it to

create a habitable block. Although these programmes

evolve the built environment. In this case this process of

function completely independent to each other, similar

hybridization has been demonstrated though a case of a

to adding all the ingredients of a dish together in a pot

Cultural Centre in form of a Hy-bridge (bridge + building)

but not cooking it. These buildings should rather be

commonly known as an ‘Inhabitable Bridge’ in the east of

Biologically, hybrids are formed by altering or hybridizing the DNA sequence of two organisms which leads to genetic variation, is it possible to apply this process in

Biologically, hybrids are formed by altering or

architecture and experiment if the architectural specie

hybridizing the DNA sequence of two organisms

will survive or not. Although to start this process of

which leads to genetic variation, is it possible to

hybridization it becomes necessary to first understand

apply this process in architecture and experiment if

the ‘DNA’ of an architectural specie, also understood as

the architectural specie will survive or not.

the language of architecture.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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referred to as ‘mixed-use’ buildings than a hybrid block.

The Language of Architecture, the thought

Inhabitable bridges, also known as ‘Living Bridges’ or ‘Hybrid bridges’ can be understood as a hybrid infrastructural element which apart from connecting two points across an obstacle is also used to Inhabit multiple static functions across its span.

A language could be understood as a series of symbols which are when put together in a certain way start to make sense. This sensible composition is known as a ‘syntagma’ or a ‘syntax’. This is repeated at various scales to form words using letters, sentences using words, paragraphs using sentences and so on. This composition of symbols at various scales can also be observed in architecture, where elements combine to make spaces, spaces combine to make buildings, buildings combine to make an urban fabric and so on.

A series of hybrid bridges had been built from the 11th to the 18th Century, most of these living bridges did not survive due to a series of disasters, although some of them still exist like Ponte Vecchio in Florence or Ponte Rialto in Venice. The idea of Hybrid Bridges seems to be lost since the 19th Century as, once expansion was possible outside fort walls, land pressure decreased, hence the need for space optimizing hybrid infrastructure vanished.

Although in the last few years (2009 – 2019), with increasing land pressure, technological advancements and high density, inhabitable bridges are again stepping into the built environment after approximately 200 years.

Graduate

Inhabitable Bridges, the definition

Figure 1. Isometric View of the proposed inhabitable bridge in Amsterdam, Netherlands connecting the neighbourhood of Sluisbuurt to Sporenburg

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Various theories in linguistics such as semiotics and semantics attempt to understand the relationship between a symbol, it's meaning and it's interpreted meaning.

Rene Margritte, a Belgian Surrealist has questioned the relationship between a symbol and its interpreted meaning in most of his art works questioning the perception of an image. In one of his paintings, ‘the treachery of images’ he paints a pipe and writes under it, “this is not a pipe” explaining that this is just a representation of a pipe, a symbol, a pre-conceived notion of how a pipe is supposed to look like. What if designers are limiting the potential of an architectural object by defining it and creating a construct? What would happen if this definition breaks? Post-modernism and Deconstructivism partly deals with this stream of linguistics and architecture.

In the book ‘The language of postmodern architecture’ Charles Jencks argues that modern architecture has limited its vocabulary which is resulting in stagnancy in the exploration of forms and spatial configurations. Is it possible to expand the existing architectural language by hybridizing the existing vocabulary?

Darwinism, the materialization The design process of the bridge can be understood in two layers, firstly, the structural skeleton followed by the habitable fabric on the deck of the bridge. Structurally the cable stayed bridge consists of two pylons and a clear span of 250m between them acting as the fairway. The form of the bridge has been designed in a way that it starts a semiotic argument between the object, its meaning and the meaning that is perceived. By definition, according to Collin’s Dictionary, “A bridge is a structure that is built over a railway, river, or road so that people or vehicles can cross from one side to the other.”

Symbolically a bridge is seen as a pathway that connects two ends. What would happen if the tension in the definition of a bridge’s definition is broken down i.e. what if a bridge does not connect two ends or is not perceived as if it is not connecting two ends of the canal. The tension in the definition will break and the meaning of a ‘bridge’ will fall apart.

Figure 2. Plan View for the proposed hybrid structure in Amsterdam, Netherlands showcasing the punctured character (courtyard) of the habitable space.

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Graduate Figure 3. Matrix for the hybridization of Elements of Space Making considered as the DNA of the spatial system in this condition.

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To initiate the process of hybridization (to design the urban fabric on the deck of the bridge), the vocabulary or the ‘DNA’ of the architectural species has to be defined as the basic elements of space making (door, window, stair, ramp, roof, floor and wall) to study the spatial morphology which the specie will go through. Now these elements of space making can be hybridized with each other to generate 49 (7 x 7) 1st generation hybrid elements/vocabulary as seen in the matrix.

As observed only certain hybrid elements amongst these 49 variations survive and are functionally usable.

Now, these 1st generation elements can be again hybridized with each other to generate 2nd generation elements and the process can be carried on until a desired habitable space of the required scale and function is achieved. The process is inspired from the Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest and Darwin’s tree of life where all species reduce to a single cell as a common ancestor which is defined as a ‘point’ in an architectural space.

This process is carried on until the entire habitable deck of the bridge is achieved. As a result of this process, there is no distinction between a door and a staircase, a door and a window, a staircase and a window, the floor and the roof as all of them start behaving a one singular element improving the dynamics of the space. Similarly, the pylon of the bridge can be hybridized with elements catering to vertical circulation (ramp, staircase and services) in this system.

Figure 4. Exploded Isometric View showcasing the dynamism achieved in the interior spaces of the inhabitable bridge by hybridizing the elements of space making through a systematic process influence by Darwin's Theories.

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In this case, how would we define these hybridized elements?

the entire organizational system. These configurations can't be seen in a plan but as experiences in integrated

The intention of this project was to materialize a bridge

sections, morphing along the way, generating a range

that could evolve to become 'more than a bridge.' This

of unique spatial experiences. Due to morphing of these

hybridized bridge serves as an infrastructural element that enables physical transition while nurturing cultural manifestations. The Hybridge exhibits a dynamic, unique spatial language at every scale achieved through the process of hybridization. This language creates a spatial drama which is very anonymous in its nature.

The developed language can be used to design any architectural form with any function.

Graduate

Conclusion, the argument

spatial elements, singularity does not exist, and this is reflected in the programmatic functionality of the bridge as-well. For example, the staircase becomes the seating and wall becomes the painting to lend a space where the artist can display his work, the visitors can read relevant literature while also make him a cup of coffee and have a conversation, all in the same space! Hybridizing a library, museum and a cafĂŠ at a programmatic level re-inventing a new typology in the built environment. What would you call this typology? A library? A Museum? Or a Cafeteria?

One of the most interesting explorations was that this

Is the vocabulary of modern architecture really limited,

Hybridization of spatial elements not only creates a

or have we confined our imagination by developing

new spatial experience but rather also decentralizes

constructs?

Ujjwal Dawar B.Arch MSc. Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science

Ujjwal received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from School of Environmental Design and Architecture, Navrachna University, with a Gold Medal for excellence in academic work. During his bachelors he has been moulded to dream laterally as well as materialize the abstract thought into reality using the desired technical means. Hence he decided to pursue his masters in Building Technology from TU Delft to strengthen his technical core. Ujjwal recently graduated in 2019 and is now setting up his design studio as well as looking for research opportunities as he has always been inclined towards bridging art, philosophy and architecture, theoretically and practically.

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BouT

EMERGEN|SEA|

Technologies in Water Architecture

Yarai Zenteno , Events Chair , Bout (2019-2020)

On the afternoon of the 26th of February, BouT presented a symposium in the topic of building technologies on water, with the focus on preventive and reactive architecture to the world’s current challenges. These challenges ranged from how cities in the future should be conceptualized to how buildings that can adapt to the rise in sea level should be designed. The goal of EMERGENSEA was to bring the latest research and design on a key topic into one event Symposium This year, BouT’s symposium aims to raise awareness and equip young professionals with new insights and a head start when the tackle challenges of the future.

Technology has become part of daily life, and although the construction industry is usually behind on applying these new technologies, with the recent state of the world, construction on the water is still on the development stage but aims to grow further in the future.

Although the potential of this topic remains on the extreme conceptual ideas that could be generated, from imagining complex new cities to solving structural problems with regards to fltoating buildings, the research potential is endless, bringing excitement for exploring and experimenting with technologies and innovative ideas.

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The name EMERGENSEA comes from “Emergency” and “Sea,” which represents the main topic of the symposium.

The planning and organization of the event started in September 2019, where the first vision for the symposium was pitched to Job Schroën, head professor of Extreme Architecture, who agreed to be the moderator of the event.

With the support of the Job and organizing team, an exciting line up of speakers was set, ranging from researchers to professionals from all over the world.

During the whole duration of the events, the Orange Hall was filled by around 100 passionate people, willing to learn more about this emerging topic. The overall interest and feedback were very positive and promising. An overview of each lecture topic is discussed further.

Moderator Job Schroën.

United Plastic Nation Noël Schardt and Bjørn Muendner from Freischeaerler, both graduated from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. Their project addresses the problem of Coastal Cities, which are on the frontlines of an extreme threat.

According to an estimated 90 percent of the largest global cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels. The vast majority of coastal cities will be impacted by coastal erosion and flooding, displacing millions of people, while destroying homes and infrastructure. In response to rapidly changing environmental conditions, new solutions must be considered concerning how future cities are built and how the most vulnerable populations are protected.

The project initiates a discussion between the transition to more resilient and sustainable cities or facing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet.

Noël Schardt and Bjørn Muendner, Freischeaerler

Hope on Water Sevince Bayrak & Oral Göktaş, co-founders of SO?, are architects and designers from Istanbul, Turkey. Their work has been awarded internationally and acclaimed by public media, including Architectural Review, Dezeen, Huffington Post, Fast Company. The lecture Hope on

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Sevince Bayrak and Oral Göktaş, co-founders of SO?

BouT

water talked about an interdisciplinary research project (architecture, sociology, and civil engineering), for the anticipated Istanbul Earthquake. The idea of designing a speculative prototype of a floating emergency house came out of this fact: what if the response is not about stable land, but manageable water?

Sustainable Floating cities: Extreme Design for Extreme Times Marc Collins Chen is a serial entrepreneur. His latest company, OCEANIX builds floating cities for people to live sustainably on the ocean. Marc developed his vision to build floating cities 12 years ago when he served as the government Minister of Tourism of French Polynesia.

He saw first-hand the impact of sea-level, encouraging him to work on innovative solutions for adaptation and sustainable coastal expansion. He co-founded Blue Frontiers with partners in Silicon Valley, a pioneering company in floating islands. In 2018, he co-founded OCEANIX to pursue his passion for building floating cities as an alternative to land reclamation and adaptation to sea-level rise and climate change.

Floating Homes in the Pampanga Delta, The Philippines Pieter Ham is a Ph.D. candidate at Delft University of Technology since 2017. He is also the co-founder of the Finch Floating Homes foundation. The foundation joins hands with the university to design and implement floating homes in flood-prone areas. The foundation believes that through analysing vernacular design strategies, answers can be created for contemporary design challenges.

The research focuses on the Pampanga Delta in the Philippines, where they built the first floating pilot home.

The building is inhabited by a Philippine family that tests the building.

Marc Collins Chen, OCEANIX

Pieter Ham, Finch Floating Homes

Dr. Ir. Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther, Blue 21

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Blue Revolution Dr. Ir. Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther is civil engineering from the Delft University of Technology. He was trained by the best flood control engineers in the world. During the completion of his MSc and Ph.D., he started to work on sustainable floating cities as a solution to urgent global challenges such as climate change and land scarcity. In the lecture, he calls this shift of humanity to the oceans ‘the Blue Revolution.’ It includes sustainably using the water to make cities, produce food and energy, and create new ecosystems. He presented a global overview of the areas with both rapid population growth and high flood risk. To identify coastal areas that could benefit most from floating urban development. Next to the global vision of Blue21, realized floating projects and technologies were also presented that are stepping stones towards achieving the BlueRevolution. Also, the presentation showed the future trends of floating urban development in the next 5, 20, and 30 years.

The symposium represented an excellent opportunity for our Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment to get in touch with projects and research going around the world and broaden the possibility of future collaborations.

TU Delft’s future-oriented vision and research-based study are instrumental in taking the next steps on innovation. So that this emerging technology on water architecture can continue growing.

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Many thanks to all those who helped and made the symposium possible: Job Schroën / Moderator Noël Schardt / Speaker Bjørn Muendner / Speaker Sevince Bayrak / Speaker Oral Göktaş / Speaker Marc Collins Chen / Speaker Pieter Ham / Speaker Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther / Speaker Yarai Zenteno / Director Sasha Rodriguéz / Speaker Ambassador Shriya Balan / Operations Commander Yamini Patidar / Catering Manager Twinkle Nathani / Media Duties Manager Aditya Parulekar / Mission 1Capt Prateek Wahi / Mission 2 Capt Divyae Mittal / Audiovisual Manager Nikoleta Sidirop / Robot programmer Noah van den Berg/Robot programmer Jasper Sauer / Video Maker Siddharth Jain / Photographer FAST University Funds / Sponsor STUD / Sponsor

BouT

How do you build a spherical mirror faรงade?

Scan the QR - Code and find out!

Architect: MVRDV Contractor: BAM Faรงade: Sorba

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Simple solutions for complex issues Challenges for future designers Di Fang, ABT (Oosterhoff Group)

Am I the only one who feels that this world is getting overcomplicated, and simplicity is being missed? New systems are made to improve old systems, new technologies are invented to fix problems caused by old technologies, and our world finally becomes a patchwork without elegance.

We human beings get so distracted by complications, and simplicity becomes unreachable.

For me, the challenge that lies in the future is how to deal with complexity. Being a good designer means more than ever how to find simple solutions for complex issues, from building level to urban level.

The complex world This article has been written during the outbreak of the Corona Virus - a disease that was defined as a pandemic by the WHO in early March 2020. The virus hit China hard at the end of 2019. After three months, while China is getting its domestic situation under control and after implementing strict containment, Europe is expected to become the next epicentre of this pandemic. However, it seems that the example of China did not warn Europe enough. Multiple countries failed to take and swiftly implement early measures, which has resulted in the steep curves of growing patients. Until this very moment (March 20th, 2020), the same mistake is being made repeatedly on the world stage. In this particular case, taking measures involves all kinds of aspects, and requires going through multiple layers of social and political systems; systems that were initially invented to improve our society. It is a living example, highlighting just how trapped people are by this complicated system1 that they invented themselves while trying to make a rational decision.

Similarly, this can generally be predicted to happen in the future as well. Our system is getting so complicated that we can hardly see through it. It is getting more difficult for

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us to make a proactive decision. Thus, we are mostly just like in the situation of Coronavirus - reacting, rather than getting ahead of the “curve.”

The author of the renowned book <The black swan>, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, described the paradox of ‘complex systems’ in his book <Antifragile>;

“……Man-made complex systems tend to develop cascades and runaway chains of reactions that decrease, even eliminate, predictability and cause outsized events. So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable. Now for reasons that have to do with the increase of the artificial, the move away from ancestral and natural models, and the loss in robustness owing to complications in the design of everything, the role of Black Swans2 is increasing……”

(Taleb, N.N. 2012. Antifragile: things that gain from disorder. Random House & Penguin Books)

Aiming for simplicity Simplicity is not easy to achieve. As designers, we are challenged to work extra hard not to be fooled by the overcomplicated human-made system, but to achieve natural and straightforward solutions. The complication lies within enormous datasets that could confuse, as well as empower us. The data sets being the unpredictable future scenarios and the chain reactions of human interventions. In the built environments, on different scales, a more comprehensive range of expertise is being involved. Aside from traditional fields like urbanism, architecture, and engineering, fields like data analysis,

economics, social science, biology, and more unexpected specializations are being involved in implausible ways.

I am very inspired by the work done by ‘The Mediated Matter group’ under the MIT media lab. Facing the scarcity of materials, they seek new ways of material production under a microscope, with the help of computer science.

Their unconventional team consists of designers, engineers, material scientists, and biologists. They managed to empower each other on common ground, and their beautiful projects are rewards of it. Their very first well-known project, ‘The Silk Pavilion’, exhibited their philosophy very well. The silk pavilion is a well-thought collaboration between humans and silkworms. 6,500 silkworms were deployed on human-made spun flat surfaces. Guided by their instinctive preference for darker areas of the pavilion’s surface, they were able to weave a scaled-up version of the cocoon from single strands of silk, which can act like a human shelter.

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Taleb also indicates that a complex system3, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems3 and regulations and intricate policies. The simpler, the better. Just like in the design world, we have the minimalist motto: “Less is more”.

The Silk Pavilion. Source: MIT Media Lab Footnote: 1 A system is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole. Systems modeling is generally a basic principle in engineering and social sciences. In this article, depending on the context, the word system can refer to a general concept and might also refer to one specific system, such as social system, cultural system, economic system, or software/hardware system in the computer science field.

Footnote: 2 Black swan is a metaphor that describes rare and unpredictable outlier events, and the human tendency is to find simplistic explanations for these events retrospectively.

Footnote: 3 Complex systems are highly composite ones, built up from very large numbers of mutually interacting subunits (that are often composites themselves) whose repeated interactions result in rich, collective behavior that feeds back into the behavior of the individual parts. Complicated systems can have very many parts too, but they play specific functional roles and are guided by very simple rules. (J Epidemiol Community Health. 2007 Nov; 61(11): 933–937. doi: 10.1136/jech.2006.054254).

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revealing a new way of designing in the Anthropocene.

The process is complex, and the preparation work is enormous. Thanks to the progression of technology, it is possible to understand the natural behavior of silkworms and manipulate them for construction-purposes. In contrast, the resulting construction looks rather simple.

However, the simplicity comes only after going through a series of complex processes with a joint force of multidisciplinary talents.

In this project, you could wonder, “who is the designer?”.

The structure of the silk pavilion is prepared and realized through computational design methods, and more importantly, based on a design that follows instinctive movement patterns of silkworms. The role of the designer is slightly blurred here. There is no one dominant actor who can decide and construct everything, while we do see a mediator who tries to bridge these knowledge fields.

The designer (the mediator) of the built environment.

If you think that this project is a bit far-fetched, consider who is in charge of shaping our living environments.

Cities are complex systems, and they are only getting more complex as they develop with new emerging technologies. Are we able to find our way through complex urban systems and reach the end of the tunnel with a simple solution? What is the light that could guide us through it?

infrastructure, and blue & green networks. Nowadays, we also talk about IoT, big data, 5G technology, energy transition, the privacy of citizens, and so on. There is a buzzword that is used to describe all these topics, namely: smart cities.

There is no clear definition of a ‘smart city’. The word ‘smart’ often misleads people into thinking that the term mainly considers technological properties. Consequently, designers are left out in the wave of this urban and technological revolution. If you visit a smart city expo, you will find yourself standing among hundreds of company stands, selling their newest products, ranging from software applications to autonomous vehicles. Ironically, you typically do not find urban designers and architects being part of it, as if a city will evolve into a smart one once it is equipped with the most cutting-edge products.

After all, people tend to forget that cities are built for people, and that technology is invented to serve people.

This situation seems somewhat familiar. In the early 20th century, cars were massively produced, thus were sold at lower prices. Ever since then, they have become affordable domestic means of transport.

”

This project displays a material practice that revolves around computer science, engineering, biology, design,

The cities were designed for cars rather than people, even though cars were initially invented to serve people. As a result, the space that was taken away by cars cannot easily be returned to the people.

Additionally, congested traffic and air pollution caused by cars have become ubiquitous urban

Before, when we used to talk about urban design, we talked about buildings, in-between space of buildings,

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issues to tackle.

Smart City Expo. Source: Business Wire

Admittedly, the technology and inventions out there are fascinating, while also necessary in dealing with our global problems. Without an overall strategy, they are less likely to work in the same direction, and hence are less likely to shape a united city. The responsibility of a designer in this technological wave of changes is to bridge gaps between various knowledge groups and act as a mediator. Mediators might not sound so creative, but it is the hidden role of the designer. In my opinion, the essence of a “smart city” is no more than connectivity.

The issue is that the scope of urban design expands so rapidly; it is a significant challenge for the designers to keep broadening their knowledge at the same pace.

Overcoming this challenge would not only prevent the designers from getting lost in all the innovative gadgets but rather encourage the designers to use these tools to serve people.

For Instance, big data is alluring, but without knowing the objective and outcome from the use of big data, it makes it a time-consuming tool. Machine learning sounds magical, but without keeping people’s needs in

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the center, designers generate products without paying attention to social values. Not to mention all of the underlying ethical conflicts that stand between digital technology and human beings require to be dealt sensibly as well. Urban designers might not be the ones who can program the best, or invent the newest product, but we can understand the importance of putting people first from the past. After the 2nd industrial revolution, urban designers were overwhelmed with the new technology and removed people’s life in cities for that technology. Moreover, we are still dealing with the aftermath of trying all possible interventions to return our cities back to people. It is a big lesson to learn from. Now, we are standing at a new intersection once again. This time, we need to make sure that we make the right choice.

Di Fang BEng– Architecture and Urban Planning MSc – Urbanism

Di Fang graduated from TU Delft with a Master’s degree in Urbanism, in 2015. She has worked as an architect and urban designer in both small and large design offices in the Netherlands since then. Her passion for design lies within the unlimited possibility of cross-disciplinary collaboration. She joined ABT in 2019,where she is part of an urban engineering group under Oosterhoff Group innovation center.

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73 | Futurity Figure 1. Piles of Trash Š MIT Senseable City Lab

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Figure 1. The new SDE4 at the National University of Singapore

Academic

Trash Track

by MIT Senseable City Laboratory

In this article, we propose to pursue a different path.

Our aim is not to portray what is to come. Rather, we intend to employ design in a systematic exploration and germination of possible futures. The method we put forward is what we call futurecraft.

On December 24, 1900, the Boston Globe published a piece imagining what Boston would look like at the turn of the millennium. The illustrated article

by Thomas F. Anderson painted an elaborate vision of a city with moving sidewalks, airships soaring high above the streets, and pneumatic tube delivery of everything from newspapers to food. The authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s predictions were imaginative and optimistic, and in retrospect almost comical, yet the perspective of glimpsing the future continues to enchant us.

Speculations about the future have become a genre in their own right, throughout literature and cinema to architecture, with the common theme of imagining the future of the city. However, these visions almost invariably result in failure - as with the Boston Globe article. Could it be because, when trying to grasp the world of tomorrow, most people, including designers, attempt to accurately depict it?

In this article, we propose to pursue a different path.

Our aim is not to portray what is to come. Rather, we intend to employ design in a systematic exploration and germination of possible futures.

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This method is rooted in a series of earlier attempts to design for the future. Recently, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby at the Royal College of Art in London proposed “speculative design”, a process that acts as a “catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” and considering how things could be. Much before that, in 1956, the American inventor Buckminster Fuller introduced what he called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science (CADS). Motivating Fuller in his work was a general belief that design, speculation, and science go hand in hand. “The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artefacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviours and devices”.

Buckminster Fuller’s statement suggests a concept which we might call ‘evolutionary’. As technical culture progresses, objects are produced and refined through design – an act that introduces mutations to improve a function or enable a new capability. On a broad scale, these mutations collectively promote change and development, and each one of them represents a potential improvement in everyday life. Following Buckminster Fuller’s reasoning, we can think of the designer as what, in biology, is referred to as a mutagen – an agent of mutation. Although mutations in the natural world

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are random, the designer has knowledge and skillset to produce targeted, specific mutations. This activity is precisely what we think of as futurecraft.

”

The method we put forward is what we call futurecraft. It starts by conceiving future scenarios (typically phrased as “What if?” questions), entertaining their implications and consequences, and sharing the resulting ideas widely, to enable public conversation and debate. What we propose is to distance ourselves from the present condition and to place ourselves in a fictive but possible future context, so as to use the public discussion generated around certain topics to empower citizens and communities. In this way, the future of the city will be created by a plurality of individuals as opposed to single ones.

“Futurecraft is not about fixing the present

(an overwhelming task) or predicting the future (an ultimately futile activity) but influencing development positively.”

Designers must not force their ideas into the world – in fact, whether or not an idea is realized is largely irrelevant.

When it is being stated, explored, and debated, a concept will necessarily make an impact. These specific mutations are tested in urban space and subjected to public debate, a process that functions like natural selection in biology.

The public will eventually drive the development toward the most desirable future.

The method and the function of futurecraft are best shown in specific examples. Trash Track, a 2009 project by the MIT Senseable City Lab, imagined a future scenario in which geo-locating devices become so small and inexpensive that almost everything could be tagged.

Researchers proposed a design into that scenario – trash that wirelessly reported its GPS location – and created a full-scale urban demonstration to test it. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the team deployed thousands of tags into Seattle’s waste management system and watched as the tags traced waste movement across the United States. A set of visualizations and videos revealed the inefficiencies of the disposal chain and were communicated widely through exhibitions, news, and other media.

Academic Figure 2. The Trash Tag © MIT Senseable City Lab

Figure 3. inGeo CMA8110 CDMA tracking device by Qualcomm © MIT Senseable City Lab

© MIT Senseable City Lab Figure 5. Aluminum Can in Seattle In transit for: 1 Days, 18 Hours 11 Minutes Traveled Distance: 2.5 Miles Deployed on: SEP 01, 02:00 UTC Last report on: SEP 02, 20:11 UTC Destination: Rabanco Recycling Center, 2733 3rd Ave S, Seattle, WA

Figure 4. Packaging Material: Foam and Rubber © MIT Senseable City Lab

© MIT Senseable City Lab Figure 6. Plastic container of liquid soap in New York In transit for: 3 Days, 17 Hours 26 Minutes Traveled Distance: 18.3 Miles Deployed on: SEP 4, 02:00 EST Last report on: SEP 8, 07:26 EST Destination: 786-798 Belleville Turnpike (In transit)

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Subsequent discussion and debate has led to systemic improvements by waste management companies, inspired startups that produce trash trackers, and, most importantly, documented behavioral change in citizens who are inspired to reduce their waste and to recycle.

Trash Track exemplified a new relationship between designers and the public, demonstrating the power of futurecraft to shape urban development.

The framework of futurecraft is based on four core ideas: that the articulation of future conditions is a hypothetical tool; that future casting is only meant to enable and provoke design; that possible futures are rooted in Figure 7. Deloyment example Š MIT Senseable City Lab

Figure 8. Composite Map of the Recorded Traces Colored by Waste Type Š MIT Senseable City Lab

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We can consider some of the key forces at play in the city today – from energy to building, from transportation to knowledge sharing. Each of these ultimately deals with citizen empowerment, suggesting the possibility of human participation in operating - and even hacking - the city. The future city will grow from a symbiosis between design and the public. Top-down frameworks are not enough: bottom-up actions are needed to transform urban spaces. There can be no smart city without smart citizens.

It is a fundamental responsibility of design to challenge the status quo, to introduce new possibilities, and ultimately to pave the way for the public to realize a desirable future. Design, as an act of futurecraft, can function as a mechanism for crowdsourcing the future – designers produce mutation, and the public engages

in debate, variation, and implementation. By soliciting ideas, and response from citizens we hope that design can move society toward the most desirable outcome. As told with the adage of the computer scientist Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.

Academic

the present and not in distant, extraordinary visions (which means balancing provocation with strong ties to the world-as-it-is); and finally, that whether or not the imagined scenarios come to pass is irrelevant. We are well aware that, in all likelihood, the future will look different from our “what-if” snapshots, but designing into a projected situation can nonetheless guide us toward a possible and desirable future.

For more information, visit: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/

Video youtube link: http://youtu.be/fvTZc5hWBNY

Video download link: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/trashtrack_release.mov

Press materials: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/press.php?id=5

MIT Senseable City Laboratory, Massachusetts, United States Sensable City Laboratory is a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research lab focuses on urban imagination and social innovation through design and science. New design approaches are emerging in tandem with the growing urban complexity in today's cities. SCL's mission is to study these urban complexities and anticipate changes by deploying tools that aid in better understanding the cities in the present and future. It follows an Omni-disciplinary research approach that involves designers, planners, engineers, physicists, biologists, and social scientists.

To know more about this research initiative and their latest projects visit, http://senseable.mit.edu/

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GREEN FLOAT The Ocean Future City

by Masaki Takeuchi (Inhouse Architect of SHIMIZU Corporation)

Introduction The world is currently facing the sea level rise due to climate change and there is an urgent need to create a sustainable society. We are facing many sorts of problems of energy, water, food, garbage, air pollution and so on. Fortunately, however, 70% of the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface is covered with the ocean. The ocean has a tremendous capacity and a big influence on the global environment and the sustainability of human beings. We are heading new challenges for a better future utilizing the potential of the ocean.

"Green Float" is a 1000m high skyscraper proposed on a 2000m diameter floating structure. It is assumed to be located mainly in the equatorial ocean, with blessed marine weather conditions. In order to obtain technical experiments and certification, we assumed GREEN FLOAT II (1/10 scale model, a 100m tall skyscraper built on a 200m diameter floating structure).

GREEN FLOAT II (Designed by SHIMIZU CORPORATION)

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Outline of Mega Floating City “Green Float” The man-made island is 3000 m in diameter and actually floats on the ocean. There is a 500m-wide lagoon around the periphery, so the net land area has a diameter of 2000 m. The skyscraper city is 1000 m tall, and the city in the sky begins 700 m above sea level. The middle levels comprise a plant factory that makes the island city self-sufficient in food. The ground level supports such facilities as a natural farm, a playground, and a beach resort. The peripheral area of the city in the sky is a residential zone that is inhabited by 30000–50000 people. The central area is a business zone with offices and research centers. The business zone is intended mainly for the research, development, and branch offices of companies engaged in biotechnology, renewable energy, and marine enterprises. The lagoon waterside on the ground level will afford residents the opportunity to enjoy the lagoon and green forests.

Project summary “Green Float” is a new model for environment-friendly Mega Floating City, under development by Shimizu Corporation, Japan. The concept of “Green Float” embodies two areas of innovation. One is “Green innovation”, achieving self-efficient zero carbon and zero

Figure 1. Section image. Source: Author

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emission cities by utilizing the potential of the ocean, and the other is “Float innovation”, unaffected by sealevel rise and ensure high flexibility for city growth. By

Figure 2. GREEN & FLOAT innovations. Source: Author

integrating “Green Innovation” and “Float Innovation”, a super high value-added Mega Floating city can be realized.

Float innovation Locating the city at a low latitude near the Equator would minimize the floating risk posed mainly by wave heights and strong winds. Because typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones rarely occur there (Figure 2), the equatorial region is considered the most advantageous for a superhigh-rise mega floating city that reaches beyond a certain height. a) New location For an existing large harbor city that faces difficulties in securing vacant land, it would be possible to extend the city functions offshore far beyond the limit of landfills.

For an island country that is short of land area, new areas for development could be secured. Compared with landfill, the development would be possible that is environmentally and ecologically friendly.

c) Avoiding the influence of earthquakes and tsunamis When a tsunami reaches a shallow shore, the wave height increases. However, a megacity floating offshore is completely immune from the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis.

d) Transferable and flexible city Because of durability issues, many cities and buildings on land cease to be functional within their lifetimes. By contrast, a mega floating city is easily moved once its role ends, allowing the location to be redeveloped. By relocating and continuing to use the lifetime of matter, the life cycle cost can be reduced. Also, to meet the needs of the expansion of urban areas, it is possible for the city to grow naturally as cells, modules, and units, much like a water lily grows on water.

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b) Unaffected by rising sea levels due to climate change There are many island nations that are facing being submerged because of rising sea levels due to climate change. A mega floating city is one way to save such countries.

Figure 3. Lagoon resort beach. Source: Author

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Figure 4. CO2 reduction of GREEN FLOAT. Source: Author

Figure 5. Vertical vegetable factory. Source: Author

GREEN innovation In the future global environmental age, most energy that will be used will be renewable energy with no CO2 emissions. Because the equatorial regions are rich in sunlight, the green potential, centered on renewable energy, would be maximized.

c) Fresh water The annual precipitation is high in the equatorial Pacific, but precipitation levels differ considerably between the rainy and dry seasons. By storing water in the high-rise mega floating city and controlling water use throughout the city, it would be possible to supply as almost same as the amount of water required for living.

a) Pleasant and comfortable temperature The Pacific equatorial islands experience a constant temperature of around 28°C. Because the temperature drops by 0.6°C for every 100 m of height, it will be 6°C lower at 1000 m. With the sky city rising 700–1000 m above the Equator, the temperature there would be a refreshing 26°C all year round. b) Zero carbon and renewable energy Solar power can provide electricity efficiently in regions with favorable sunshine hours and solar radiation angle.

In addition, because the sea surface is at a much different temperature than the sea bed, the efficiency of power generation based on the ocean temperature difference also improves. Taking the CO2 emissions data for Japan as a benchmark, Figure 3 shows how Green Float could reduce such emissions.

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d) Food self-sufficiency By harnessing the power of the sun as much as possible, providing a vertical vegetable factory would contribute positively to food self-sufficiency, food mileage, and food traceability. e) Zero emissions and recycling Human waste in the form of water, garbage, and CO2 can be nutritious for plants. By harnessing the height of the sky city to redistribute human waste to lower levels, plants and other living things would be supplied with nutrition. This raises the possibility of complete resource recycling from waste to food.

Figure 6. Section. Source: Author

Validation of Float technology Green Float II (200 m in diameter; Figure 5), which is roughly one tenth the scale of Green Float (2000m in diameter) is taken as the latest technology-embodied model. Assuming a bay location, which is the extension of the urban area, authors have conducted experiments and analyses of the response to tsunami and strong winds.

(1) Earthquakes and tsunamis Authors assume the meteorological and oceanic

Figure 7. Tsunami experiment. Source: Author

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conditions of a large Japanese city. Buildings and structures with floating isolation are extremely safe because they experience very little seismic force in the event of an earthquake. In addition, the authors found experimentally that the tsunami does not exceed the breakwater of 1 m even with the tsunami of 10 m or more, which far exceeds the tsunami assumption in the assumed location. This is because the water level gradually increases due to the tsunami inside the bay. Of course, the structure itself is extremely safe (2)Typhoon (waves and winds) Again, authors assume the meteorological and oceanic conditions of a large Japanese city. Even assuming the direct hit of a typhoon bigger than the Ise Bay Typhoon, structural safety was secured sufficiently for the floating structure (lower part), the skyscraper (upper part), and the mooring facilities. The acceleration also caused no furniture to fall over.

(3)Certification from official third party Green Float II has received AIP from Nippon Kaijikyokai as certification by a third-party organization that is concerned with the structural safety of floating structures.

Figure 8. Typhoon experiment. Source: Author

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Future (1) GREEN FLOAT construction method A mega floating city requires advances in aspects such as unitization and robot construction more so than a city on land. Although the future construction plans of Green Float remain at the idea stage at present, authors will try to improve the technology through future model projects.

(2) Realizing GREEN FLOAT After the technology has been established, the project is realized using different variations of architectural applications and shapes. We are working with the government agencies and private projects in several countries at the schematic design and technical demonstration level. In the future, I believe that new cities and architectural solutions can be realized by floating.

Figure 9. City in the Sky. Source: Author

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Projects Figure 10. Mega floating city, GREEN FLOAT. Source: Author

Masaki Takeuchi (Inhouse Architect of SHIMIZU Corporation) In March 1980 , Masaki Takeuchi graduated from Waseda University. In April 1980,he joined “Shimizu Corporation”. The projects below are some of his works: •

Urban-scale project competition at Osaka branch about City

•

Developing the new value technologies; LCV (Life Cycle Valuation), eco-BCP(Business Continuity Plan)

•

Ocean City Project:

November 2008: The Maritime Future City named “GREEN FLOAT” (Project Leader), November 2014: The Deep Sea Future City named “OCEAN SPIRAL” (Project Leader), October 2015: Improving technical feasibility; experiment & analysis (Project Leader), December 2017: GREEN FLOAT II acquired the certification ; Class NK's AIP (Approval in Principal), in structural safety of the floating structure of super high rise buildings.

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To infinity & beyond Agatha Mintus

The context of architecture is incessantly evolving and consequently demanding adaptation of buildings and designs to new lifestyles, challenges and extreme environments. In the near future, one of the new contexts will be the long-term presence of humans in outer space. It requires creating a selfsufficient station supporting and protecting crew members from harmful and hazardous conditions.

The role of designers is increasing since the longterm manned missions are inevitable and the realization of the concepts is requiring involvement from all disciplines. The next are three different design approaches in the space industry I have experienced.

LunAres Research Station – creating a scientific platform

Figure 1. EVA area in LunAres, author: matiaž tančič

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The first approach is the creation of facilities providing spaces for studying the technology and the impact of mission and space conditions on humans. Currently, the main issue regarding long-term manned mission is humans. With the technology that we have, it is already possible to travel, explore and establish space stations in the nearby planetary system. However, the effects of being in space on psychological and physiological aspects are still unknown. Many experiments are performed on ISS (International Space Station), which provides a real space environment to measure and monitor its impact.

Additionally, many medical and psychological studies are focusing on the effects of isolation, supply limitations, artificial environment on humans.

One of the analogue habitats I was able to co-design was LunAres, a research station for manned space mission simulation, located at the post-military airport in Poland. The facility provides full isolation, allowing for complex research on the psychological and physiological impact of long-term extra-terrestrial human presence.

Since the establishment in 2017, there were 26 scientific publications made in collaboration with LunAres during 10 official missions. The studies address the impact of several limitations considering space, communication, food, daily routine, health and wellbeing. The facility also introduced the first mission with disabled people to study how the procedures and interiors in space should

be adapted to an accident-scenario.

LunAres is designed for a 6-member crew with the current habitat plan of 176m2 habitable space and 250m2 Extravehicular Activity (EVA) area. The habitat is divided into 7 modular containers providing different conditions and functions (Laboratory, Kitchen + Storage (Galley), Dormitory, Operations, Gym, Workshop, Sanitary Module. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Atriumâ&#x20AC;? module, connecting all of the rooms together, is covered with cupola creating open, multifunctional space. The concept of functional plan and space dimensions were determined through research on associated literature and existing references. The concept of separating dirty modules from clean ones, noisy from quiet and common from private was implemented in the design. At the same time, the organization of functions provides fast access between associated modules.

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These can be tackled on Earth, in specialised facilities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; analogue habitats.

Figure 2: Plan of the habitat, Source: lunares.space

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Figure 3: EVA activity during the Endymion mission. Source: Space is More.

The cutting edge service compared to other existing analogue habitats are the full isolation, including habitable space and EVA area. The complex studies are supported by smart monitoring and control of indoor conditions, such as temperature, humidity, light colour and intensity, power and water usage. The constant gathering of big data allows for detailed and accurate comparison of different factors with physical and psychological state of crew members. The equipment and technology support the sense of isolation and distance.

The reusability of water, hydroponic and aeroponic food production are developing the facility into the simulator of a self-sufficient station, which could be helpful with studies on sustainable space exploration.

Space is More – complex and interdisciplinary exploration of the unknown Young and interdisciplinary teams are often responsible for creating bold concepts, which are introducing solutions for challenges and new lifestyles. Those ideas

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might be an inspiration and driving factor for developing real, sustainable technologies. As a student and member of the Space is More team, I was able to take part in mission design competitions related to long-term human presence in space. During these contests, the role of an architect is to propose a structure, functional planning and a design compatible with mission scenarios and life support system. Moreover, the unfamiliar conditions, such as lack of gravity, require new ergonomic strategy and functional organization.

One of the projects presenting complex work on implementing new requirements in architecture is the Phobos Base, done for the 2017 AIAA Student Design Competition – Human Spaceflight. Habitat was designed according to NASA-STD-3001 Space Flight HumanSystem Standard1. The interior was planned to ensure efficient transit, physical and psychological health and the wellbeing of crew members. Despite almost lack of gravity, we propose creating an artificial orientation – a vertical feeling of ‘up’ and ‘down’. To strengthen this

The habitat consists of 4 expandable modules with habitable functions and 3 rigid modules which provide access between each module and exterior. General organization of the habitat determines 4 main functions divided into inflatable modules: private activity, group activity, food production (green module) and dirty module. They are connected to one rigid node which is also a main entrance to the hab. Spaceport docking systems are located on the top of the station and a detached airlock – the transition between exterior and courtyard. The main functional aspect of the design is a separation of clean and tidy habitable space from a dirty area with EVA, workshop and astrobiology lab. The impure

parts of the station are divided by hygiene modules where each crew member must cleanse before entering the habitable space. Another vital design objective was to create a favourable interior for psychological health and wellbeing of crew members. For this purpose, the private zone was located far apart from group activities and noisy equipment.

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impression the stronger light was located on ‘ceilings’ and the most frequently used equipment was put on ‘walls’ to give a sensation of right and left sides.

Installations in the habitat were designed so that with minimized space it can access every part of the interior.

Therefore, we use the core in Bigelow module (expandable module) and the inner side of the module’s shielding walls for all installations. Ventilation installation is piped to every separated space in the habitat. Additionally, CO2 is led to food production rooms to contribute towards the cultivation by airflow. Water is piped from a tank lying outside the habitat to every

Figure 4: General view of the Phobos Base Concept. Source: spaceismore.com

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DOCKING MODULES Interplanetary docking port

MAIN FUNCTION OF MODULES exterior airlock

green module

INTERIOR ORGANIZATION dirty work

hygiene

chemical water

water

dirty water

E VA

technical

production waste

air

chemical filter

food production

private area

CO

group area

clean work

Mars - Phobos docking port

technical airlock

group module

dirty module

private module

I N S TA L AT I O N S

2

F O U N D AT I O N S T R U C T U R E

exterior - membrane airlock

habitat - membrane airlock

FUNCTIONAL SCHEMES

dirty space

clean space

entry shower

group space

private space

storage

food production

lab

work stations

Figure 5: Scheme of the functional organization and installation distribution, Source: spaceismore.com

hygiene module. Next to the hygiene module, there is a filter for dirty chemical water which might be reused in

design can directly translate into a design for space-

But, how did my interest in outer space started? Designers and architects are becoming one of the researchers in the space industry field, as the creation of safe space compatible with life-support and mission-support systems are essential for space exploration. Additionally, the studies of in-situ construction and manufacturing on

exploration, a human-centered approach.

Moon or Mars are becoming important as the approach

toilet, shower or laundry. Water waste from the toilet and the galley reaches storage in green rooms and can be used for food production. At the end, the Phobos project showed how most of the principles we currently use in

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Building on Mars â&#x20AC;&#x201C; experimental & searching approach

A

B

C

D

E

F

G1,G2,G3,G4

TYPE

Original

Amorphous phase +5%

Ferric oxide +5%

Plagioclase +5%

Ferric sulphate +5%

Particle Packing

Sulphur addition (10%,20%,30%,50%)

Potential

Potential

Potential optimi-

Potential optimi-

EXPERIMENTS

Comparison of all experiments

optimization for

optimization for

zation for thermal

zation for thermal

compression

compression

treatment

treatment

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Composition No

More compact composition- potential optimization for

Potential optimization for compression

compresion

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Figure 6. Figure 1: Steps in the experiments. 1, 2- mould preparation; 3, 4 - compression; 5 - measuring sample; 6- thermal treatment and measuring; 7- mechanical test; 8- analysis. Source: A. Mintus

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Stress (MPa)

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best options comparison 22

12 7 2

original

amorphous

nano ferric oxide

7% sulfur

5% sulfur

30%sulfur

0,3

suuur addition

0,25

particle packing

0,2

lowest melting point elements

0,15

Strain

nano ferric-oxide

0,1

amorphous phase

0,05

original

-3 0

Figure 3. Best options stress-strain relation | Young's Modulus vs. type of composition. Source: A. Mintus

of ISRU (in situ space resources utilization) is the

for production. The concept of optimisation by controlling

current concept for missions . This was the topic of my

material composition was studied in this research.

2

experimental thesis research done at the TU Delft under supervision from Fred Veer, Oguzhan Copuroglu and

The composition of the material was based on the Martian

David Peck.

simulant MGS-14 and adjusted to ease and improve the specific production method. Based on ongoing researches,

The buildings on Mars, tackled in the ISRU approach, could use the regolith (Martian soil) as a building material. To minimize the transportation and dependence from Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supplies, energy for manufacturing and construction should also be produced on site. Considering water as an essential element for life-support systems, low-tech adobe type building materials, could be the ideal option for the first missions. Two basic processes required for the production of low-tech adobe blocks are thermal treatment and compaction3. According to the authors,

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there were 7 different compositions determined, improving either compression or thermal treatment process. The composition was adjusted by sieving, based on the study of Martian minerals and their grain size range in dustform regolith5. The Amount of chosen minerals, such as a nano-ferric oxide or amorphous phase were increased to improve compaction6. Another potential solution studied, was the particle packing method 7. Thermal treatment was improved by increasing the amount of elements,

the adjustment of materialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s composition could improve

which have the lowest melting point, to minimize heating

the product's properties and minimize energy demand

temperature or time of heating 8, 9.

but more resistant to stress (up to 12MPa). The specimens with the addition of sulfur powder had mostly the highest

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”

“ The results had shown that low-tech rammed regolith is a low energy sustainable building material for Mars that can provide sufficient structural strength to build vaults.”

of nanophase ferric oxide made the material more brittle,

peaks for compression strength. This composition made the material more brittle, resistant to low deformation and small cracks. Based on the analysis of the results in terms of energy input and rocket payload, the specimens, that had sufficient mechanical properties, as well as

During the experiments, regolith substitute has been

an efficient production process, were chosen. The best

compressed into blocks using compression bench with

option was the additional amount of nano ferric oxide, as

the loading pressure of 9,5kN and loading time of 5

the material with sulfur powder would be independent of

minutes. During the compression, the displacement

Earth’s supplies.

versus time was measured. Half of the specimens were further processed with thermal treatment to compare the

The results had shown that low-tech rammed regolith

impact of different compositions on this process. The

is a low energy sustainable building material for Mars

samples were put in the oven, heated up for 4h to 600 ˚C, which is the melting point of used plagioclase or 120 ˚C, which is the melting point of sulfur. Next, they were tested mechanically with the pressuring rate of 1mm/min, and the maximum load of 10000N. For each specimen, the stress (σ MPa) the strain (ε) and the Young’s Modulus were calculated and analysed with graphs.

The mechanical test proved that the change in composition can improve the mechanical properties of the specimens.

that can provide sufficient structural strength to build vaults. Moreover, the adjustment of regolith composition could minimize the energy demand and improve the manufacturing processes. The introduced optimization method, using regolith composition adjustment, is a promising way of improving the efficiency of the production process and increasing the mechanical properties of the building material. This composition could be further developed by finding the best ratio between minerals and best grain size distribution. In this report the compositions had only one variant (which was adding an

According to the results, the addition of amorphous phase

extra 5% of chosen mineral), however, there might be a

minerals and nanophase ferric oxide made the material

better percentage. Moreover, the combinations between

stronger. The specimens with additional amorphous

these optimisations could be further researched. This

phase were in general stronger, could withstand bigger

shows how experimental researches can be a good basis

deformation, but also deformed very fast. The addition

for further development.

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Conclusions The presented projects show the experimental approach as the link between them. The unknown in the space topics is still a driving force. There's a need for testing, researching and going beyond the standard. As designers, we can take an active part in the development of the space industry. By experimenting with the architectural and building aspects, we could support research taking innovation and knowledge from other studies. By creating futuristic and bold concepts we could inspire others

to pursue their space dreams and goals as scientists, engineers and designers. And finally, designing a platform beneficial for other experts and researchers working in this field is essential. Creating an environment for interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing of big data could bring us closer to human presence in space.

Agata Mintus With a background in architecture with a specialization in Building Technology, Agata gained knowledge and experience by taking part in international competitions, workshops and projects related to space. She is a co-founder of Space is More company. She works as an architect and board member. Currently, she is developing the analog research station called LunAres. Her goal is to contribute to space exploration by researching on extra-terrestrial habitation and building technologies.

Reference 1: NASA. (2015). NASA Space Flight Human-System Standard Volume 2: Human Factors, Habitability, and Environmental Health. Washington DC. Retrieved from http://standards.nasa.gov/.

Reference 2: Jordan, M. R. (2017). The Road To Red Rocks: a History and Critique of Mars Exploration and Select Mars Mission Models. https://doi. org/10.13140/RG.2.2.32326.27209 Reference 3: Vieira Nobrega, A. C., & Barbosa, N. P. (2019). Current Development and Future Needs for Natural Earth Construction: A State-of-the-art Review. In U. T. Bexerra, H. S. Ferreira, & N. P. Barbosa (Eds.), Bio-Inspired Materials (6th ed.). Bentham Science Publisher.

Reference 4: Cannon, K. M., Britt, D. T., Smith, T. M., Fritsche, R. F., & Batcheldor, D. (2019). Mars global simulant MGS-1: A Rocknest-based open standard for basaltic martian regolith simulants. Icarus, 317, 470–478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.08.019 Reference 5: Achilles, C. N., Downs, R. T., Ming, D. W., Rampe, E. B., Morris, R. V., Treiman, A. H., … Morookian, J. M. (2017). Mineralogy of an active eolian sediment from the Namib dune, Gale crater, Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 122(11), 2344–2361. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JE005262 Reference 6: Chow, B. J., Chen, T., Zhong, Y., & Qiao, Y. (2017). Direct Formation of Structural Components Using a Martian Soil Simulant. Scientific Reports (Vol. 7). Nature Publishing Group. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01157-w Reference 7: Malkanthi, S. N., & Perera, A. A. D. A. J. (2019). Particle Packing Application for Improvement in the Properties of Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks with Reduced Clay and Silt. Technology & Applied Science Research (Vol. 9). Retrieved from www.etasr.com Reference 8: Barmatz, M., Steinfeld, D., Anderson, M., & Winterhalter, D. (2014). 3D Microwave Print Head Approach for Processing Lunar and Mars Regolith. In 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. https://doi.org/2014LPI....45.1137B Reference 9: Wan, L., Wendner, R., & Cusatis, G. (2016). A novel material for in situ construction on Mars: experiments and numerical simulations. Construction and Building Materials, 120, 222–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2016.05.046

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DO YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW WE CONNECT THESE DOTS?

FOR INTERNS AND GRADUATE STUDENTS The future of construction and design will inevitably be coupled with computational design.

We are always looking for talented graduation students and interns with interest in computational design with Grasshopper. If you’re interested in graduating with us, send us an e-mail to: letstalk@white-lioness.com.

Don’t know what you want to research yet or not sure if our projects cover your topic? We are always willing to give you advice, so don’t hesitate to contact us!

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The Spherical Mirror Façade An Article by Sorba

The new art depot for museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is going to be the new landmark in the city of Rotterdam. The building is designed by Winy Maas of MVRDV Architects and is meant to blend in with its surroundings. The façade is made out of double curved glass panels with a mirror coating and expected to be completed this year.

Introduction The design of MVRDV included the completely reflecting spherical façade. In this scheme Sorba develops the façade for main contractor BAM Bouw en Techniek. To build this façade Sorba uses double curved mirror glass panels. Through the use of glass, the mirror effect will be crystal clear. The radius of the art depot differs on ground level and at the roof. At ground level the radius is only 40 meters, and at the roof this extends to 60 meters. The façade counts 26 rows of panels with 64 panels per row.

This leads to a total of 1664 3D curved panels. The glass panels are produced in China and each row has a different curvature in the glass.

”

The spherical and reflective façade is the greatest feature of this new development. Sorba has been awarded with the special task to develop, engineer, Figure 1. Overview of the art depot with the reflection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

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produce and install this unique façade.

Company Figure 2. The reflection of the skyline of Rotterdam

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Similar projects compared to the Art Depot The new art depot seems unique, but there are features that can be found in other buildings and structures throughout the world. These are not made by Sorba but give insight in the uniqueness of the Art Depot in Rotterdam. Many people compare the reflective bowl to the Cloud Gate (Anish Kapoor) artwork in Chicago, also known as The Bean. This landmark in Chicago is like the Art Depot and features a lot of double curves, but The Bean is made out of polished stainless steel and not out of glass. The polished stainless-steel panels are welded together and then polished again to create a seamless look.

A different glass structure that features double curvature is the Emporia in Malmรถ, Sweden. In the center of this building the architect designed a diagonal slit in the glass faรงade. This glass however is also the outer wall of the building and therefore they used insulated glass.

This insulated glass is installed into visible frames, unlike the glass panels of the Art Depot in Rotterdam. For the Art Depot the seams need to be as invisible as possible, therefore a structure of frames like the Emporia could not be used. The few windows and doors in the art depot have a frame structure and insulated glass like the Emporia.

The challenge for the Art Depot for Boijmans Van Beuningen was to create the reflective faรงade with as little seams as possible. The solution was found in the double curved glass with a reflective coating. This glass will function as a cladding and not as the structure of the building. The 'glass' is applied as glass panels, just like an outer shell made out of aluminium. Therefore, Sorba had to come up with a substructure to fit the panels to the concrete base. This substructure consists of an aluminium frame that is glued to the panel. Subsequently, this panel hangs on brackets on the concrete base of the Art Depot.

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Construction of the panels The glass panels are installed onto the faรงade on stainless steel brackets that have been anchored into the concrete structure. The placement of these anchors has been measured from the 3D model, while taking measurements on a curved building is nearly impossible.

After the installation of the brackets, the faรงade has been insulated. Next was the installation of the adjustable hooks, on which the glass panels are hanged. These adjustable hooks are designed in a way that the seams can be adjusted horizontally and vertically, to line them out perfectly.

Figure 3. The brackets installed onto the concrete base

Figure 4. Close up of the adjustable hooks with two panels hanging from them

of the glass panels. The glue is the load bearing factor between the aluminium frame and the glass and thus has to be certified. Therefore, the gluing process is executed under specific requirements to guarantee its strength.

This process is closely monitored, and quality controls are being held on regular intervals. With the aluminium frame, the glass panels are mounted to the faรงade. However, the city of Rotterdam required a second support system aside from the glue. Therefore, we placed tiny metal plates around the corners of the panels. These are connected to the aluminium frame and lock the panel in place.

Insulated glass In most of the faรงade the glass is used as the outer shell of the building, but at some spots the glass makes up actual doors and windows. At these spots Sorba placed insulated glass panels. In total there are 186 of these insulated glass panels in the faรงade. These have a gradient transition from reflective to translucent glass.

This gradient transition is made using a dotted pattern.

On the lower levels the insulated glass has a resistance level of WK4 and on the higher levels we used glass with a resistance level of WK3.

Company

The design of the faรงade asks for a smooth surface ,that is why Sorba has glued an aluminium frame to the backside

The doors are fitted into the faรงade and will function like bus doors. The doors will open to the front and

Figure 5. Installation of glass panels with boom lifts.

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subsequently slide to the side. This way, when closed, the doors will disappear in the façade. The doors are built out of heavy steel frames on which the panels are glued.

After assembly the smaller two panel doors are about 4 meters high, 2.3 meters wide and weigh around 1000 kg.

The bigger truck lock doors, three panels high, are about 5.6 meters high and 2.3 meters wide and weigh around 1500 kg. These will be installed with specialized cranes, because of the odd shape, heavy weight and fragile nature of the doors.

The entire project Aside from the façade, Sorba also works on the cladding of the roof construction of the Art Depot. This roof construction is cladded with aluminium composite material with a mirror finish. These panels are almost 7 meters long to create minimal breaks in the reflection.

The façade and the entire building will be completed in 2020. The opening of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Art Depot is planned for 2021.

Figure 6. Close up of window in the façade, fitted out with insulated glass

Frequent updates on Sorba’s progress on the Art Depot can be found on our LinkedIn page and website.

Scan the QR Code to go to a video about the entire process of the façade.

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BouT

Board 25 Signing Off !!!

Aditya Parulekar, Chair (2019-2020)

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73 | Futurity

A little over 25 years ago, a group of students from Building Technology started a student association for their master track. They called it “Praktijkvereniging BouT” and aimed to connect students with the industry.

Now, two and a half decades later, BouT has grown into a professional student association with well over a hundred active members, including students, professors, staff and alumni. We, the 25th board of BouT, together with all our committee members, have had the opportunity to take the association through its silver jubilee this year. It has been a year filled with some great highlights for the BouT community, such as the hit-welcome party and BBQ hosted with our honorary BouT member Marcel Bilow in September; the adventurous study trip to Zurich and Basel where we visited our peers at the ETH Zurich in November; the highly anticipated EMERGEN|SEA| symposium on Aquatic Architecture hosted by BouT in February; as well as the many inspiring lunch lectures and company visits which were made possible by our industry partners this year. But also, the occasional student walking into the BouT office for a chat or a coffee break is much cherished by us. The door is always open!

The year of the jubilee also brought exciting new things for the association, such as the monthly newsletter, the Building Technology sweater, the special edition Rumoer XXV and the inception of the BouwHouse platform.

BouwHouse, which is a collaboration platform for student associations, was initiated by BouT to promote the collaboration between the different master disciplines of the faculty of Architecture of TU Delft.

The development of the worldwide Pandemic since the last few months has been very saddening and has had a big impact on everyday life for everyone. Due to the measures in place, all planned BouT activities and events leading up to summer 2020 are postponed until further notice. In these times of social distancing and isolation, we hope everyone is safe and can continue their lives from their homes. We would like to use BouT as an online platform where we can arrange Friday afternoon drinks on Zoom and perhaps stream a lunch-lecture from one of

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our industry partners right to your kitchen table. Let’s get through this together!

We wish it would have been under better circumstances that we could pass the baton to board 26. However, we have full confidence the new board is up to the challenge of leading the association through these turbulent waters.

Board 26 will be taking over from April onwards and will continue right where we left off.

Board 25 would like to thank all the committee members of BouT who put in their efforts for the association, the professors who support us, the other student associations we teamed up with this year and the industry partners we work with. Finally, I would like to say that it has been a really big pleasure to be part of the board with Divyae, Kees, Tarang, Tom, Prateek and Yarai. This really is a team that can work hard & play hard. I’m sure, wherever they will end up working, they will put a smile on the faces of their co-workers.

And with that said, Board 25 out.

Samen bouwen aan een prettige en gezonde wereld met duurzame gevels.

Dรกt geeft ons energie!

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