Design annoyances...

To me the design of bespoke furniture for the interior of a house that is in the design phase can be one of two things.

1) The design of furniture that is can be easily made to fit the space with the efficiency of material, storage, function and space, using the most availible resources to the client. Or better still, designing the space for the furniture that standard furniture can be created/bought to fit the space with ease, rendering ir also suitable for the future change of furniture needs (as this will hopefully be before the time of change of the house - if it is well-thought-out design.)

2) The design of furniture to fit a space that has been put in place without the thought of furniture, even though it is a new design, thus meaning, if the space is to be adequately functional in use to the furniture, that it has to be bespoke designed and built in - making future replacement difficult as well as the product expensive and time consuming to all invloved.

In my opinion the furniture can be aethetically designed to match the interior and styels of the building in both these options, so why would one opt to carry out design in the second method?

Interesting links...

www.treehugger.com
http://www.animalarchitecture.org/
http://www.anycorp.com/
http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/
http://3ddreaming.blogspot.com/
http://www.oneplanetliving.org/index.html
http://bureau-spectacular.net/
http://www.bioregional.com/
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/
http://www.brunskilldesign.com/
http://www.sustainableabc.com/
http://blink.hdrinc.com/
http://www.permacultureproject.com/
www.earthships.net
http://students.autodesk.com

Waking Life Scene Quote

Richard Linklater's  'Waking Life'

Scene 15: 'We are the authors'

"..."On this bridge," Lorca warns, "life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware." And so many think because Then happened, Now isn't. But didn't I mention the ongoing "wow" is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, that is self awareness. ..."

Re:Urban, Dense sustainability.

Evidently there are too many of us, all the data proves. With rising populations there will definitely be too many to live sustainably on small-holdings in the countryside. One-planet living describes this by data showing that if everyone on the planet lived like a European, we would need three planets.

Therefore the model for eco-living off-grid, in the middle of no-where - although it has a certain charm - as an idealized sustainable life needs to be erased. Cities are currently fuel guzzling, consuming swarms of potential and individual opportunity that spread their waste and destruction far and wide, but, if re-thought, re-fitted and cycled up, (looped,) they are just what we need in order to see human society into the future of human population growth.

The grid is good. It both provides everyone in small, dense spaces with what they need as well as freeing up peoples time to be spent being citizens. (One theory for the emergence of cities – those producing things not food (ploughs and shoes) for those who produce food, allowing those who produce food time to make a surplus to feed those who need time away from growing food in order to make the things needed.) – Such as Catal Huyuk on the Mesopotamian plains possibly back to 9000 years ago. (‘Cities’ by John Reader.))

Current grids are linear, with input and output waste, we need to change this to sustainable systems that are circular and effective and that everybody can contribute to, eliminating the concept of waste and creating more self-sustaining city systems. This is why the movement to micro-renewables and feed-in-tariffs is essential to the development of our cities. But is a very small part of the over-arching theme of things that need to change.

For Better or Worse: Society it has to be.

We struggle here, in this Big Society, in his Bad Economy, to find any work, to pay any rent, to make any friends…People are happy to let me work for them for free, they like my approach to design and are impressed by my portfolio, but can they pay me? No. In this Big Society, should relative worth (money) become something else (food and company – community projects – like Wwoofing?) There is no Money to be earnt, so therefore, I cannot have a home, or even rent a room, I cannot afford public transport, let alone a car, insurance, petrol, so I am stuck to the distance of my pedals and the generosity of ever-helpful friend and  So, there is another life we discussed over breakfast with my great uncle Ray (artist.) One where with just $250 one could buy an acre in the desert, (southern USA,) and for just $500 start to build shelter, collect rain water, generate electricity, and grow food, and all this in a place where a reputation is easily built, so people will trust you and always come to you for odd jobs, after a while, one could have a home, a farm, water, food, a family, a community, electricity and a lot of time to think in a beautiful country.

The discussion; I say, so one can stick with society and struggle, or turn their back on society…live and run around in the desert and relax. Ray says it wouldn’t be turning back, instead, it would be creating a new society.

These words new society don’t seem to be the case, or would they work.

Firstly, if anyone were to start a new society, it wouldn’t be the easy life in the desert described above. A society needs laws and principles on which it operates, that is what our big society is. I know we haven’t got it anywhere near perfect, no one has, but maybe it is impossible to. The history of America, (and in fact the whole history of human migration,) is a great tale of people moving to the frontier, the new lands, in order to live in a way unrestrained by where they were, essentially to make a better lives for themselves and their children, (usually away from tax,) in other words, a new society. And people are still escaping the urban rat society to live on the frontier and cultivate land and a ‘new society’ to this day. All they managed to do was create more places that people want to escape from. Ideology and utopias are prisons, real cities and societies are unpredictable. We must stay and grow what we have, as Reader says in ‘Cities’ : “So long as cities have been […], change has been the currency that sustains them – demolition and reconstruction, the recycling of investment…” We must continue the change and development of our societies rather than starting from fresh yet again.

Sustainable Perceptions...Targets for the Mainstream

Reading Building Magazine in my local library yesterday, the 4/2/11 edition, there was a summary of a discussion on the government target of achieving carbon zero by 2016, or level 6 in the Code for Sustainable Homes. An issue with this is that the extra cost involved in achieving this level currently is too high to allow it to be the mainstream option.

H+H's Cliff Fudge says, "...We're finding that cost reducing is about taking the waste out of the building process..." and this would reduce the cost however in order to make this the mainstream want in society, (which is the ultimate cost factor,) the lifestyle wants and perception of carbon zero must be also altered in the mainstream.

Due to the way the levels 1-6 are determined - including not only the "...embodied carbon but also emissions from occupants..." activities as well as fabric losses, if mainstream lifestyle and therefore the 'occupants' activities' were also a government target to reduce to carbon zero, then this approach would seem natural and not a battle against the economy and society wants. Also we would be well on our way to becoming a sustainable community.

Later, Fudge says, "...If you are only allowed to build a low-carbon home it has to be at the same price as a second hand home, or you cannot sell it." Highlighting the fact that even if by 2016 all our new housing is carbon zero, the majority of housing stock still will not be, still will suit the lifestyle needs of the citizens and still therefore will, in the mainstream, seem the norm. Doesn't this mean that if we are truly to make a difference, the government must also try to alter existing stock such that the fabric losses and occupants' activities of all our citizens are taken into account?

Another element to the problem is summed up towards the end of the article:

"...However, it is not until 2020 that the organization predicts people will start to choose a home based on its energy performance. "I'm not sure I agree the choice will be on energy performance alone because I think in 2020 there will be a shortage of houses," says Oliver. "However it does show that there is a disconnection between when people will start to place a value on a low-carbon home and when builders are being asked to build them."..."

Question Series...from above...

Government target carbon zero by 2016 - but level 6 depends on occupants activity

- can we have carbon zero citizen lifestyle and wants by 2016?

Should the government input targets for exsiting housing stock as well as new builds for carbon-zero.

As most of our communities that will exist in 2016 have already been built.

Is it possible to change existing stock into carbon zero in terms of energy use, fabric losses and losses due to occupant activity?

City Box House

For those young single people who want to live in the center and for our centers that have limited space for new developments. Build small one-person, low-E, city boxes on top of things which aren't used currently. Here's an idea for MK:

Journey Around my Bedroom

I am taking inspiration from Xavier de Maistre, when, as Alain de Botton describes in 'The Art of Travel', page 240,  "...undertook a journey around his bedroom...in 1790, while he was living in a modest room at the top of an apartment building in Turin, de Maistre pioneered a mode of travel that was to make his name: room travel." Botton compares de Maistre's book 'Journey Around My Bedroom' to another exploration book of the same era: 'Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent', 1799 - 1804 in South America by Alexander von Humboldt which "...required ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, four interpreters, a chronometer, a sextant, two telescopes, letters of introduction from the king of Spain and a gun..." (page 240, The Art of Travel, Botton.)

Therefore, I shall make use of this method of thinking about traveling to learn, explore and discover, instead of thinking about the travel element and feelings like de Maistre did, I shall make architectural and spatial studies. While I have been planning a great trip to investigate the dense inner cities of some of the worlds largest mega-cities, in the meantime, I shall start right here in my bedroom and slowly move further away, see what I can learn. Without plane tickets, visa's and a backpack, discover whether or not, as the Tao Te Ching says in chapter XLVII in D.C. Lau's translation:

'...The furthur one goes,
The less one knows...'

City Bird

A Birds Nest.

Some birds to create shelter to protect and warm the growing family make nests that are created out of things collected from the locality and placed together to form a whole space. The cup nest: Straw, grass, mud...woven together. They choose the location deliberately; safe from predators, sheltered from rains and winds, not too far from food. Family-sized spaces in the gaps between elements in the natural landscape.

What about a nest for the city bird, would they collect trash, compost, recycling, shards of man-made materials, all found in the locality, situated in an out-of-the-way underpass corner not seen from the street, or on the roof of a high rise, between the roof door space and the satellites? Family-sized spaces in the gaps between elements in the built landscape.

Hook into Systems

To measure a civilization:

Arrive at a city, a new city, with nothing...how to survive? Urban bush craft. Try to hook into the systems - the systems of life that are the veins and arteries of a surviving citizen. And by citizen meaning the true - a member of the city. First the fresh water systems - the pipes that steal the water from mountains far away and quench the multiplying population. Then the food, imported from the rest of the world, preserved and distributed, the first water and food must be found without money - you arrived with nothing - there are systems for these.

The systems then get more complex, more culturally bent, you must find shelter, this begins with clothing and ends with a house, there are various systems for this. You must find places to wash.

PRIMARY SYSTEMS:
        Water systems
        Food systems
        Shelter systems

Then the systems that organize the citizens must be infiltrated. You must find a way to gain relative worth, in order to trade. Money. A job, work for food and shelter directly or for a wage...play the money game.

SECONDARY SYSTEMS:
        Relative Worth
        Information systems
        Transport systems
        Communication systems

How quickly and easily can this be achieved? What is the value of the city to the citizen for life...everything if you are to live within it. And this is defined, labeled and enabled by architecture.

Sustainable Marathon...The Booklet

Here's the upload for the booklet handed out at the Sustainable Open Weekend in Marathon - talked about in another post - We compiled all the information to be discussed and places to visit during the event. The pages are added as jpeg's so click on them to view larger.

The Meeting Dome

At the beginning of the Summer La Loma Del Chivo community had been split into 4 corners…The Sunhouse, John’s Gypsy Camp, The Goatshed Hostel and Guil’s Nabolom, so we came up with the idea to build a central meeting space, an outdoor space on the path between the two places of congregation as a place for coffee, music conversations and art. When Guil got involved in the plan, he pulled out some inspiring drawings by Kiv from a few years back that suggested we needed a dome. It was about the same time when John Suficool drove Mike, Kikay Wes, Guil and I down into Terlingua to meet Don Bryant.

Don Bryant has been building domes for decades. Out here in the dessert, he has been evolving a smart way to build Geodesic domes. From the basic tetrahedron shapes, he takes the triangles and breaks them up into various frequencies of smaller triangles, much like the methods of Buckminster Fuller, however, Don rationalizes the complex construction this usually requires by generating jigs and forms for the original size panels, meaning one does not need to cut each and every triangle.

This means that with one jig, one can assemble the strong geodesic framework for the dome in record time. Furthering this idea, if enough panels are creates from the jig to create one dome, the panels themselves can become forms - assembled, copied on site and removed, leaving a dome framework and then being passed on to the next builders, or, another dome built connecting to the first.

This is the method that Don recommended to us. Trevor, who lives near to Don has tried this out and is currently building the first of his domes, so, while he is working on the window and door fittings, he has kindly lent us the forms before he starts on the second.

Before collecting the forms, Eric and I dug and filled a 1foot deep foundation at the same diameter to the forms - 18foot. Assembling and placing the forms took almost no time at all and the next day we started wiring together the rebar.  Once all the framework lines had been copied, and a rebar ring attached at the base to the foundation, the forms could be removed - by simply cutting the initial wiring.

We decided to go for a less expensive option by instead of using regular cement lath and trawling on the stucco, we would use chicken wire and cement-soaked sheets to create the initial egg-shell layer, this technique is borrowed from Mike Reynolds ‘The Hut’ video where they use this as an inexpensive way to make the first shell on a roof. This technique has worked well in the sense that it gives a backing for the cement and thus there is less loss of material - as there can often be when trowling through regular lathe. Paper - Mache building! Before adding the sheets we wired up electricity lines for where the lights and the outlets will go.

This is the stage we are currently on, see the photo album for more images during construction.