Just eight months after filing for bankruptcy, General Motors has announced that it will be teaming up with NASA to develop new robots.  The opportunistic joint venture is part of the Space Act Agreement, and aims to build a safe ‘humanoid’ robot that is able to work alongside humans.  The development of the R2 robonaut – or what is being claimed as the most dexterous robot – is a result of several new technologies including leading edge control and sensor/ vision systems.  To achieve near human dexterity in an envelope of comparable size and shape to human hands and fingers, engineers looked to biomimicry to create tendon-like operators.  The R2 was built to replicate the human form from waist up and take over difficult, dangerous or repetitive tasks while increasing safety.

[ NASA and General Motors have come together to develop the next generation dexterous humanoid robot. The robots – called Robonaut2 – were designed to use the same tools as humans, which allows them to work safely side-by-side humans on Earth and in space. Image via NASA]

[ Robonaut2 surpasses previous dexterous humanoid robots in strength, yet it is safe enough to work side-by-side with humans. It is able to lift, not just hold, this 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body. Image via NASA]

The massive expense of such a development encouraged partnership between what are now two government owned agencies.  While it is still to be decided if the robots will be remotely operated by human control devices or will have autonomously scripted actions, the aim for future robonauts is to be able to work free of human involvement.  The ramifications of such a development are endless – from changing production processes, to soldier robots, future robonauts could even be the first citizens of new planets that plant the first terraforming or geoengineering seeds.  Key to the future development and success of robonauts is how we can effectively reduce the gap between mechanical engineering and biology, or create a systemic symbiosis between the sciences.

The Thesis publication this year, ANNUAL, has raised the stakes again. Below is a short piece I submitted to it, which asked for responses to the provocation of “crisis as catalyst.”

The Crisis of Solutions / The Opportunity of Crises -  (Mason White)

There are so many proclamations of crises today – economic, climate, social, political, and apparently there is even a crisis of form – that the result is virtually numbing. In fact the greatest crisis is the crisis of indifference to crisis. (Insert story of boy who cried wolf.) Yet how do we, in any productive profession, react to such a call to action? Are these just snafus stalling an inevitable trajectory or larger paradigm shifts suggesting a new world? What role does a designer play here?

“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top.” – Buckminster Fuller

The quote above from Buckminster Fuller’s Operational Manual for Spaceship Earth revolves around an argument that the piano top as a flotation device is an inadvertent solution to a problem that requires more adequate redress. While I agree that the piano top is not necessarily the most ideal life preserver, I disagree with Fuller’s propositioning that crisis management exclusively requires going back to reevaluate the design of life preservers. This overlooks the innovation and ingenuity of the user, and in many ways a piano top may be even more effective as a life preserver in its ability to offer a way to get out of the water, and a way to float more individuals than a single preserver on a shared surface. We could also make the argument that the piano top (if buoyant enough) can double as a water-born vehicle. But this does not mean that the life preserver should be designed in homage to the piano top, but rather that the piano top, in the right hands, can be rigged to be a life preserver. I would argue that the architect here is no longer the designer of the piano top nor the designer of a life preserver but the person – in this case the person in the water – that opportunistically addresses a crisis (of some magnitude) with this innovative programmatic or typological transformation. The architect is the person that hacks / rigs the piano top into a life preserver.

In the face of myriad crises, I would propose a (paradigm?) shift from the binary of problem / solution toward challenges / opportunity. Design work is typically resigned to either a signature response to a brief (capital D-design) or a solution to a problem (lowercase d-design). However, both of these are reductive and both overlook the role of design to position itself as an opportunity. Opportunity locates design as a response addressing the problem but incorporates another unexpected possibility, namely a typological or programmatic innovation in response to a yet-unseen factor. Opportunities are solutions rigged to address future challenges and as yet unseen problems.

More info on ANNUAL can be found here. Or try emailing The Annual theannual.daniels[at]gmail.com

Is Weather the last vestige of nature in the City?
Do the forces in Weather systems hold the key to the energy crisis?
Is instability and disorder something that can be designed?
Is Weather the nemesis of Architecture or its best friend?
Is Weather becoming the last form of cultural specificity?
Does it all come down to the “Green”?

The dynamic, turbulent and unpredictable forces that comprise the weather are shared by economic cycles of production and consumption.  We are at the cusp of an intriguing moment wherein the cycles of economics and weather have collided to instigate a new green economy.  The consumptive aspects of ‘green’ have granted architecture a moment to explore its nemesis – instability and disorder – the key characteristics of weather.

-arium: Weather + Architecture is a research investigation carried out during the 2008 Gehry Chair studio at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design under the direction of Jürgen Mayer H. and Neeraj Bhatia that centers upon how to renegotiate the relationship between architecture and weather.  Composed of three sections – The Weather Report, The Weather Forecast, and The Weather Outlook – that respectively, research, design and theorize on weather and architecture, -arium offers a guide for both architectural designer and critics. The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design invites you to join celebrating the launch of –arium: Weather + Architecture. Hard copies will be available for purchase during the reception or can be purchased online.

Project Team:

Editors:
Jürgen Mayer H. & Neeraj Bhatia

Graphic Design:
Eric Bury, Visuals Etcetera

Student Researchers:
Tomek Bartzak, Johanna Bollozos, Dan Briker, Piers Cunnington, Andrea Losier, Renee Leung, Daniel Rabin, Dennis Rijkhoff, Annie Ritz, Lisa Spensieri, Andrea Traverso, Geoffrey Turnbull & Marnie Williams

Articles by:
George Baird (Daniels), Neeraj Bhatia (InfraNet Lab/ The Open Workshop/ Daniels), Rodolphe el-Khoury (KLF/ Daniels), Robert Levit (KLF/ Daniels), Filiz Klassen (Ryerson University), Dirk Hebel (DRKH Architects/ ETHZ), Jürgen Mayer H. (J. MAYER H. Architects), Jörg Stollmann (URBANINFORM), Henry Urbach (SFMOMA), Matthais Hollwich (HWKN, UPenn, Architizer), Marc Kushner (HWKN/ Columbia, Architizer), & Mason White (InfraNet Lab/ Lateral Office/ Daniels)

Last month I had the pleasure of attending final reviews at University of Michigan Taubman College for two days. I saw an incredible range of work within a studio premise called “Perimeter.” Each studio developed a position relative to the condition of a perimeter as a site. Perimeter to what? In what way is the perimeter advantageous for divergent forms and formats of urbanism? And is the perimeter just a slumbering future center?

From my visit, it is difficult to select a single project, again because of the sweeping diversity of propositions within each brief, but I was struck by the simplicity and industrious viability of a project that had the Thames River as a perimeter site. Its author is Jonathan Blair working under professor Sophia Psarra’s studio site of the Thames. Now you might be wondering, in what way is the Thames a perimeter? And I had similar hesitation, but generally it depends on who is asking the question of perimeter. If it is fisherman and fishmongers than it is most certainly a perimeter to a larger center.

Blair’s project originates from the following two facts:

Fact 1: Britons eat one-third of all the cod consumed in the world, and 85% of cod caught in European waters is destined for plates in the UK. (BBC)

Fact 2: The very shape of the food web has changed, from plankton on up to the cod and flatfish that once dominated the icy waters, supporting rich commercial fisheries. They’ve been largely replaced by jellyfish and crabs. (Wired)

[The first fish n chips shop was opened in 1860 in London offering Atlantic Cod fried in the Jewsih traditional way from trawling in the North Sea.]

Jonathan Blair’s Miles of Liquid History: A Half Real/Half Fictional Atlas of the London Thames addresses a projected near future in which the ocean’s fruit is even more threatened, and to maintain fish consumption we have resorted to new forms of aquaculture. Blair embraces some of the initial successes of the aquapod for aquacultural harvesting. (read more on offshore aquaculture here.) He writes:

The oceans have been critical for maintaining food sources worldwide. What happens when we relieve them of their fruit? Just as London has replaced cod, the famous fish n’ chips variety, with plaice due to overfishing, other once abundant species are disappearing. Due to such occurrences, fish farms have popped up as a way to monitor stocks. Fish farms make fishing an easy chore and stabilize fish prices.

[An aquapod submerged ready to cultivate, as developed by Ocean Farm Technologies.]

The catch, however, is that Blair rigs the aquapod’s arrival point into London at the historic Tower Bridge, completed in 1894. Effectively, the bridge reels in the pod, when ready, it hovers over vehicles and pedestrians passing below as a gantry pulls it toward one of the pier-towers. After it is emptied, it is then deposited back under the raised bridge-road, into the Thames, and cast back out to sea.

[0:00 | Condition normal.]

[5:00 | Aquapod arrives.]

[6:00 | Aquapod lifted to high gantry.]

[9:00 | Bridge back to normal.]

[18:00 | Aquapod empited, and bridge opens to release pod.]

[19:00 | Aquapod cast back out to the North Sea.]

He further writes:

However, a present challenge with fish farms lies in the pollution from a large aquatic populous occupying a coastal region previously uninhabited. Antibiotics, feed, and fish waste plague the stagnant water surrounding the farm. This is currently tolerated as a positive alternative to scraping the bottom with ever-expanding nets. The Tower Bridge Seafood Market explores a fictitious urban scenario where direct access to the sea provides the ability for fish farming to becoming free-ranging.

[View of a model of one of the Tower Bridge piers rigged with over 25 handlines for the local catch-of-the-day at the proposed Tower Bridge market.]

The two towers of Tower Bridge are outfitted with a light-weight supplementary structure that allows access to the market, food court, lift operations, and a crow’s nest. Each structural member is threaded with a handline that fihes for local catch. This operates in complement to the larger scale offshore aquapod.

[Elevations of the filigreed structural rig wrapping the tower-piers of Tower bridge.]

Finally, Blair writes:

The proposed method utilizes a recent invention in which a geodesic structure of aluminum and Kevlar mesh preseeded with a particular marine species serves as the vessel for off-shore farming. Autonomous feeding and satellite guidance systems navigate the spheres on predetermined migratory paths until the school has reached adequate size for its return to port. This mobile fish farm is juxtaposed with the traditional handline method, where a balance of wild versus farm-raised is played out on a central stage. The handline method also allows for a specific species not able to caught by net to be acquired. Tying in to the existing hydraulic lift systems historically used to raise and lower the drawbridge, the “AquaSphere” is hoisted upwards between the two towers where it will be unloaded while simultaneously the fishing lines retract bringing up the a wild catch and special for the day.

[Fish-eye view of the structural wrapper showing integrated reelers.]

To reach Jonathan, please contact him at blairjo [at] gmail [dot] com.

[Togo phosphates mining]

If you thought post-peak oil had generated media frenzy (and spawned endless sustainable design projects), there’s another, quieter crisis looming – post-peak phosphorous.

Phosphorus is at the heart of modern farming; an essential ingredient of agricultural fertilizers. It has no synthetic alternative and is being mined, used and wasted as never before. Inefficiencies in the processing of food and the soaring demand for meat and dairy produce across Asia is fueling demand for phosphorus faster than anyone had predicted.

[Global fertilizer use, 2007 via NYT]

Dana Cordell, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, states: “Quite simply, without phosphorus we cannot produce food. At current rates, reserves will be depleted in the next 50 to 100 years. Phosphorus is as critical for all modern economies as water. If global water supply were as concentrated as global phosphorus supply, there would be much, much deeper concern. It is amazing that more attention is not being paid to ensuring phosphorus security.”

Not only does the fluctuating price of the raw material – phosphate rock – impact food prices, but some researchers believe that the risk of future phosphorus shortages dismantles the idea of bio-fuels as a “renewable” source of energy.

Significant Phosphate reserves exist in only a few nations: Morocco holds 32 per cent of the world’s proven reserves, with Western Sahara, South Africa, Jordan, Syria and Russia holding the other significant reserves. A new geopolitical map may be drawn around the remaining reserves – creating a small number of new “resource superpowers” with a pricing control over fertilisers that some suspect could end up rivaling OPEC’s control over crude oil.

[global phosphate reserves]

The economic battle to secure phosphorus supplies may already have begun. China apparently has 13 billion tonnes of phosphate rock reserves and has started to guard them more carefully, alarming the fertiliser industry, as well as Western Europe and India, which are both entirely reliant on phosphorus imports. With America’s own phosphorus production down 20 per cent over the past three years, it has begun to ship phosphorus in from Morocco.

Few researchers hold out hope of a discovery of phosphorus large enough to meet the continued growth in demand. The ore takes millions of years to form, extracting phosphorus from the sea bed presents massive technological and financial challenges. The solution, say scientists, lies in better use of existing phosphorus reserves.

Ironically, excess phosphorous leaching into water supplies causes plant and algae blooms, killing water oxygen supplies and creating ‘dead zones’ in coastal waters.  Scientist such as Cordell are looking into recycling the millions of tons of phosphorus that originate in fertilizer or sewage and move to the seas each year would address the twin problems of pollution and shortage.

[Extracting one ton of phosphate produces five tons of the waste. Florida, a major producer, has approx. 1 billion tons of slightly-radioactive heaps, which form a significant state landform.]

Many sewage treatment districts recycle sewage sludge to farm fields, while the Swedish have developed a toilet which captures phosphorous-rich urine, stores it for use farm fertilizer.

Would post-peak agriculture be replaced by fields of fertilizer-efficient greenhouses, producing new technological landscapes. In the meantime, perhaps we are all shareholders of the new yellow gold?

If you’re planning a winter getaway to the islands this year, you might move beyond ‘eco-tourism’ to trash tourism, in this case, visiting the island of Thilafushi, just off the shores of the Maldives, an island country in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls. The country foregrounded itself on the headlines back in October, when the president of Maldives and members of his cabinet met underwater to stress the significance of rising seas.

The name conjures images of azure seas and white beaches, but Thilafushi is an island of trash, created in the early 1990s on 7km lagoon called Thilafalhu, to solve the Maldives’ mounting garbage problem.

[An industrial waste-scape emerges from Thilafushi - built from, and for, trash]

The island has grown at the rate of a square metre a day, as more and more rubbish is dumped here. Mountains of rubbish – plastic, metal tins and rusty oil barrels – extend as far as the eye can see. Unlike the adjacent resort islands, the only visitors here are the Bangladeshi workers who wade through the sludge and brave the stench to burn the tonnes of refuse that arrive at the island every day, writes Maryam Omidi.

Spotting the potential to generate revenue from the mushrooming island, the government decided to lease part of it for industrial purposes. Additional terrain was created using white sand and now giant cement cones, oil drums and the skeletons of future boats can be seen dotted around. Metal compactors compress junk into blocks for sale to India. Each tonne sells for US$175.

The island has grown to such proportions that it now has a café, a restaurant, two mosques, a barbershop, a clinic, a police station and rather unexpectedly, a makeshift zoo.  Like  Wall-E’s post-apocalyptic world, here is a society built around, and sustained by trash.

The garbage is collected in the capital and separated before being transferred to Thilafushi on landing vessels. However, a major concern for environmentalists around the world, is the treatment of toxic wastes, which includes both e-waste and batteries

According to Ali Rilwan, executive director of environmental NGO Bluepeace, these materials leech into the surrounding environment. “These chemicals remain forever and they are getting into the ecosystem and inside the reef,” he said. “Unlike a landfill, this is a lagoon fill. It is a landfill in liquid form and so it absorbs these chemicals much more easily and this makes it more vulnerable.”

[Does every island needs is trash alter-ego? Singapores Semakau island]

Singapore built itself it’s the Semaku, an island covering an area of 3.5 square kilometers and consisting of two small islands connected by a rock embankment.

[Eastern and Wester Pacific Gyres]

Thilafushi,  of course, pales in comparison to Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a “plastic soup” of waste growing tenfold every decade, and now covering an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

[A new trash ecology emerges in the Pacific]

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. It is believed that 100 million tons of flotsam is circulating in the region, composed primarily of plastics – everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bag.

Maybe we could capitalize on this: the ultimate flea-market, duty-free island in the Pacific, for all the cruise boats..?

Juergen Bergbauer’s series Jardin a la francaise oscillates between a masked-cropped photo and a model-space future nostalgia. Bergbauer speculates that this is how André Le Nôtre might represent designs for castle gardens or elaborate hedgework – as 3d-modeled perspectival figures on a beige canvas – were he at work today. Each image operates from an ideal height (of roughly 3.5 meters) as though ready for pan, tilt, rotation, and zoom. Landscape fabrication, scripting, and the modeling of environments somehow seem increasingly less distinct, or new for that matter.

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) (Detail) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (orangerie II) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

Juergen, might we suggest Longleat next?

related: see Habitat Interlocks

[The Canary Islands as an eddy-creating obstacle via GSFC/NASA.]

Vortex streets emerge when the right wind and cloud formation encounters the right kind of obstacle. Theodore von Kármán, a fluid dynamicist, observed and documented this phenomenon. Swirling rings sequence along a street-like corridor trail beyond the obstacle. Each ring stems from an air pockets are released in a series of vortices alternating parallel to wind direction. This condition can happen at any scale if the proportion of energies and obstacles is present.

[Another set of vortices southeast of the Ilha da Madeira (Madeira Island) via GSFC/NASA December 1, 2002.]

We were excited to see that MedSec and UNEP have released a series of recent maps on various aspects of the environment dependent upon Mediterranean Sea. The series is titled, appropriately enough, “Environment and Security in the Mediterranean.” They have documented Agriculture and Fisheries, Migration, Water, Population, Non-renewable resources, and Desertification. Here they are in all their geo-informational glory. 1000+ possibilities…

[Mediterranean: Water. Zoï Environment Network.]

[Mediterranean: Population. Zoï Environment Network.]

[Mediterranean: Non-renewable resources. Zoï Environment Network.]

[Mediterranean: Migration. Zoï Environment Network.]

[Mediterranean: Desertification. Zoï Environment Network.]