Recycling Center TRIPS + Please JOIN A TEAM!

[1] Trips to the Recycling Center!

Some members of the class have spearheaded efforts to go to the recycling center to collect bottles...there are trips schedule for Thursday and Friday. I believe Ileana is in charge of Thursday trips and Molly and a few others are in charge of Friday. If you are interested in joining them, or have a car to contribute, please let designated leaders know. The more people/cars we have, the more bottles we can collect!

[2] Design/Construction Teams!

Listed below are teams for construction loosely separated by people interested in 'space frame' vs. 'other alternatives.' Both teams should try to build as complete a mockup as possible (full scale) for next class with all elements from catchment, holding tank, filtration, and final storage/distribution based on ideas from today's discussion [with thoughts about program, foundation, filtration methods, etc.]

please see the list below for teams and members:

TEAM A: 'space frame'

Molly Reichert
David
Rocky H.
Steve B.
Ileana
Adam
Harini
Adrienne Smith
Bryan Allen
Roxanne
Eleanor

TEAM B: 'alternative methods'

Jaeyeong Yang
Dave Dahl
Jungmin An
David Dana
Silvia
Olimpia
Soomin Ko
Tim
Rachael
Gerrell
Trudy
Won Shim

IF YOU DID NOT GET THE CLASS EMAIL regarding this, IF YOU ARE MISSING FROM A TEAM, or know someone missing from a team, please let me (harini[at]berkeley[dot]edu) or Mark know asap.

space frame action

pyramid module space frame with tubular members.

bottle triangular base pyramid module.

Recycling Center Contact

I have a friend that works at a Recycling Center. He is always providing us material for... any past purposes.

Do we need more bottles?

If we do,
How many, and what kind?
He might not be able to chose that much, but we can place an order.

Please contact me if needed.

Have a great day!

Berta

Youth Empowerment School- YES

I´m updating the High School process here since I will not be there tomorrow to share comments out-loud with you all. To get from feedback, please comment here, OR email me.

YES School has agreed with us coming in the classroom!!
We can have 3 consecutive Fridays (3 different classes 10:20-11:20/ 12:35-1:35/ 1:40-2:40), and the followed last Saturday, so we will need to schedule to go and do a couple presentation in 1-4 different topics:

1. Social and Community Design Talk

2. Urban Water/Filtration/ Waste Talk

3. How to use Plastic Bottles for Building Systems
4. Design Charette with the kids in order to know WHAT to build (it will be smaller scope, and their ideas- for now that´s the idea, suggestions?)

5. Saturday all-day workshop to do a Hands-on Experiment (TBD)

The Nº1 Talk will be done by (cross fingers)either Architecture for Humanity or Young Planners Network -high School students.
Nª3 and Nº4 could be design to be in one unique 1 hour Session. What do you think?

The questions now are:

* Who is interested and commited?
* When will that work in your semester schedule?

and the big one:

* Do we want the final workshop to happen at the same time that the EnormousFlower Construction? Is it happening over the weekend?
* Do we want students to come to Wurster and help build?

And if it is a different thing,

* Ideas for what to build in 8 hours on a Saturday with the High School students?
* Can we offer them to re-use your Enormous Flower in their brand new High School Farm Project? (just an idea from me, not yet sure)

I can try to get volunteers from somewhere else to do some of this different work. I don´t want to overload students with an "on the side" project. It´s just that it´s such a good timing, and so exciting to see others reactions, and it´s your work that you are sharing!!!

Thank you so much EVERYBODY for the opportunity, the great work and the effort!
De verdad, Thank you!

PD:
This are some Image references about the "Drink Me Furniture" idea that I had last week. PlasticBottled Filters integrated in urban furniture that can be drunk "poquito a poquito". They will appear and disappear as the water is collected and distributed.
Some "Bottle Art"




Gerhy Cardboard Chair (1000$!!!!!!!!!)


Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo carved 1000 figures out of ice and placed them on steps in the central Gendarmenmarkt square, Berlin on Sept 2nd 2009 where they began to melt within about half an hour. For or funded by the World Life Fund.


And... you never know what can happen next...


Architecture for Humanity has a San Francisco Chapter Project called Street FUNiture that can be looked at, for inspiration or for expanding their furniture collection!
http://sites.google.com/site/afhsanfrancisco/street-funiture

Sabina Nieto and Berta Lázaro Collaboration

Our interest in joining the course for the EnormousPlasticRainFlower is one of open documentation. We may or may not be in the position this semester to integrate the design research with a high school program; however, we would at the least be interested in condensing and compiling research along the way--to create a "How to" document.

Our proposal is to archive the studio's process documentation from this recycled rainwater catchment project and create a document that can be shared for further reproductions of such a worthwhile endeavor.

Our secondary idea, after sharing this project with the YES high school of Oakland, would be to share this research with Architecture for Humanity. From the ground up, PlasticFlowerCisterns could sprout around town, with a manual of sorts guiding the way.

We will be posting ideas and other projects on How-to Documentation, soon

Thank you all!

PS: I just wanted to share some pictures of recycled architecture so that the email is not that boring ;)
I got the info from here. It´s a summer music Festival in South Spain FIB Benicassim, that has an art program on the side. This was on the 2004 Edition.

the tube...

it's flexible!

basic construction

We are going to have to transfer water from one column to another at some point, and maybe this can be a way to do that. The tube is made from the tops of coke bottles with fishing wire looped through to keep them together. As long as the bottom piece is anchored, all of the pieces will sit securely in the one below it. The tube is easy to construct, uses a part of the bottle that wasn't doing much in the stacking schemes, and most importantly, it's flexible. This means that we can potentially transfer water to columns that are not immediately adjacent to each other . . . I'm not quite sure what the advantage of that may be, but my intuition tells me there is an advantage in there somewhere.

Assemble

... by Fabrication team

Taping

... by Fabrication team

Filter + storage : system

...by Fabrication team

Using other bottles

...by Fabrication team

2nd stage : Proliferation

can grow up and be multiplied

...by Fabrication team

from our class

getting to know the bottle

Since we seem to be moving towards the computer for parametric design I though it might be good to know what we are working with. Here are the various types of common bottles with dimensions, their critical geometry, potential connection points, and some concepts for 'shingle' based connections.

I promise the images work if they arnt showing up just click where they should be and they will work.

I can give the CAD file to anyone who wants it. 8th flr NW corner

Internal tubular construction...

First stage : Synthesizing our ideas

This is just first stage for synthesizing our whole ideas...

It is a simplified miniature, however it can be multiplied horizontally, vertically and also be several layered.

to be continued...

modular construction

Thinking about the modular construction of the flower, and from what we talked last week, we have been developing this idea of " module", and tried to nail down the main problems.

Once we manage to work out a vertical module that works for the filtration of water, we could multiply the module N times, either by accumulation, or by association, to create a space or structure as big as we want.
That vertical module should be linked to a horizontal capturing surface on the top, and to a distribution system on the bottom.

An important issue to solve then would be the connections of the bottles, both vertically and horizontally,in a hermetic way. For that, we might need a "double layer" system, where the external layer, the bottles, serve as structural columns, fixed together, and the internal layer, in this case a "sock" made with plastic bags, serves as the water conductor, both vertically and horizontally.

In this case the structure is separated from the water conduction, so that each system maintains its own integrity; and the water distribution system can still be hermetic.

parametric architecture

I wanted to raise the question about which tools we will be using to design and
produce the drawings of our flower, and which tools will make construction
easier for us.
A previous post on the blog showed these images about this installation by
lift architects (http://www.liftarchitects.com)/,
which creates a space by using pickle bottle lids. The space was designed
through a 3d surface, and then grasshopper was used to analyze the length of
each of the lines that hold the pickle lids.

This other installation, also done in San Francisco by bios design (http://biosarch.wordpress.com/), also uses grass hopper to generate and analyze the space under a canopy, made with plastic cups.

catchment + pre-storage charrette [part2]

some process photos of our charette...