charles wu / www.charleswu.co.uk

SYNERGETIC ECOLOGY

Nature has a way to things. Lately I’ve been researching more about accelerating updraft tower, and realised that tree actually has the best way to transport fluid to the tip of the leave from so far under soil. Using ecological morphology, we could understand how architecture could be sustainable and efficient.

Think of Synergetics too. Bucky has a way in seeing things. MACRO view of Universe is essential.

Form is an issue. Branding. The look of a tree is a brand. We somehow thinks we know how a tree looks like since we were a child.

Loos might not approve, but the Satin Bowerbird collects yellow flowers and lilac blue items to decorate his bower so as to attract female Bowerbird. What is even more fascinating is how artificial the blue is, how much it stands out from the surrounding, thus, innocently attractive.

WHY

maybe Phillip Petit would look forward to SOM building a phase 2, turning them into twin towers for him to draw a line and walk across. He’d say, ‘that’s how american are, always asking why. Sometimes there’s no why.’ But… why? I mean… why?

PROTOTYPE

This ampitheatre reminds me of Greek ampitheatres, or Pompeii. Except that it’s under water.

It could be used as a water collecting Reservoir, but during special occasions it could be a stage and center of spectacles. Imagine sitting around in O2 realising that bits of seaweeds under your feet. Quite tasteful and intguing. That’s a prototype I’d say.

LOVE IT!

I always know that I’m not the only one thinking of the tower dream of power. Seductive as it is. We have stack city here.

Taken from Archinect, ‘It’s a familiar claim by now: A lush new city will rise from the super-heated sands of the Gulf, in perfect zero-carbon equilibium. The enticingly difficult technological problem of conquering the uninhabitable desert and the peculiar opportunity to social-engineer new communities has put the Gulf in architectural headlines again and again.

Starting with an adaptation of Jorg Schlaich’s solar chimney power generators, Behin’s project employs the stack effect to moderate the temperature of the city, and to provide for some of its energy needs. Already a successful engineer-entrepreneur when he decided to study architecture, Behin uses his strong understanding of technology to enter the problem of the zero carbon city from a pragmatic point of view, but ends up asking us whether we’re ready to re-engage utopia.’

A sectional perspective reveals the different layers of inhabitation that occur within the urban fabric: a top zone supporting air flow associated with the solar chimney along with transportation and energy infrastructure (including photovoltaics), a middle zone containing cellular spaces such as homes and offices, and a bottom zone comprising a continuous ground which is thickened to support large-scale and communal programs.

Stack City won the James Templeton Kelley Prize for best thesis or final design project at the Harvard Graduate School of Design this Spring. The project was advised by Professor Hashim Sarkis with technical advice from Professor Matthias Schuler.

for more detail and photos of the project, check Archinect

PARQUE DEL LAGO

Usually I loath winning entries to a competition I didn’t win. Interesting enough to see a fascinating solution I actually like. Genuinely this is a very interesting answer to the 3km airport runway turned national park.

Water is the major element here, acquatic theatre, water treatment plants, ‘According to the organizers, the coming availability of 126 hectares of space with a flat topography, located in the midst of a consolidated area, which thanks to the decision of the Quito Metropolitan Council, will be transformed into a park, constitutes an exceptional event and a unique opportunity.’

3-kilometer runway was turned into an “active hydrologic park” which then we partitioned into 6 programmatically discrete areas.

the 3120 mts line is divided in 6 stages that conform a closed cycle of water events.

1. At the north end of the park are wetlands. These bioremediate water redirected from the south end of the park after having run its course through this outrageously elongated pool.

2. Relatively clean water from the wetlands is then used to fill an open air aquarium. The tanks here contain fluvial species from tropical ecosystems.

3. An aquatic botanical garden comes next in this hydrological assembly line. Whereas the faunal variety is showcased in the aquarium, tropical plants are the main attractions here, though both are equally essential to maintain any kind of a robust ecosystem.

4. From there, water moves into circular water tanks, where it is mechanically oxygenated and filtrated. and the organic material coming from the botanical garden is removed from water. Pedestrian walkways involve people with process that are usually is hidden in every city.

5. pools and thermal baths. Clean water is used to fill the public pools and thermal baths. a combination of eolic and solar energy is used to heat the acuatic complex…

6. Finally, we come to a recreational lake, where the water is collected in subterranean tanks to satisfy the need of irrigation systems and general maintenance of the park before.

A really thorough way of utilising nature, and resolving notions of water treatment, storage, renewable energy generation. Great branding, chic graphics, thumbs up.

 (check out Paisajas Emergentes webpage here)

GREEN = GREEN?

How do we understand something that’s not very tangible? Something like Electricity? How did we describe, design and understand its existence before they become the norm?

And what about renewable energy? green technology? Are they supposed to be futuristic and full of ‘Green’ to get the story over? Or should they always be filled with wind turbines and solar panels? When can we get the message through just like Le Corbusier talking about tactile materiality, scale and city as universe?

Complicated notion, I do not have the answer today, let’s sleep on that one. Well, I guess it’s still forgivable, bet even MVRDV hasn’t figured that out yet.

LIFESTYLE

Prototypes and technologies are about sustaining and extending the lifestyle of what we have, adding a twist that is extremely sensitive to the earth. Like animals who hears an earthquake hours before it happens.

It is a hidden agenda, almost transparent, like our city. Let’s assume this new Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo, China, is really a zero-emissions building. This brand almost assumes that the material used, construction techniques, form, facade orientations, are all influenced by the location of the building, sunpath and wind, humidity and rain, as well as the programme operation, electricity and gas, water effluent and waste.

CLIMATE CHANGE PROTOTYPES

Technologies need to be pushed forward to reduce carbon dioxide. Public need to be taught the way towards reducing footprint. Companies need to invest into emission reductions and energy efficient systems. Architects, what should we do?

Imagine family picnics in the park, people in and out of the museum, Toms peeping through their living room windows, interviewees sitting in office lounges, lovers strolling along the boulevards pointing towards vulnerable monuments. They are all drawn to this almost transparent fabric we call architecture. What we should contribute is to combine technologies with the way we make our streets, we do our office lounges, we reinvent our boulevard.

Technologies are reinterpretations of physics and wisdom, it could be traced way back to homo sapiens who decided to eat meat and hold up a bone with his hand. It’s inevitable to describe future of our city not as a sign of power, but a system that generates power. A system is more than a machine, it acquires self-organisation. It is fluid, organic, yet very sensitive and well calibrated. Organising resources, reinterpretating materials and light, a synergetic perception of this fabric. The next revolution has to take place. Now.

DESIRE MAPPING

Desire is a cycle. It is a cycle that grows out of our nature, to pursuit, possess things that could represent and even, actualise our inner selves. We’re happy to put on things nicely tagged with others names onto our skin, fill up our rooms. Symbols of lust, luxury, taste, and prowess.

It then affects the way we perceive what’s around us. It’s like a disease, a flu. Your neighbour having the newest hi-fi set, young girls under the sun eating the infamous brand’s honey whatever ice-cream, need is ignited by the sensual impact and memory of things, and fulfilled by the ultimate possession. Capitalism is an environment that nurtures such interaction. Together with fordism, mass production comes mass consumption. Brands, filterings through all medias, billboards at junctions, televisions. TO say it’s because we’re vulnerable, I’d rather say it’s because we KNOW we’re vulnerable.

To read Deyan Sudjic’s book is to understand how vulnerable we are, and to question how, through the urge to design and to make, we are a part of the whole chain. In fact this is human nature. Our insecurity (scared of looking ugly, wanting to show how rich one could be) is levered by the excessive array of things to CHOOSE from. From there it’s almost difficult to see who’s the host and who’s the guess.

Are we, consumers and needers, who decide the existence of an object because we need them? Or are they, objects of desire, dictate what we do and how we react?

PROGRAMMATIC CDM

Complicated but almost understandably essential. Programmatic CDM aims at going 1 step forward from CDM projects, or classical CDM projects, by the use of smaller scaled and lower ER projects, grouped together to form a proposal with the ER parallel to a CDM project.

Programmatic CDM is good because of the lower transaction costs, lower bars for additionality, and the appearantly more flexible organisation, ownership and partnership. It’s difficult because projects are too small in terms of emissions, complications in organsation make them unlikely projects. So far 13 projects have been on the pipeline, with only 1 approved.

Programmatic CDM project could be benefitial to architectural CDM projects, as they are smaller in scale, and focuses of complexity and organsation. It’s an urban scale where we could re- organise EXISTING fabric and reconstitute renewable energy and energy efficient systems. Flexibility of this system allows them to be mandatory or voluntary. Let’s see how far could this system be pushed.

(diagram as part of the work for CHORA Architecture and Urbanism)