Tutorial 29 Jan 2010

Reconnecting with Nature
Why: Since the Machine Age, Le Corbusier has declared that “The House is a machine for living in” which mean architects should make the house as well suited to its purpose as a machine was because house is one of the primary living unit of the city. On the other hand, greenhouse gas has emitted since the creation of steam engine, it dichotomized the interrelationship between the natural and artificial worlds. Annihilative natural cycles affected on the global climate change, by consequence, the situations are more detrimental to particular landscapes, geophysical and economic conditions. Contemporary architecture is attempting to deal with global climate change by constructing and using inert, industrial era construction materials to solve this problem, but it’s not enough to manipulate the flow and transfer of energy from the biosphere to the built environment.
What: This architectural project proposes to reconnect with nature by investigating the relationship between the primary living units of the city and microcosm of organism to allow the possibility of self-generating and environmental responsive materials. This might rephrase the declaration from Le Corbusier in the biological context, as “The House is an organism for living”, which mean architects should make the house as well suited to its purpose as an organism was to create a genuine sustainable cycle, which can possibly consume greenhouse gas and become a part of the nature.
How: To reconstruct an existing house in term of mass, surface and plan to replace the new context from the Machine Age in biological context by using a transdisciplinary approach of biotechnology, nanotechnology, geoengineering and architecture to manipulate the real environment that responds to the city.

Tutorial 22 Jan 2010

Reconnecting The Nature : Carbon Architecture

The Twentieth Century modernism architecture can be described in the other way as a Machine Age as the declaration of Le Corbusier “ A house is a machine to live in “. As a result of the creation of steam engine in the industrial revolution, the abundant manufacturer has been emitted green house gas to the atmosphere and dichotomized the interrelationship between the natural and artificial worlds. Annihilative natural cycles affected on the global climate change, by consequence, the situations are more detrimental to particular landscapes, geophysical and economic conditions.

One of the most important destructive natural cycles is carbon cycle. The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle, which carbon is annually exchanged among the 5 reservoirs -biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. The enormous unnatural emanation of carbon dioxide destroys the balance of carbon cycle.

The ambition of sustainability architecture was constructed to dispose and reduce carbon footprint to stabilize carbon cycle but it could not be enough efficiency to manipulate all the problems with the inertness construction materials, which cannot liberally flow the energy and information from biosphere to the built environment.

This architectural project proposes to reconnect with the nature by investigating the biological system, extreme environment and the metabolic interrelationship of carbon in organic and non-organic elements to allow the possibility of self generate and environmental response materials, which concern about the global climate change.

Northwest Black Sea is the place where the climate change extremely impact to the water temperature rising, which increase methane seepage from the seafloor. It was investigated a self generate carbonate reef-like structure of the methane and carbon dioxide consuming, methanotrophic microbial mats in an anoxide condition. This biological process protects the emission of methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, the high range of gasses seepage will overbalance the process.

Carbon emission from coal and how can architecture reclaim carbon footprint back:1st Crit 2009.12.17

Coal is one of the most important fossil fuel in the industrial revolution, which is a major turning point in human history and almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way. Its stored energy benefits in many ways of uses, on the other hand its combustion products affect on and leave carbon footprint to our environment. It is one of the major causes of climate change.

I start to study how energy stored in coal and how the energy released in different scales.

The energy we get from coal today is the energy that plants absorbed from the sun million of years ago. All living plants store solar energy through a process known as photosynthesis. When plants die, this energy is usually released as the plants decay process is interrupted, preventing the release of the stored solar energy. The energy is locked into the coal. It might assume that coal is the by-product of the ancient light, which was fossilized light by plants.That means when we get the energy from coal, we use the stored energy from million years ago.

These two drawing are investigated in micro scale.

They show how energy exists within the coal molecule.

Energy exists in form of the chemical bonds created during its fossilization. For the stored energy within coal to be released, heat is added as the activation energy. An analogy of this is that the stored energy within the coal is like an energy store in a stretched piece of rubber. The activation energy for the stretched rubber is like a blade that severs the strand. The severing of the rubber releases the energy that was stored within it. Heat is the blade that severs the chemical bonds and releases the stored energy. The energy released from the coal is in the form of heat.

This is another experiment about coal properties to explore how the stored energy release to our environment. I burned a piece of real coal size around 1.5 cm cubic. The combustion process took around 10 minutes. When the stored energy release, it produced black carbon soot and smoke to the air. The heat energy moved air and soot up. I used papers to capture it, created these three drawings.

In each drawing, I let coal smoke and soot drew on the paper around three minutes and after that I removed a new one for the next three minutes until a combustion process finished. The energy released different in each state as you can see from the combustion product in the drawings.

This drawing investigates a macro scale of using coal in the history. Coal was an important fuel used in power station to produce electricity. The Battersea Power Station is one of the main used of coal in London. It had an annual coal consumption of over million tones. This kind of coal-fired power station has been closed as a result of carbon emission, which is the main cause of global warming.

These my investigation and experiments frame the question about how can architecture reclaim carbon back regarding to the global warming and how architecture reclaim carbon as a self-generated materials.A carbon track in the building such as in the coal-fired power station is a substrate of self-generated carbon nanotube, which is now developing for a new carbon-capture technology. This drawing shows the possibility of using carbon nanotube to capture carbon from our environment as a self-generated architectural material to create a new building skin.

Tutorial 11 Dec 2009

Tutorial 04 Dec 2009

This is my first experiment to burn a real coal to explore how the stored energy release to our environment again . I burned a piece of coal size around 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 on the gas stove. The energy from coal moved air and soot up to above. These three drawings are created by using papers to capture how the energy released and interacted to a medium. This process is one of a painting technique call 'Fumage', which was first practiced in the 1930'S by the surrealist artist Wolfgang Paalen. He created images using oil paint and smoke from burning candles and a kerosine lamp. Later Salvador Dali used the technique and called it 'Sfumato'.The American artist John Cage also used it as part of his printmaking process.

In each drawing, I let coal smoke drew on the paper for three minutes and after that I removed a new one for the next three minutes until a flame has gone.

The last three minutes

The next three minutes

The first three minutes

Tutorial 27 Nov 2009

Energy exists within the coal, but in the form of the chemical bonds created during its fossilization. For the stored energy within coal to be released, heat is added as the activation energy. An analogy of this is that the stored energy within the coal is like a stretched piece of rubber. There is surely energy stored in the stretched rubber, but it is not being released. The activation energy for the stretched rubber is like a blade that severs the strand. The severing of the rubber releases the energy that was stored within it. Heat is the blade that severs the chemical bonds and releases the stored energy. The energy released from the coal is in the form of heat.

Stored Energy in Coal Molecules

Releaseded Energy in Coal Molecules

Tutorial 20 Nov 2009