Design,Urbanism

The Time for Talk is Over

THURSDAY , March 31, 2011 | BY

Pascale Saint-Louis

Haiti has been flooded with designers and architects from all over the world with visions of how to recreate the country. Projects range from towers on pillars in the middle of the ocean to master plans proposing to build a few inches on top of the debris. Although the ideas are provocative, it seems they can only be realized many years from now, once high risks zones have been identified. Ultimately, the millions of displaced are caught between learning from past mistakes and building towards a better and brighter future by the need to create structures that will withstand various site pressures.

Images provided by HaitiSOFTHOUSE

One of the answers to the cries of progress is The HaitiSOFTHOUSE, whose team comprises Architects Lonn Combs, Rodney Leon, Dragana Zoric, and artist Mark Parsons. The soft house project is the first step toward moving Haiti forward with integrity.

The HaitiSOFTHOUSE transitional shelter comprises an easy-to-assemble, structural steel frame, cladded with a high performance fabric that can withstand the pressures of a Caribbean rainy season, including tropical storms and hurricanes. The structure is able to adapt to various soil conditions, and anchors directly into the ground. Once assembled, it is a healthy, environmentally-ventilated shelter that can be combined with other units to form spaces that address specific domestic and community needs.

Images provided by HaitiSOFTHOUSE

After securing a site in Jacmel Haiti, the team collaborated with The Rural Haiti Project, which has constructed initial prototypes in June of 2010 for testing. This endeavor evolved into the creation of the SOFTVILLAGE. The structure is designed to be assembled and erected by very few people in one day or less. The structure’s parts includes two types of anchors depending on soil conditions, cable, a vent, screws, washers and bolts, and a few pipes at different lengths and angles. The soft house is 16 feet at its widest and 11’8” at its tallest.

The dimension of the tent-like design is proportioned to the human scale and with the understanding of the user’s needs. Unlike a traditional tent, the user does not have to crawl into the structure, he or she can walk inside with pride through an actual front door; giving the structure a home-like quality.

Images provided by HaitiSOFTHOUSE

“There needs to be a more strategic and centralized plan for the redevelopment of Haiti that takes into account transitional needs until more permanent structures can be constructed,” said Mr. Leon, the project manager. “The time for talk is over and the time to implement these solutions is at hand – and long overdue.”

The HaitiSOFTHOUSE team is in the process finding funding to match a $50,000 grant from Deutsche Bank to mass produce the transitional homes. For more information and to learn how to be a part of this great project please see their website: http://www.haitisofthouse.org

Images provided by HaitiSOFTHOUSE

COMMENTS (3)

Culture,Sustainability

Staying Fit, Saving Penguins

TUESDAY , March 22, 2011 | BY

Katherine James

Two of my favorite things in life are fitness and animals. So when I heard about the Wildlife Conservation Society’s upcoming Run for the Wild 5K charity event at the Bronx Zoo to benefit penguins, I knew I had to get involved. And working for FXFOWLE, a design firm deeply committed to sustainability and environmental issues, I knew many of my colleagues would join me in this endeavor.

Like many birds, penguins are in trouble. They face serious challenges, such as climate change and pollution. Of the world’s 17 penguin species, 12 are facing serious population declines, and several are facing extinction. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), warmer seas brought on by climate change are swallowing up sea ice in the western Antarctic, and with it, krill – a key penguin food that also depends on ice – is also disappearing. As a result, the Adelie penguin population in this region will likely go extinct in our lifetime. Another challenge is the penguin’s life at sea – the most dangerous time in the bird’s life – as many end up swimming through oil dumped by tankers. Oil on a penguin is akin to a hole in their feathers, and makes the birds unable to withstand icy waters.

Bird-safety has always been a priority at FXFOWLE. Our projects incorporate strategies such as reduced artificial lighting and bird-safe glass so that birds perceive the barrier and avoid it, thereby reducing fatalities. In keeping with these values, and to further our commitment to preserving nature and wildlife, the FXFOWLE Team will spend the morning of April 30th running through the beautiful winding paths of the Bronx Zoo to raise money for WCS towards furthering penguin conservation.

WCS has been committed to ensuring a future for penguins for over 25 years, by helping achieve bans on commercial fishing in key penguin habitats, and by creating Argentina’s Parque Marino Isla Pinguino, or “Penguin Island Marine Park,” a 650-square mile reserve for rockhopper penguins. But so much more needs to be done. And that is where everyone can help. Please join FXFOWLE in helping to make tracks for penguins, by making a donation to the WCS in support of our run.

The donations we collect will go toward WCS’s efforts to monitor the penguins of Punta Tombo during the most vulnerable times in their lives – the feeding season, which begins in April. With your support, WCS will continue to help regulate oil pollution and commercial fishing that imperil the birds at sea. WCS will also work towards creating new protected areas to safeguard the birds’ nesting grounds, like the Parque Marino Isla Pingüino, or Penguin Island Marine Park, that WCS helped create in Argentina last winter.

For every dollar you donate, you can extend a life, and make a bird very happy. See for yourself:

COMMENTS (1)

Culture,Urbanism

A Bird Eat Bird World

TUESDAY , March 15, 2011 | BY

Coe Will

I may be far from waking up to birdsong in the mountains of Vermont, but occasionally something reminds me that even New York City has a significant wildlife population. After spending ten hours a week on an underground train I sometimes forget that, despite all the concrete, steel, and taxi cabs, we share this city with a lot of, if not angry, at least hungry birds; and not all of them are pigeons.

During a recent mid-afternoon trip to the office coffee machine, I just barely caught the moment when a carnivorous bird swooped out of the sky and dropped to the roof of the building next door with a still struggling pigeon clamped in its beak. I immediately grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots of this National Geographic moment before the unlucky victim was reduced to a pile of feathers and blood-stained snow.

The only meat-eating birds in New York with which I am on somewhat familiar terms are the Red-Tailed Hawks of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which soar nonchalantly over our pick-up Frisbee games and Sunday barbecues. This Manhattanite bird whose attack I witnessed outside the kitchen window was a stranger to me, so I sent the photos around to various sources for identification: my boyfriend (an internet savvy sleuth), some coworkers (who helped develop the Audubon Society’s Bird-safe Building Guidelines), my father (a member of Cornell University’s Project Feederwatch), and Marcia Fowle (former Executive Director of the New York City Audubon and wife of FXFOWLE’s Founding Principal Bruce Fowle). Most assumed the bird was the speedy Peregrine Falcon, but my dad, Marcia, and her daughter Margaret, the Fowle’s “in-family ornithologist,” officially identified the bird as a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

The Sharp-shinned Hawk, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “winters in a large variety of habitats, including urban and suburban areas,” and is “a regular visitor to bird feeders, where it eats birds, not seed.” The small hawk has a wingspan of only 17-22 inches, less than half the intimidating 52 inches of the red-tailed hawk, making this featherweight snare even more impressive.

While I probably won’t witness another Sharp-shinned Hawk nature scene as dramatic as this one, who knows what other aviary activities I might see outside my office window this spring.

COMMENTS (5)

bird-safe, New York, photography, wildlife

Design,Sustainability,Technology

A Day in the Sun, part 2

TUESDAY , March 1, 2011 | BY

Pascale Saint-Louis

Pascale continues her conversation with Minnie more about the process of developing and building the FabLab house.

Describe the FabLab team and your roles?
Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), with whom we collaborated, selected seven researchers from around the world, including Japan, Taiwan, Lithuania, Australia, France, and Mexico. We were in charge of design, structure, 3D modeling, communication with engineers and consultants, constructions documents, and actual construction.

: Photo by ADRIÀ GOULA

As a LEED Architectural Design was there a sustainable system, either active or passive, that you learned while working on the FabLab house?
Instead of thinking of either active or passive systems, the Fablab house approached sustainability with four points.

Form follows energy: If the twentieth century championed the premise that ‘form follows function,’ the 21st century will be about ‘form follows energy.’ The house is no longer a machine but an organism to be inhabited.

A climate-passive structure: The Fab Lab House uses the resources of its environment—sun, water and wind—to create a microclimate that passively optimizes the basic conditions of habitability.

A house, a tree: A house is like a tree that captures energy with its solar ‘leaves’ and sends it down to its roots, where it is stored, shared, or returned to the house to produce the fruit of electricity.

A domestic metabolism: The house’s control system is designed to provide detailed real-time monitoring of its behavior and its interaction with the environment, creating historical profiles and sharing these socially.

What are some lessons learned?
FabLab house’s goal is to not industrialize production but to allow any person to manufacture a home anywhere in the world, from the platform of FabLabs, or Fabrication Laboratories. Most importantly, we can build a house with our own hands. In looking for a suitable structural system that also allowed us to fabricate digitally, we found Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Cecil Balmond’s Serpentine pavilion to be a great example of how to put parts together with minimal tolerance.

What were the challenges in constructing in the elements?
We proposed a pre-fabricated wooden construction in which all its structural components are computerized numerical controlled (CNC) cut from 2.5m x 12m laminated veneer lumber (LVL) sheets. All 3000 pieces have their own unique names, and keeping track of them and grouping them properly is the key for fast construction. Similar to a giant 3D puzzle, once you find A-1, you know the next piece would be A-2 and so on. These pieces combined into twenty portions that were assembled at IAAC’s warehouse in Barcelona then transported to Madrid. This ensured we had all the correct parts and reduced on site modification. Each structural member had a 1-2 mm tolerance. However, not all pieces were precut correctly, but since we were using wood it was simple to modify the pieces on site.

Provided by Daisuke Nagatomo & Minnie Jan

Describe the design, construction and exhibition processes?
The design and construction proceeded in parallel rather than linearly. The Solar Decathlon Europe organization gave feed back after each construction document submission and each team needed to modify and comply with all rules and regulations before entering the next stage. The process included ten days of construction and inspections, then ten days of competition during which the projects were open to public, and the four days of disassembly. In all, we had about 190,000 visitors to the Villa Solar, as the competition grounds were called.

How does it feel to have won the People’s Choice award?
We wanted to break the traditional box-shape solar house, and had taken a very high risk to create a visually striking image. It was very encouraging to know that the general public could appreciate our effort and enjoy their stay at the FabLab house.

Photo by ADRIÀ GOULA