Adverse Conditions

Having grown up in New Mexico, I'm more than familiar with chiles (not the Texan stew, but the pepper, so yes, that is how it's spelled). The state question is, "red or green?", which refers to Green Chile and Red Chile, between which debates still rage. New Mexico's harsh desert is the ideal place to grow chiles, and this always puzzled me. Chiles, like many fruits and vegetables grow better in more intense climates. With little water and far too much sun, they are forced to pack more capsaicin, the chemical which gives chiles their heat, into each of their limited cells.

Even in the harshest of conditions, life thrives. At the bottom of the ocean, hydrothermal vents spew molten hot carbon dioxide, boiling the water around them. But even in a place where temperatures reach 750 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun is completely blocked out by the miles of water above, life has found away. Massive colonies of tube worms and gastropods thrive, brushing the super-heated water off like it's nothing. The sea around the vents are full of beautiful creatures. It's just another example of how life often functions best in adverse conditions.
Though you won't find skyscrapers at the bottom of the ocean (unless you're from Atlantis, which by the way is totally real), architects have been forced to deal with some adverse conditions as well. And like in nature, such challenges provide for even more beautiful buildings.

Take Las Lajas Sanctuary in Columbia for example. It's hard to imagine a more difficult place to build a massive church, especially in 1916 when construction technology wasn't much more than men laying bricks. But still, architecture persevered and we are left with one of the most beautiful (in my opinion) churches in the world.

Adverse conditions don't necessarily have to come from the natural environment. Entire cities have felt squeezed and constricted by their man-made surroundings. Manhattan, after running out of room to build outwards, turned to the skies. While many would have given up and moved to one of the lesser boroughs (insulting but true), architects once again persevered, and the small island is now one of, if not the greatest cities in the world.

Paris felt a similar pressure, but its growth was constrained not by an island, but by man-made walls. Centuries ago, the city was surrounded by a massive defense wall. Not wanting to be left outside of the security of the ramparts, Parisians, like New Yorkers, built upwards. Even the traditional eight story apartments for a time towered over neighboring villages and other large European cities. With all of those people crammed into a small space, the city became architectural espresso, an ultra-concentrated blast of style and function.

But if Paris is espresso, then suburban America is a decaf iced coffee that's been sitting in the sun for too long. New Mexico's vast desert, where I grew up, can produce powerfully concentrated chiles, but it's architecture has turned into a watery sludge. The problem is, we have space. Lots of space. Albuquerque is the same size as Paris, but has one thirtieth the population. American claustrophobia has spread the country's cities out exponentially. What we're left with is a bland, flat landscape that presents no challenge to architects, and it's for this reason that you won't find any great buildings in the suburbs. There's simply no reason to try. Like cows in a field, we grow bloated for lack of competition. With no incentive to innovate, American cities have become the opposite of the chiles they consume, bland and bloated.

So, if you're looking to build a beautiful city, try the Grand Canyon or Mount Ranier. Architects, like those that built the great cities of the world, will be forced to design better buildings. Like your parents always told you, hard work builds character. 

Underwear

Do you ever have one of those days where you don't even bother to put on more than underwear and a t-shirt? Ever have a lazy Sunday where you just feel like letting it all hang out? So did architecture, except their lazy Sunday was more of a lazy 1980's, the period of "high-tech" architecture, a sort of bare-bones, architectural underwear phase. Architects like Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Renzo Piano were like the underwear models of the architecture world. They through the thick facades of the post-modernist movement to the winds, and strutted their internal structures down the architectural catwalks.
But the thing about underwear models is, they're usually sexy. Foster, Rogers, and Piano were able to strip away the outer layers of a building to reveal the (sometimes) beauty underneath. Like the earlier style of brutalism (that's another post), high-tech used the intricate beauty of a building's internal structure on the outside. When most people go out in public, they tend to cover up with layers of clothing. While these facades can be beautiful too, there are some who are just as, if not more beautiful when they show a little skin.
Take the Centre Georges Pompidou in Beaubourg, Paris. This, the most famous example houses a massive library and a center for musical studies. It was designed by the legendary Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers and is the epitome of architecture in its underwear. The Dynamic Duo of High-Tech super-stardom designed the building inside-out. All of the plumbing, cooling, heating, electrical, and escalator systems were placed on the outside of the building, surrounded by much of the exposed structure. In my opinion, it's beautiful, but the neighbors disagreed. It remains one of the most hated buildings in Paris, alongside L'Arc de la Defense and the Montparnasse Tower. It's easy to understand where they're comin from. When you see someone walking down the streets in their underwear, your first reaction is generally shock. It's very difficult to have a conversation with someone like that, so it must be difficult for the people of Paris to have to see it every day.

Sadly, though, for anyone who liked that picture of Mr. Beckham and his lady friend, this concept of inside out did not really come from an Armani catalog. It came from insects. You've probably heard of the term exoskeleton. Unlike our internal bone structure, insects' bones are on the outside. This acts as armor as well as serving various sensory and excretion purposes. For bugs, it's more efficient to have their structure on the outside, leaving more room in the already limited space for other important things. This is exactly the thinking behind High-Tech architecture.

I pass another Renzo Piano building every day. It's the new design building at the University of New Mexico. It's a bit less flashy than the Pompidou, but it follows the same concept. Rather than covering up the sandstone-colored concrete, he left it exposed, giving the building a more raw and industrial feel than if it had been painted or covered.
You may have heard of another High-Tech building and not even known it. The World Trade Center in New York had much of its load-bearing structure on the outside, but it did so in a way that made it generally unnoticeable.
Personally, I prefer more organic forms like those of Zaha Hadid or the timeless Frank Gehry. Perhaps the reason that High-Tech never really caught on is the fact that often, it's better to leave a little to the imagination, just like in fashion. So whether you're an architect or a teenage boy, think twice before you walk outside in your boxers.

Subdivision Iteration Columns and You!

Doric. Ionic. Dear Abby. If you've studied architecture, particularly classic, you know all about and are probably very sick of columns. Yes, they are crucial to any building's structure, but how interesting could a cylindrical support be in a time when the traditional is being replaced by more organic, fluid, and expressive styles? The answer is very. But to get there, we need to make a quick stop in the land of geometry.
More specifically, the realm of subdivision. This is a vastly complex but completely amazing field, in which I cannot claim to have much knowledge. I do know some basics. Here's how it works: Using relatively simple mathematic formulas, a simple sphere or cube can be turned into an intricately beautiful form. This is done by repeatedly dividing the surface. A cube starts with 6 sides and is divided so that it has 36 sides. When subdivided again, it has 216, then 1296, then 7776, and so on. This process can be repeated infinitely, and with each step, the form becomes exponentially more complicated. You can tweak the formulas to change the number of sides, divisions, etc.. (This is very similar to the way snowflakes are formed). With little more than a modeling program and a formula, you can end up with something like these:

Architects are already looking to use this phenomenon on a large scale, but construction processes capable of making buildings as complex as the images above is still decades away.
But, we still have columns, and that's where. Michael Hansmeyer comes in. He's working in the fascinating world of computational architecture, and he's come up with a simple and elegant solution to our boring columns using only the theory of subdivision and a lot of paper. Instead of starting out with a cube or sphere, he begins his forms with a doric column. The already complex form is subdivided until it resembles something like this:

When he's finished, the column has 16 million facets. That's a lot. Too many, in fact, for any existing manufacturing technique to even attempt. So, to make his columns a reality, he had to turn to every computer nerd's worst nightmare: paper.

He took thousands of 1 mm cross-sections of the column and fed them into a paper-cutting computer, which then made identical physical copies of the cross-sections. These were stacked to finally form a physical column, like the ones in the pictures below. I think the beauty and potential speaks for itself. It's amazing to think that we can see the intricate future of architecture captured in its simplest form.

Dérive à Paris

If you've been annoyed by the lack of posts in the past 10 days, it's because I've been in Paris doing a bit of urban exploring. But now I'm back and I'd like to share some of my experiences with you. (Also, all the photos in this post are straight from my camera)
You may or may not remember my post about a little thing called Drift Deck. It's sort of a puzzle/guide for people like myself who love exploring cities. The cards are based around the theory of Dérive, a philosophy that strips you of your societal shackles and allows you to find a deeper connection with an urban environment.
I used these cards and an open mind to discover Paris. Not in any kind of beatnik Jack Kerouac way, but just as a person who is new to a city and wants to look beneath the tourist attractions to see how it really ticks. The first thing I'll say about Paris is that for the most part, it's a labyrinth. Unlike the organized and familiar grid of Manhattan, Paris's streets seem to have been laid out by random chance. Maps are little help to newcomers like myself because there are not clear directional markers. But while this makes tourism difficult, it makes exploration a dream come true. When you're trying to get a feel for how a city really works, it's best not to have any point of reference or sense of direction. When I really needed to get somewhere specific, I took the Metro (Paris's subway system) but during my free time, I let Drift Deck take the wheel.

One of the things I noticed in Paris is that you are never without art. From the Louvre to back alleys, the Parisians can't stop making their city beautiful. Even in the tunnels of the Metro, every square inch is covered with amazing graffiti and street art. Walking down the street, you're surrounded by some of the world's most beautiful architecture, which is where I guess I can offer the most insight.
In most cities, people build over old architecture either by remodeling or just knocking it down. In Manhattan, almost everything is fairly modern, with little glimpses of the original city peeking through the cracks. But in Paris, classic architecture remains the star of the show. There, it is the modern that is cast into the background, because it seems that no one is either capable or willing to compete with the old masters. Usually, it seems out of place.

Take the Montparnasse Tower (above) for example. When it was built in the late 80's, Parisians felt that the boring but massive office tower located within a mile of the Eiffel Tower was so destructive to the skyline that they passed laws prohibiting new high-rise construction anywhere but La Defense, Paris's "downtown suburb".
When a whale dies, its body floats down to the deep sea floor. There, its carcass creates a brand new habitat for crabs, monkfish, and bacteria. They make a new civilization within the decaying bones of a former giant. Parisians have done the same, except they are by no means parasites. The city grew in a very logical way. The original city was walled, and as it expanded, each generation knocked down the previous wall and constructed a new one. The current "wall" is said to be the Peripherique highway which rings the now massive city. Paris has evolved as a spiral, with the oldest in the center and the newest around the periphery. In most American cities, poverty is highest near the center of a city. Paris is the opposite, with the poorest communities forced to the outer ring because of high property values in the center. If you start in the center and move in a spiral, you will pass through several distinct architectural periods: Medieval Roman, Renaissance, neo-classic, Baroque, Rococo, Consulate, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Post-war, and Contemporary.

But your best bet is doing what I did and sticking to the Opera Garnier area on foot, where all of these styles mix together into a wonderful and intricate inner city. This is also where neo-classicism, my personal favorite of the Parisian styles lives. If you stop an look at even the most commonplace apartment building, you'll see the intricate detail that classic architects put into each of their works. Though they're generally a bit worn, the complex moldings below each window are still visible. The paint is a bit faded, but modern additions bring back the once vibrant colors. Parisians have built their modern lives not on top of these stunning classics, but within them.

Seven Quintillion Bricks

For the millions of people living along the edge of the Sahara in Africa, the desert and its infinite sand has always been just part of the landscape. But now, in the age of climate change, the dunes which have always stood guard over their villages are on the attack. Changing winds and temperatures are causing the sands to move rapidly south, far past their previous borders. This onslaught is a danger to the entire human race's future, as well as the safety and livelihood of the people it most directly affects.
But, as is so wonderfully often the case, an architecture student has the solution. Magnus Larsson, who studies at the Architectural Association proposes a radical and elegant solution to the massive problem. He wants to build a 6000 km long "green wall" across the continent that would provide protection and improvement for the African people. It would not be built by humans, but by bacteria.
My least favorite high school class was geology. I always hated memorizing the specific characteristics of hundreds of different rocks, only to forget everything the second after I turned my final exam in. But I do remember learning about sandstone. Unlike most other rocks, sandstone is created biologically. Some rocks are made from the calcium in animals' bones, but sandstone is actively created by the bacteria Bascillus Pasteurii. Through its digestive process, the bacteria turn sand into stone by partially digesting parts of the grain and filling the spaces between the grains with the products of their snacks. This then solidifies to form sandstone. And it's not like this is a new process; it's been happening naturally for millions of years.

So, now we have our construction workers. They're self sufficient when given the proper food and they won't try to form unions. And you only need to buy them once because bacteria can theoretically replicate itself infinitely if it has a food supply to match.

Magnus wants to flush the bacteria into the outer dunes of the Sahara, but with some supervision and control. He predicts that they will do two things within a few days: create a habitable environment for the desert-dwellers and provide protection for the rest of the continent.

These structures will come in a few different forms. To create livable spaces, he must have some level of control over the product. One idea is to sort of blow up big balloons under and on the surface of the still-pliable dunes, let the stone solidify around the balloons, and then pop them, leaving a cavernous and habitable space. This would allow space for people to live, trees to grow, and moisture for farming to collect. In a matter of years, there could be a brand-new environment "printed" across the African continent, sheltering people and improving lives.
The inspirations for the sanditecture comes from another area of geology. Tafoni are small cavernous structures naturally found in sandstone, with wide entrances and round, concave sides. These would give the structure natural stability while allowing fresh air, sunlight, and moisture in.
In places where people would not need to live, the bacteria would be basically set loose. They would do what they do best, and when they run out of nutrients, they would die.
While Larsson's plans are regarded as being a bit far-fetched, they provide an example of just what biology and architecture can do when they team up to solve some of the world's biggest problems. It's estimated that there are more than 7500000000000000000 grains of sand on the planet and 5000000000000000000000000000000 bacterial cells, and we're only just beginning to discover a couple uses for them.

(wrong sand people)

An Oyster In New York

Ah, the humble oyster. He gives us beautiful pearls and tasty seafood dishes. He lacks a spine, brain, and motor skills, but he is about to rescue New York City. Millions of him actually.
In fact, the oyster has been keeping the planet's oceans clean for millions of years. Their favorite snack is phytoplankton, the organism responsible for the haziness in polluted waters, like those surrounding Manhattan. The phytoplankton feed on nitrogen-rich compounds like ammonia and other nitrates, which are common industrial byproducts. Oysters love phytoplankton.
Another of the oyster's greatest tricks is the ability to form massive reef structures. In a short time, oysters can increase an area of sea floor's surface area 50X, while providing coral and other marine life with the nutrients they need to live.
As one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world, New York harbor has its fair share of phytoplankton, fed by the city's massive industry. Unless you're Cosmo Kramer, you wouldn't exactly want to swim in it. The Gowanus canal, which seperates Governor's Island from Brooklyn, is one of the worst areas, and is the perfect spot for Oystertecture. That's what architect Kate Orff is calling her plan to revitalize the harbor. Like the harbors of cities all over the world, industrialization has flattened and homogenized what was once rich, three dimensional ocean structure. It's Orff's goal, with the help of oysters, to reshape the harbor's landscape and clean it up in the process.

New York is no stranger to oysters. In fact, before colonization, the waters surrounding Manhattan were some of the richest habitats on Earth. Since then, city growth and pollution have all but destroyed the once abundant oyster colonies. But now they're back, and they have some big changes to make. Their first ambition is to form new reef structures in the harbor that would provide new green urban spaces and also protect the Gowanus from rising sea levels and surges. Orff promises that slower water will mean better water.
Their other goal is to use their extreme ability as a bio filter to clean up the harbor.The new colonies will take in the dingy muck and pass it through their multiple stomachs to create fresh and clean byproducts. One single oyster will be able to clean 50 gallons of New York's filth per day, so imagine what thousands, millions could accomplish.
The oyster colonies will start their growth on huge net structures that Orff's team promises can be built and placed in the harbor for a very low price. From there, the oysters will just do what they've been doing for millions of years. Within a decade, we may have brand new urban spaces, coastal protection, and clean water, all thanks to some little bivalve molluscs.

Downward Facing Beetle

A fog rolls in over the arid desert plains of Namibia. The dense mist is possibly the only moisture this dune field will receive for days. A small black beetle emerges from its little home at the top of a sand dune. It squats down, lifts its shiny posterior to face the cool wind, and falls asleep. The next morning, just before sunrise, it wakes from its slumber and dumps the water it's collected down its body and into its mouth.
The Namid desert is one of the driest places on earth, too dry for any human to call home. But even here, nature has managed to beat us once again. The animal in question the Namibian Fog-Basking Beetle (we'll call her Misty for short), and despite its seemingly normal appearance, it's teaching us more about desert architecture than anyone could have imagined.

You see, the rear section of Misty's exoskeleton is covered with little bumps, which are hydrophilic (they like water). These are what helps her draw moisture from the air. The remaining shell is hydrophobic (dislikes water). This makes it so that all the moisture she collects beads up on top of the little bumps. Then, when she tilts to take a morning drink, the hydrophobic sections allow these now substantially sized water droplets to roll easily into her mouth. Thirst quenched, she can then get on with having nothing to do in the middle of the stupid desert.
"Well that's great," you might say. "But I'll just stick to tap water." But while aquifers meet the water needs of most desert cities, they are a non-renewable resource. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the vast majority of my water comes from large water deposits beneath the city. But there is already talk of the aquifers being stretched to their limit and fear of them being completely used up within my lifetime, so I know firsthand you don't have to be a beetle in Namibia to be concerned about desert water. It's a problem we must face immediately.
And that's where our good old friend architecture comes in. Inspired by Misty, architects all over the world are beginning to realize the potential of fog. A notable example is Grimshaw's plan for the Water Theatre in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. The theater will use a massive wall filled with hundreds of evaporators and condensers, coupled with a Seawater Greenhouse to create an entirely self-sufficient building. The Canary Islands are the perfect location for such a structure, with dense ocean fog common and a perpetual northeasterly wind. It creates pure drinking water for the theater's guests and supplies water to surrounding greenhouses and the city's water grid. Unlike traditional desalinization plants, the Theatre will recreate the natural water cycle, in which sunlight evaporates seawater, which then condenses and precipitates to the ground. The result: an infinite supply of fresh water and a brilliant backdrop for an open-air theater. (For more details, watch this)
And this is just the start. Plants like these will someday be built all over the world, helping to solve one of humanity's greatest problems. 

Another wet beetle

If you're thinking, "wait what about Blur," shut up. That is the opposite of using resources wisely because it makes fog.