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Architectural Adaptation as Praxis
Full text linkSince industrialization, modern architecture has appropriated the notion of adaptation. Defined as the adjustment of a building to the environment and its users, architectural adaptation has been mainly carried out via a narrow technological approach. Thus, digitalization has emerged as the latest ‘smart’ update. The limits of technological adaptation become especially evident with architecture in aiming to solve an ecological and social crisis on both a global and local level. In this paper, we argue for reconceptualizing adaptivity in architecture to (re)integrate processual, social, and aesthetic dimensions. We propose a new architectural understanding of adaptivity that includes currently excluded agents and involves them in communication and adaptation processes. As we focus on the intertwining of technical developments and cultural practices, that is, the interactions of human and non-human agents in architecture, we seek to describe architectural adaptation as an inclusive spatial praxis. This may aid in inventing new ways of life built upon sustainable nature-culture-technology relationships within society
Time Thinking and Drawing in Designing Dynamic River Landscapes
Full text linkThis visual essay explores the use of time thinking and drawing in the design process of the Ooijen- Wanssum floodplain widening project. Through a series of project sketches, final drawings and photos of the constructed project, the authors reveal the way in which time drawing has (often implicitly) given direction to the design process. The water calendar is introduced as a design tool that integrates time- dependent river dynamics into the design process and thereby informs spatial design choices that are considered in several design sketches. These design choices include interactions with dynamic processes such as erosion, vegetation dynamics and recreational use of the river landscape
The Future Belongs to Us: Crisis — Time to Regroup, Self- Management — Means to Reorganize
Full text linkAs a principle of industrial and spatial organisation, self-management enabled Yugoslavia to shape its own socialism after the breakup with the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc — in 1986. It even represented the paradigmatic element of a proposal for an urban restructuring of New Belgrade submitted by Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre and architects Renaudie and Gilbaud. The Yugoslav experience of self-management is not the only one. The oldest precedent probably is the Paris Commune. Bottom-up self-management has unravelled the planet over, in factories of Eastern Europe, neighbourhoods in South American cities, and rural communities in North Africa and the Middle East, to mention some.
This essay will look at self-management as a critical socio-political paradigm inherently connected to spatial determinants and both a means and a goal of reorganising society in the contemporary moment and for the ever nearer future.
The narrative is positioned in a broader temporal context of mass misappropriation of space by mechanisms of power: be it state, corporate, state-corporate, or architectural; the context, that is, of “flat hierarchies” as the new office ping pong tables and bean bags and corporate campuses as the new public spaces, and in the narrower temporal context of a global pandemic forcing a redefinition of public and private, of work and labour relations
Indoor Air Quality Forecast in Shared Spaces: Predictive Models and Adaptive Design Proposals
Full text linkThe high concentration of air pollutants in indoor environments can have a remarkable adverse impact on health and well-being, cognitive performance and productivity. Indoor air pollutants are especially problematic in naturally ventilated shared spaces such as classrooms and meeting rooms, where human-generated pollutants can rise rapidly. When the inhabitants are exposed to indoor air pollution, recovering from its ramifications takes time and harms their well-being in the long run. In our approach, we seek to predict and prevent such hazardous situations instead of rectifying them after they happen. The prediction and prevention are accomplished through algorithms that can learn from the evolution of air pollutants and other variables to indicate whether or not a high level of pollution is forecast. We present two AI-enabled methods, one providing the forecast for the concentration level of carbon dioxide in the next 5 and 20 minutes with 86% and 92% accuracy. The second algorithm provides predictive indicators about how the CO2 level will evolve during the upcoming session (meeting or a course) before the session starts. We will discuss design implications and present design proposals on how these methods can inform interactive solutions for preventing high concentrations of indoor air pollutants
Urban Space and Everyday Adaptations: Rethinking commons, co-living, and activism for the Anthropocene City
Full text linkThis paper addresses Jem Bendell’s concept of “deep adaptation” in the Anthropocene through the lens of everyday urban practices in contemporary Northern Europe. It proposes that this “deep adaptation” should be defined less in relation to a socio-ecological “collapse” and more through everyday occurrences in presentday urban environments.
Entering into a critical conversation with Bendell’s conceptual “4 Rs” framework, the paper draws on primary data from several cities in Sweden and Germany to show how, in practice, resilience can be found in the “quiet activism” of leisure gardeners; how ingrained notions of restricted land use may be relinquished through “commoning” urban space; how novel constellations of co-living restores old ideas of intragenerational urban cohabitation; and, finally, how a path to reconciliation may be articulated through an ontological shift away from an anthropocentric urban planning, towards one that recognises other-thanhuman beings as legitimate dwellers in the urban landscape.
Accounting for urbanities of enmeshed societal, ecological, and spatial trajectories, the paper reveals an inhibiting anthropocentrism in Bendell’s framework and ultimately points to how his “creatively constructed hope” for the future may be found, not in an impending global collapse, but in everyday adaptations and embodied acts that stretch far beyond the human
Bio-Cyber-Physical ‘Planetoids’ for Repopulating Residual Spaces
Full text linkMinimal interventions that provide various microclimates can stimulate both biodiversity and social accessibility of leftover spaces. New habitats are often developed for different animal and plant species based on studies of the microclimates typical of such residual spaces. By introducing interventions of 0.5-1.0 m diameter ‘planetoids’ placed at various locations, existing and new life is supported. The ‘planetoid’ described in this paper is prototyped by means of Design-to-Robotic-Production and -Operation (D2RP&O). This implies that it is not only produced by robotic means, but that it contains sensor-actuator mechanisms that allow humans to interact with them by establishing a bio-cyber-physical feedback loop
Ambient UX for Cyber-Physical Spaces
Full text linkAmbient User Experience (Ambient UX) is a conceptual framework providing a strategy for design processes that target cyber-physical spaces. Such design processes interface Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks (WSAN), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and physically built environments. For managing the complexity of such design processes and ensuring the development of a design facilitating users’ satisfaction, design approaches focused on experience and user activities linked to bio-cyber-physical feedback loops are needed. This paper points out how Ambient UX supports decision-making in a design process. It outlines the importance of mapping user experiences for cyber-physically enhanced environments by discussing design practices that can support this activity and presenting a representative case study implemented with students at TU Delft.
 
Additive Manufacturing and Spark Plasma Sintering of Lunar Regolith for Functionally Graded Materials
Full text linkThis study investigates the feasibility of in-situ manufacturing of a functionally graded metallic-regolith. To fabricate the gradient, digital light processing, an additive manufacturing technique, and spark plasma sintering were selected due to their compatibility with metallic-ceramic processing in a space environment. The chosen methods were first assessed for their ability to effectively consolidate regolith alone, before progressing to sintering regolith directly onto metallic substrates. Optimized processing conditions based on the sintering temperature, initial powder particle size, and different compositions of the lunar regolith powders were identified. Experiments have successfully proven the consolidation of lunar regolith simulants at 1050°C under 80 MPa with digital light processing and spark plasma sintering, while the metallic powders can be fully densified at relatively low temperatures and a pressure of 50 MPa with spark plasma sintering. Furthermore, the lunar regolith and Ti6Al4V gradient was proven to be the most promising combination. While the current study showed that it is feasible to manufacture a functionally graded metallic-regolith, further developments of a fully optimized method have the potential to produce tailored, high-performance materials in an off-earth manufacturing setting for the production of aerospace, robotic, or architectural components
Learning lessons from Earth and Space towards Sustainable Multi-planetary Design
Full text linkOff-Earth structural design has been a subject of fascination and research for decades. Given that the vision of permanent lunar and Martian human presence is materialising, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the future applicability and challenges of off-Earth design. This article investigates contemporary thinking about off-Earth structural design – specifically focused on large-scale infrastructure such as habitats – and assesses it in terms of its sustainability. We suggest that the extra-terrestrial setting, which is characterised by resource, construction, and labour constraints, is to be analysed as an extreme case of the built environment on Earth. Subsequently, we propose that structural design methodologies originating on Earth can benefit both the off-Earth context, through their inherent material efficiency and use of local materials, and the on-Earth context, where unsustainable growth and material inefficiency dominate our built environment. As our planet rapidly heads towards a scarcity of construction materials and disruptive environmental change, what sustainability lessons can we learn from our past, and how can we apply these to extra-terrestrial construction? Finally, how can we use these lessons to futureproof our built environment
Additive manufacturing of Lunar Regolith Simulant using Direct Ink Writing
Full text linkThis work explores the use of a lunar regolith simulant as feedstock for the direct ink writing additive manufacturing process as an option to enable future lunar in-situ resource utilisation. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated in a laboratory setting by manufacturing objects with different geometries, using methyl cellulose or sodium alginate as binding agents, water and lunar regolith simulant to create a viscous, printable ‘ink’. A custom three-axis gantry system is used to produce green bodies for subsequent sintering. The sintered objects are characterised using compressive strength measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It is proposed that the bioorganic compounds used in this work as additives could be produced in situ for a future lunar base through photosynthesis, utilising carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts together with the available sunlight. Thus, all the components used for the dispersion – additive, water, and regolith – are available in situ. The compressive strength for sintered samples produced with this method was measured to be 2.4 MPa with a standard deviation of 0.2 MPa (n = 4). It is believed, based on the high sample porosity observed during SEM analysis, that the comparatively low mechanical strength of the samples is due to a low sintering temperature, and that the mechanical strength could be increased by optimising the sintering process further