Something for Nothing

On Friday I started to do some research into various forms of green energy solutions, and it was a rather fruitful search, I must say. The thing is, none of the things that are mentioned are viable all on their own, but I have the feeling that if you combined them smartly with a building and really integrated them in just the right way, you might be able to get something that is trul self-sustaining.

Solar panels are a bit of an obvious choice, but I was looking in something called "Earthship Housing", which uses solar energy, but doesn't completely rely on it.

It also uses wind energy, but it uses the sun's rays to heat it as well, using a more passive approach to heating and cooling. Each Earthship has its own water treatment facility, which uses plants to process grey water and black water, and the whole thing is supposedly self-sustaining. This is really interesting, but all of the ones I've seen thus far are situated in a desert climate, so some serious modifications would be necessary.

Here's a link to the Earth Ship homepage.

Another thing that piqued my curiosity was something called a "stirling engine". Basically, a stirling engine is a small engine that is powered by the expansion and contraction of a gas inside a cylinder. All it needs to operate is a difference in temperature between the top plate the bottom plate to keep it running. Basically, it doesn't need to burn anything as a fuel source to keep on going, which is really interesting, because it could be put to good use as an electrical generator, I think. It's also interesting, because you can make one out of a tin can and some PVC piping, so it's extremely accessible to almost anyone.

This is the one I found on instructables, and it can run using only a small candle underneath it, but there are other that can just by putting them on top of a cup of coffee or even just on your hand. That's a pretty interesting possibility, I think, and it's something I'd like to build and test out.

Instructable
How it works
Tin Can Stirling Engine Plan

Subversion Center

So, I have my site.... I think. This lovely building is on the corner of Annabell and Higgins, and it's a nifty little place to be sure. It has eight stories, 9000 sq.ft/floor plate, a high load capacity, and two freight elevators. How do I know this? It says so on the sign outside the building, and for the low, low price of 175 dollars, I could rent a floor inside of it!
I was thinking that what I wanted to do was retrofit a certain building within the city to run on green power alone, and take it completely off the grid. Once this was accomplished, I could use the space to disseminate the information on how I managed such a feat to everyone who wanted to help me out. The idea would be something like a central research laboratory, where I would develop the essential means of gathering energy for free. Once I got everything up and running, I could have an info session with interested parties and show them how to do the same thing with their homes and businesses, in order to get them off of the grid.

This way, everyone could have free, or extremely cheap, electricity and heat in their homes or businesses. Instead of being parasitic to the building, it would be more symbiotic. I'd have to study the building and come up with solutions to heat it using nothing but what the building already has, like sunlight, heat mass, and airflow.

I think that's how I want to approach the project at this point. I don't know the strategies I will necessarily be using, because I haven't found out exactly what I need to know about the building, but if I build a model and study lighting and heating patterns, I could adapt the building to its surroundings and hopefully make it self-sustaining.
It's also right beside a railway line, so I could use that somehow, I'm sure. Maybe I could order in specific parts and have them delivered or something like that, or if the things I need to make electricity are too heavy to come by truck, they could come by train instead. I don't know if that's necessary, but it's an angle I'll most likely need to consider.

Dark Days

Due to our potential site in Winnipeg, which has a lot of homeless people in it, I decided that one of the things I'd like to tackle is homelessness in Winnipeg. In order to do that, I needed to do a little research, and fortunately for me, I remembered a movie that we had to watch way back in the old days of ED1. The movie is called Dark Days, and it's about a group of homeless people in New York who took shelter underneath the tunnels of the Amtrak Subway system.

The film takes place in the year 2000, and follows the lives of people who actually lived there . It's really an amazing documentary, and I remember being really moved by it when we watched it before, and I was again when I re-watched it tonight.


The situation is incredibly sad. The conditions are filthy, the people are plunged in darkness all day long, and many of the people who live there are battling drug addictions along with their other obvious predicaments.

I think the most striking thing about it when I first watched it was that the people in the film are so normal. It seems odd, but the people who live in this awful place are really just average people in an incredible situation. Throughout the movie, you see people cleaning their homes, painting walls, taking care of pets, and even going to work.

Even in this picture you can see that the person who lives here has cobbled together a home out of found materials and is actually hanging laundry outside to dry. It's surreal when you hear these supposedly homeless people talking about their balconies, their living rooms, and their various home renovations that they've made while they've been living there.

It's also strange because they also go to work like regular people. One man goes up every weekday to collect cans and bottles, while another rummages through garbage to find electronics and CD's and other things that he can pawn to make a few dollars. On the weekends, they rest and relax, so that they can go out and do it again next week.

The movie is incredible, and I think if you're going to work on any kind of homeless project, this is a great place to start, because it gives incredible insight into the lives of the people who live in these conditions.

I plan on taking some cues from this movie as well. Tomorrow, I'd like to go through one of the first shots in the movie and study the structures that the people have built underground, making not of what materials and methods of connections are used to build these "houses". It's all found material, but what works for them? I think it would be an incredibly informative case study to look at, but I have to take it all with a grain of salt, as homeless people in Winnipeg face much different problems than homeless people in New York subways.

I plan on exploring how I can take these building typologies and adapt them to a much harsher climate, as well as to the outdoors. It's going to be challenging, but I think it will help define my project that much more and give me a solid base to make some good decisions.

Site Selection

Shannon and I went to the site yesterday to try and find some appropriate sites in Point Douglas for our buildings to inhabit. We just about ended up freezing to death, but I think I might have actually found something that I can use. Plus, I got to test out my new camera, which was pretty sweet, I must say.

This is pretty much it right here. This is just a little way down Higgins ave. The building at the back is Syrotech industries, and the one on the right is the National Lamp building. I'm not sure what the building on the left actually is, but I do know that it was the site of "Mural Fest 2k7".

One of the things that drew me to this site was the fact that it was already a point of communication. I've been getting into graffiti for a while now, and I've always been fascinated by it because of its ability to convey a message of territoriality with just a little bit of paint. It's a method of communication that's completely different from how we normally do things, and I find that really interesting.Another interesting thing on the site is on the right hand side behind the National Lamp building. It appears to be some kind of electronics graveyard, and we found the remnants of a bunch of old photocopiers and overhead projectors. This is a good source of junk that could be used for some kind of makeshift shelter, which is where the direction of my project seems to be heading.

I ended up finding another potential site, as well, just a little further down Higgins. This is just behind the railroad, and just west of the railbridge, and has some similar qualities as the other site.
This site is quite a bit smaller, but is still pretty interesting. It also has a lot of graffiti on it, but this site's graffiti is more obviously illegal. It also shows signs of previous use as a shelter, which the other site didn't have at all. This one is a little bit better hidden, which could be helpful in terms of building parasitic architecture, because it would be harder to notice. The only big problem here is protection from wind, as the left side is completely open. That, and there are constantly trains going by, but it might just be something that has to be dealt with.

I don't know which site I'm going to go with just yet, but I was thinking of using both sites and somehow networking them together. The second site has less of a chance to be networked because there aren't other buildings around to be networked with, while the other site can be somewhat networked using physical connections.

The next thing I have to decide is what I want to actually do with my site. I was thinking about going all around the site and finding sources of junk and building materials and building a catalog of pieces that could be used for building or communications. There are a lot of places to find bits of junk, and even the first site has wooden palettes to be used for building. It's something to think about, for sure, and it'll definitely take some more research to figure it all out.

(Radio)Active Shelter

I've been wracking my brain for last little while trying to come up with some kind of solution to my architectural problems, but I just haven't been having a whole lot of luck until now. I was told to go back and examine my machine a little more, and I did. I thought I had examined it enough, and that I had already come up with a solid idea, but it just wasn't working out, so I had to take a bit of a harder look.

So, look harder I did, and what do you know? I found out some interesting stuff.

What does it do?
The machine basically listens to info(sound) from a remote location and then relays that information to an observer at a central, hidden location. The user, in the case of the final build, was able to see the information as it came in, in order to expand his or her perception of the area.

What are its unique attributes?
One of the things I built into it, which was somewhat frowned upon, and certainly not explained very well, was the ability to pick the machine up and move it to another locale and instantly be able to see what was happening there. This is why the machine was on a small box, rather than on a wall or in some other kind of more permanent fixture.
The transmitters can also receive different kinds of data, so the idea that only sound can be broadcast isn't necessarily true, meaning that I could narrow down the info being recieved by the end user. The transmitters are also very mobile, and could be placed within a room, within a building, or go even further away to monitor different regions within a city, or different buildings within a block.

What are its problems?
As I discussed before, the data collected at the time was very general. I was going for mysterious in my own head, but when you strive for that, sometimes you just wash out all the interesting bits, which one could say I was guilty of doing.
The projection on the project was also limited in a way. Sure, the machine could monitor a very large area, and in that regard, it projected a long way out, but the information was kept to a single room, and the info received was kind of esoteric. You had to be in the know to actually realize what the machine was telling you. This limited my applications for the project, and I believe was why I was stuck.

Now, I've been doing a bit of research and thinking about what kind of problem I'd like to address in my architectural intervention at Point Douglas. One of the things that I knew about the area is that there is a fairly large concentration of homeless people who had resorted to staying in abandoned train cars near the river. This is a sad fact, to be sure, and it was something I wanted to address.

When I was in Chicago this August, I bought a magazine in the IIT bookstore, and inside there was a project done by a designer from San Francisco. What this designer had done was create a cardboard homeless shelter that was inspired by origami, so that a homeless person could fold it up and move around when they wanted to. It gave them a dry place to sleep as well as the ability to be mobile. This might not jive too much with my research so far, but what she did after she designed these shelters was include instructions on how to build a $35 radio transceiver, which would allow the homeless people to communicate with each other wirelessly. I think this idea is really interesting, because it allows even the most marginalized people to communicate and meet with each other when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

This is a fine idea for San Francisco, but I have my reservations about cardboard shelters in the dead of Winnipeg Winter, and I wanted to look at other solutions. I can't remember the designer's name, unfortunately, since I can't find the magazine anymore, but I was able to find some other similar ideas.

http://www.indexaward.dk/2007/default.asp?id=706&show=nomination&nominationid=160&playmovie=wmv

This is a similar idea to the one in San Francisco, but this one is intended for disaster relief in Japan, and is actually made of paper.

My idea was to create a new kind of Winnipeg-friendly shelter using easily found materials and then create a similar type of radio transceiver. Instead of just existing on one band and working like a walkie-talkie, these transmitters could send sound to a central radio receiver, which would then rebroadcast all of those different channels out to the rest of the point. It would basically be a chat room for the homeless, where they could inform each other about where they are and the conditions in different spots. I think it could finally make my design a useful thing, as well as allow it to project even further, both in terms of receiving and transmitting data.

Thoughts on my Final Critique and the New Term

I thought that my final critique went pretty well considering that I was actually kind of disappointed with myself. I never had enough time to finish the project completely, and I only had one of eight mechanisms working on the day of my presentation, and even then, the batteries ran out while I was talking!

It could have been a lot worse, I suppose, so I can’t complain too much. The comments I received were interesting, but they all had a similar focus, in that they were all asking what the point of the whole thing was.

The information the machine gives to the user was vague, and I intentionally did that to make the machine more mysterious, but in doing so, I also made it more generic and less responsive. By not narrowing the info down, the info had less use to the person receiving it.

After the term ended, I took a long break from blogging, and with the new term now well underway, I am still confused, I guess. After being assigned to look at sites in Point Douglas, I had a big idea all ready for Monday when I talked with Patrick, but of course I had gotten way ahead of myself again, but let me explain what I wanted to do first.

I have no pictures of my intended site, but it was an old burn out building near a railroad that’s been set for demolition. My original thinking was that my machine is something of a virus. Its ability to move into a new building and immediately start sending data to a central spot with mobile receivers made it kind of a sinister little device, and I wanted to take advantage of this. In order to do that, though, my idea was to make a building that exhibited similar viral attributes. Instead of receiving just information over a wireless network, this building would be built upon the foundation of the burnt out building and use some of its components. It would also use components of other dilapidated buildings in order to make itself up.

I decided that within this building, there could be the central piece to my project, receiving data from other parts of the building that would be integrated with the HVAC system in the building. When an area reported being too cold, a solar heated burst of air made from recycled glass, tins, and motors would kick in and heat the area, all as the result of a set of impulses. The building could be solar powered and solar heated, meaning it could be counted upon to be off the grid most of the time, allowing for infinite rearranging and interior possibilities inside, due to having a mobile thermostat and HVAC system.

You see how I get ahead of things?

Well, Patrick set me straight afterwards and said that my logic was a bit too linear. I had gone from the machine receiving data to a building receieving bricks, and if I kept on like that, I could pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted and justify it in some roundabout way. Fun, but not really in the spirit of the project. I needed to think more about my machine and what it could do, as well as what it couldn’t do in order to find a purpose and pick a site.

The big question is:
I have all this info, but who gives a damn? I need to figure out a way to make this a useful design for Point Douglas, and then I need to apply it in some kind of architectural context.

Final Build

Once I had my transmitter all ready to go (all eight of them!) it was time to get my device assembled. The laser cutting went really well, and I was quite happy with how all the pieces turned out, aside from one piece that I had to redo, because Patrick said it was too sci-fi. Fair enough, I suppose, I think it looked better after, too. And now... the pictures!

Once all of this was built, it was time for me to make a box for the machine to stand on. I was actually kind of mad about the box when it was done, because I went out and bought some really nice wood, and it cost quite a bit of money to make, too. The wood was warped all to hell, and the wood splintered if you even thought about putting a screw or nail in it. It was tough to put together, and I didn't like how it looked in the end, either. It looked okay, but I would have liked to stain it, but due to the extra time it took to clamp it together due to the warping, I didn't have time to darken the finish.

FFM - (Finally) Frequency Modulated

Throughout the entire term, I was having a really tough time making one of my main goals actually happen. That goal was FM transmission over a fairly long distance, and even though I was able to get my AM transmitter working for a short time, it was also only for a short distance, so when I ordered ten FM transmitter bug kits from QKits.com, I was pretty excited. These kits were supposed to be able to transmit up to 100' on a stable frequency, and so I decided to get them and use them for my project.

The kits looked like this before they were assembled:The red wires on top are the battery connector and antenna wires. The interesting thing about this kit is that the inductor is actually printed right on the circuit board, and the antenna can tap into the inductor in two different spots. If you use tap A, the transmitter can broadcast a lot further, but the signal will drift quite a bit more. If you use tap B, the transmitter should transmit for 100 feet, but the signal will be much more stable, which is why after I tested both, I decided on using tap B, since my machine can't constantly re-tune itself.

This is what the transmitter looked like after it was all soldered together.

The whole thing is extremely small, and could easily fit inside a small mint tin, but I haven't gotten around to that just yet.

After I got a few radios together, I got my younger brother to come in to studio and be my helper monkey. Together, we found that the transmitter could easily reach 100' on tap B, but if we had to go through doorways in the Russell building, the transmission would instantly stop. The metal doorways don't allow the radio waves to pass through, so it was decided that I would have to have all of my transmitters inside the Russell building, no matter what. It was encouraging, though, to see that it could also quite easily transmit through the concrete floors in the building, which was pretty exciting.

When we tried the radios on tap A, the signal drifted about 5 mHz either way, which is way too much drift in much too short a time.