London.Breath.S

intro

Scientists think that ice will probably disappear from the North Pole for the first time by this summer 2008 due to the global warming. We would like to express our solidarity with the hungry ‐ and probably angry ‐ polar bears that will soon reach our lands (?) trying to find some dry land and food.

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What about architecture? The earth and the city ‐ as the bears ‐ need ideas being ble to cope with ecological issue and to establish a radically new relation between architecture and nature. This is why we’ve imagined for “London 2008” a breathing and living architectural objet, in order to give a strong iconic value to the gallery that will contain, produce and distribute ideas about the future of the cities. Living beings basically differ from the unanimated ones in their ability to create relations and interact with the environment they’re living in.Like a weird animal generated by the River Thames, our proposal consist of a complex organism formed by different elements (skin, eyes, arms, heart, lungs, etc.) interacting with forces of nature to establish a mature and respectful – LOVing – relationship with environment and nature. The main roof, floating like a jellyfish, is composed by a translucent, elastic and flexible skin. This surface uses a structural system made of semi‐rigid fiberglass elements, something like camping tent poles. This allows the roof to lightly move and change his shape depending on the wind solicitations, like a soap bubble when we blow on it: this is how the gallery breathes.

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On top, a random array of helium solar balloons provides for solar energy supply during the day and become a funny set of lamps at night standing as a signal in the skyline of London. When the gallery moves along the river, solar balloons can be retracted to stay on thejellyfish roof. Exhibition spaces and observation area are imagined like piston boxes, with a platform that lifts using the energy of the river coming from some water turbines. The movement of these iron lungs creates an added vertical promenade for visitors, which experience the sensation of floating on a living architecture.

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related post

bAT 2.0

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bathouseproject competition site

…//LANDSCAPE//…This is a wood blades hill for bat roosting. A vertical bat-scaled landscape…//DIVERSITY/…On the hill, bats can choose their preferred location. They have a large range of accommodation solutions. Internal and external wood blades roosts have different sizes, shapes, sun exposition and thermal condition. Internal boxes rounding the lift provide an artificial cavern atmosphere for bats, and underground ones have a better thermal stability, granted by the earth-insulating effect…/ACCESSIBLE///..Internal lift Boxes are accessible for both researcher and visitors. Researchers can easily access and take away boxes for maintenance and monitoring. Visitors can enjoy a real vertical promenade in the dark among bat roosts. Using Night Vision Binoculars, you can observe bats in their roosts trough a glass. A special glass interlayer will be used to totally avoid light and sounds entering boxes. …/FLEXIBLE/…The oval steel frame is a modular system that you can replicate and use in different location with new configurations depending on and thermal needs and size. Using the same elements you can do A or B or C+D. ///VENTILATED/// Internal space has mechanical windows to let air circulate providing thermal regulation. Moreover, bats can freely circulate through. //BAT LIGHTS// Mercury vapor lights are used to encourage moths and other flying insects from the lake and, consequently, attracting bats. ///GUANO/// A system for bat guano cleaning and recycling is integrated in the project. In fact, a gutter-like blade and a system of grid-boxes in the ground. ///BATS 2.0/// An infrared web-cams network provide to constantly record bat images. A web 2.0 internet site will manage image data to build a really online interactive exhibition. Computers will be installed in the main buildings of the WWT centre. Bye…///

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plan

LA CRITICONA : 2009 BIKE CRITICAL MASS

Si os gusta ir en bici al trabajo o el fin de semana, os animo a participar a la critical mass interplanetaria (este año en España).
Durante los días 30 de abril al 3 de mayo Madrid será el lugar de encuentro para los participantes de las diversas masas criticas del mundo y el ciclismo urbano en general. Llenaremos la ciudad de bicis, charlas, talleres. El objetivo es de dar continuidad a iniciativas como la Critical Mass Interplanetaria, La Ciemmona Romana http://ciemmona.org/. Podéis encontrar todo el interesante programa de las jornadas aqui.

Quiero aprovechar para apuntar aquí también lo que para mi representa la bici, es decir libertad, economía, ecología, placer, diversión, deporte…personalmente me ha revolucionado la vision de la ciudad (Paris en mi caso) y en bici siento que puedo mejor aprovechar de todas las oportunidades.

Volviendo a la Critical Mass (masa critica, bici critica o simplemente CM), el nombre viene de un concepto de la física, donde la masa crítica es la cantidad mínima de material necesaria para que se mantenga una reacción nuclear a cadena. Ted White en su película “Return of the Scorcher” acerca del ciclismo muestra un fenómeno que se da en China: los ciclistas a menudo no pueden cruzar las intersecciones debido al tráfico de automóviles y a la inexistencia de semáforos. Pausadamente, más y más ciclistas se amontonan esperando para cruzar la calle y, cuando existe un número suficiente -una masa crítica- les es posible moverse todos juntos con la fuerza de su número para parar el tráfico mientras cruzan la calle. De ahí viene también el titulo de su ultimo documental “We are Traffic” (1999): Somos tráfico! Mas info sobre la historia de la Critical Mass aqui.

Estaré en Madrid desde el 28 de avril hasta el 3 de mayo a la manifestación, y podréis seguir las infos que subiré por el twitter @immaginoteca si os interesa.

La foto expuesta aquí arriba es de una bici de piñón fijo (fixie), un fenómeno de cultura urbana que se está difundiendo a una velocidad impresionante, como vemos en google trend. Se trata de bicis muy ligeras, simples (sin frenos, ni cambios, ni nada). Esta nueva tendencia me recuerda a veces casi una secta (me ha pasado más de una vez en Paris que gente en fixie, al ver que yo también era “uno de ellos”, me haya hecho una señal con la mano como para decir “hi brother…”). Anyway…la bici de piñón fijo tiene su por qué, aunque siempre resulta bastante difícil explicarlo a alguien que no la haya probado. Los de fixie.es intentan explicarlo aquí. Pero yo prefiero esta explicación en ingles.