DeJonckheere

Segue City One

2006-12-08T01:02:00.000-08:00

Segue City One is what I have seen as the first of many mega developments which work as a unit to increase efficiency and effectiveness in global trade. The city discussed here is a result of research done earlier this semester in Mega Blog posts and the Mapimation project.

The Mapimation project was the precursor to Segue City One; here I explored global transportation networks. The map overlaps the world’s largest cities, ports, airports, and rail and road networks to find areas of intense overlap of the world’s largest transportation networks. These areas are crucial as distribution hubs in the global economy. However, the cities that act as major player in global trade, unsightly ports, noisy airports, and disruptive road and rail networks lower the living quality of these cities. Segue cities are meant to be new developments at the crossing of major transportation systems. The segue city acts as a mega hub for all passenger and cargo traffic entering the region it serves. For example, here Segue City One serves most of Western Europe as a gate to the entire continent. In this way, undesirable characteristics of transportation networks are retreated to the segue city leaving behind prime real estate on the mainland and leaving the exchange of goods and passenger layovers to one specially designed location.

Segue City One is located in the North Sea, it lies central to some of the main cities it supplies such as London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Paris and others. The city is constructed as a collage of the areas it serves. Five main elements create Segues City One, those being: 1) the city itself, 2) the green spaces, 3) the airports 4) the seaports and 5) the rail and road circulation network.

We will begin with the city. The city is a composition constructed of large samples of the largest cities of the region served—London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. These are some of the most influential cities of the region. The sections of the city are oriented in a way that corresponds with the actual cities they have been modeled after. While Segue City One’s purpose is to house rather industrial processes, the city is created in a way that still offers a comfortable living environment.

This brings us to the green spaces. A ring of green grounds foreseen to have a park like atmosphere surrounds the perimeter of the city. All of the industrial operations, the ports and airports are located outside of this “green ring” and are thus screened from the city itself. A bay has been left in the center of the city to give occupants a comfortable waterfront to enjoy seeing as the border with the ocean on the perimeter of the city is surrounded by the transportation networks.

The transportation network consists of a central loop from which arteries branch down the length of each port. These arteries support both rail lines and roads which carry goods to and from ships in the ports. The network is then connected to the mainland of England and Holland via Chunnel system thus plugging goods directly into the rail and road infrastructures of Western Europe. The central loop is located under the city while the arteries surface onto each port dock.

The ports are a collection of Western Europe’s largest ports; that is the ports in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Le Havre. They have been designed as a negative of the areas making up these ports. That is to say what are channels and canals in the existing ports have become the docks in the Segue City One ports. The hope is that a similar organization of operations can continue since the structure of each port is essentially the same as its inspired port. Like the city fabrics, the ports are oriented in directions pointing to their original locations.

And finally the airports, I have selected three of Europe’s existing airports, those in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The load that these airports carry today are equivalent to what I have calculated would be needed to support all intercontinental cargo and passengers entering and leaving Western Europe. Like the ports, the have been located outside the “green ring.”

In essence, the Segue City is a collage of the largest urban spaces and transportation networks of Western Europe designed to take the load of the exchange of goods and international trade off of the mainland leaving valuable real estate and more comfortable living conditions.

The following link will lead you to an earlier study massing model which has a similar effect to the final project: Segue Interactive Model

Below is my PowerPoint presentation, to be replace by images later.

Global Transportation Networks

European Network Collisions

New European Road Map

North Sea Location

Veiw from Space

Component Collage

London/Paris Collision

City Block Figure Ground

"Green Ring"

Airports

Seaports

FormZ Model

View over Segue City One Bay

View Down Rotterdam Port

View Along Inner Bay

12.01.06

2006-12-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

The past few days have been dedicated to experimentation with FormZ, SketchUp and Google Earth. Here are some files that begin to show what I have learned: Trial Model 1 and Trial Model 2. I am now in the process of building the final, more detailed FormZ model of which a toned down version will be place into Google earth.

11.29.06

2006-11-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

The following two images are the most recent of my Photoshop collage efforts. The top image incorporates the cities of London, Paris and Amsterdam; the ports of Copenhagen, Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre; and an airport three times the size of London Heathrow International. The second image is a close up view of the collision of two of the cities, London is on top and Paris on bottom. I also have a rough SketchUp massing model in Google Earth here.

11.20.06 Proposal

2006-11-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

After some early experimentation, I have chosen to further develop a Segues City designed to serve the European continent. My mapping has shown the North Sea as an area of highly concentrated global traffic and a seemingly effective site for the location of a Segue City. This proposal began with a study of the major ports in Northern Europe including the ports in Le Havre, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, and Copenhagen. Using Google Earth maps, I found the area which each of these ports covered. The inverse of the land covered (the water ways occupied by the ports that is) was then used to create the port branches stretching from the center of my proposed Segue City. The idea is that each port in the Segue City could continue to function in the same organization as it currently does onshore.

The central island contains the actual city and the mega airport. The airport has been designed to accompany the loads of all of the inter-continental flights entering the major airports of the European Continent, both passenger and cargo. The airport needed to support this load is the equivalent of 3 Hartsville Atlanta International Airports (which has been modeled as such). The city of the island has been modeled after Manhattan in New York; it has been foreseen with a similar population density and covers roughly 18 square miles allowing 1.5 million people to inhabit the island. This figure is a response to the number of employees needed to operate all of the functions of the Segue City including families of the employees.

The second major function of the center island is the hub of both the rail and road networks in the city. Underground, an interstate loop and a rail loop allow the exchange of goods and people from one area if the city to another, but more importantly, the hubs are a means of transportation for goods and people onto the mainland of Europe. Chunnel systems will allow trains and trucks to transport goods and people directly to their destinations onshore. This relieves the pressure and confusion of the transportation of goods from ships to trains/trucks/planes on the mainland freeing up valuable real estate for other uses. Under the surface of the central island, the interstate loop and the rail loop are stacked on top of one another. Vertical transportation shafts will move goods with a system of elevators from the airport to trucks or trains or vice versa.

Several images below describe the process and proposal I have created thus far. The first two images go back to my mapimation project showing how the site for the European Segue City was chosen. Then a series of collages and perspectives give an idea of scale and the city in its context. Finally, the video gives a rough idea of the form of the Segues City and the different transportation networks that make the city a center for exchange. The model is a simple combination of extrusions and sweeps to give a reference of scale and form. The animation shows how the separate systems of transportation are interlocked with one another.

Image Updates for the Segue Cities

2006-11-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

Some photoshop collages to follow up last week's sketches:

Segue City Program Proposal

2006-11-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

After my conclusions from the mapping project, I have proposed four sites where I feel the creation of an offshore segue city would benefit the exchange of goods and movement of passengers throughout the globe. These sites are: Los Angeles, New York, the North Sea and the East China/Yellow Sea. I find the site in the North Sea especially interesting and plan to focus on this site especially for the purposes of this project.

Program of the Segue City—The Segue Cities will be transportation hubs for all major transportation networks supplying a fairly large area, in this case, most of north western and north Eastern Europe. The Segue City will consist of a central island, envisioned now to be and artificial island constructed in a similar fashion to the Kansai Airport (see earlier post). The central hub island would serve as a gateway airport to the larger served region, it would provide living areas for workers and their families in the Segue City and it would provide a ring of transportation connecting the spokes of the City described next. Below the surface of the central island, a rail network will gather, distribute and transport goods to and from the mainland. The second major component of the City will be the spokes that radiate from the central hub. These arms will be massive docking piers for all ships that would generally crowd the ports of the surrounding mainland. Goods will pass from the ship directly to the rail and interstate networks of the European continent. The arms radiating from the central hub are foreseen as floating island units. As demand for shipping increases, more units can be attached to the hub. I have researched a material called pykrete to perhaps serve as the main construction of the shipping islands. Pykrete is a material invented during WWII created with a simple mixture of wood pulp and sea water. In WWII, the Royal Navy suggested building a super aircraft carrier, the Habbakuk of pykrete which was discovered to have similar structural properties to concrete while floating like an iceberg. This link to the Habbakuk project further discusses the material.

Below are some early sketches of how the program of the Segue Cities may function:

Mega Transportation Networks

2006-11-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

The final phase of this mapping project goes beyond mapping only major air routes. This map super-imposes the world's four main modes of transportation used to physically connect every corner of the globe. The mapping explores the world’s largest air, shipping, rail and roadway networks. The map is done as such that each layer of information is displayed on the map as a partial transparency, thus the areas of the map which show the whitest moments represent the areas of the globe in which there are the highest concentration of intersections between the world’s largest transportation networks. These are the areas of the globe are the areas which move most of the world’s people and goods around the world. These are very important areas for the global economy and have a large impact on most of the world; they represent some of the wealthiest areas of the world and are also among the most populated places on the globe.

Below is a plan view of a map of the earth. The world’s mega cities (that is cities containing more than 10 million people) are plotted along with the world’s largest ports, airports, rail networks, interstate infrastructures and the most commonly traveled air routes and shipping lanes. The shipping lanes and air routes are mapped as lines of connections, the mega cities and airports are mapped as domes with radii in correspondence to global size, and the ports, interstate infrastructures and rail lines are mapped as flat circles centered on the mega cities they are tied to, the radii of these forms also have been derived from the global scale of these networks.

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Shown above is the identical map of the globe seen before but the levels of the image have been altered to create a clearer understanding of the most critical areas of the overlapping of transportation networks. Four focus areas immediately become obvious, the eastern coast line of Asia between China and Japan especially, Northern Europe, the US northeast (centered on New York) and the US west coast (centered on Los Angeles). Following are several perspectives of the map including a front elevation view showing an interesting pattern across the globe, a perspective view of the Asian east coast from the Pacific Ocean and a second image taken over Russia and a perspective of Northern Europe taken form the northern part of the African continent, in that order.

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The next map below describes the areas most affected by the largest transportation networks and which areas of the globe are less accessible than others. Following are two more maps, the first of which shows the population of the areas most affected by my mapping of transportation and the second which highlights GNP per capita (darker countries have higher GNP) in the areas of my mapping versus other areas of the globe. And finally, the last two images describe one of the most interesting sites on the globe, the North Sea. The Google Earth map (image 10) locates the road map that follows it. The last map is a transportation map, it disregards all information except that discribing transportation networks. The last map collage explores what the North Sea in northern Europe might look like if a "Segue City" island transportation hub (discussed below) were built to serve the European continent. In this map, the red, yellow and green lines represent major highways and interstates in northern Europe and England, the circles represent air space superiority for the largest airports in the area and the gray lines are shipping routes too and from the city. These maps are, however, only speculation of what could be if a mega "Segue City" was built in the North Sea.

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Our lives today are based on a global economy and as the population of the world continues to grow, a global economy will be increasingly important for our living standards and perhaps for developing the situation of other areas that seem left out of the global economy at this time. I believe the that it will be increasingly important for the areas highlighted by this mapping to work as efficient and effective segues of goods and people and as the main distribution hubs of the world. In many of these areas, problems of space and ugly industrialization are major concerns as they will continue to be. An interesting study titled “What if Denmark was the Port to the New Europe?” describes these issues in Denmark and suggests a solution involving the construction of a new “super port” as a man-made island replacing the other ports which now crowd the Danish coastline. The study predicts great profit for the Danes and a higher quality of life due to the prime real estate which would be yielded if all of the ports were moved offshore. Similar situations are faced in all of the areas highlighted by the mapping and so the thought arises, what would happen if mega offshore “Segue Cities” were created to move the unsightly and ever growing transportation network hubs to a central location offshore? Just as airline hubs were formed to make airline travel more efficient, can this concept not be applied to all forms of transportation of both people and goods on a global scale to make international trade more efficient as a whole? For the next part of the project, I plan to explore the creation of “Segue Cities” which could operate in the strategic locations pointed out to create a new and more efficient means of global travel and transportation.

Mappimation Progress

2006-11-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the latest images of my FormZ mapping. the lines shown represent the main sea lanes and air routes connecting the "mega" ports and airports of the world. The ports are marked by flat circular areas corresponding to the size of the ports. Airports are marked by circular domes, size also corresponding to the size of the airport. And finally, all of the mega cities of the world are also marked with white spheres. The layering of this information reveals areas in the of intense white which are areas that are extremely developed as far as their global modes of transportation and ties to the rest of the world. These are areas that could be considered for the construction of Segue Cities. Still to come on the map is the plotting of major railroads and interstates around the globe (hope). Any suggestions?

Segue Cities Update

2006-11-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Some brainstorming for collage maps and proposals:

Segue Cities

2006-10-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

After last week's review I have refocused my mapping to incorporate more than just the plotting of air traffic data. I have chosen to attempt mapping all of the major networks of transportation for people and goods including major air routes, shipping routes, interstate networks, and railway networks. These systems will be mapped over a plotting of the world's mega cities (that is any city with more that 10 million inhabitants); the idea is that when all of these layers of information are superimposed over one another, the map will reveal the most important "Segue Cities" of the world, that is to say, the cities which most control the movement of people and goods around the globe and in many ways, control a large factor of the global economy and the conditions many people around the world face.

I hope that these Segue Cities can become sites for a new system of global interaction. I suspect that many of these cities will encounter similar problems of population growth, unsightly conditions around the port areas, and a general confusion and inefficiency of distribution of people and goods. I plan to analyze the largest Segue Cities an pose a plan for the construction of an off coast island which could perhaps serve an of shore port/airport for a more efficient distribution of cargo and passenger traffic.

One very interesting corner is the North Sea. London and Paris are two mega cities which depend on a large import export business; the London, Paris, and Amsterdam airports are among the worlds largest, four of the world's largest ports are located here and finally, all of the countries in this general area contain strong rail and interstate networks. As the population continues to grow and more pressures are felt of the expansion of airports and ports what could a solution be to make the transport of goods and passengers in and out of the area more efficient. Inspired by an earlier case study on Kansai International Airport in Osaka, I began to wonder if it would be possible to build an island in the North Sea which would serve as a major airport and seaport to receive and send northern Europe's goods and passengers throughout the rest of the globe. A chunnel type system could allow interstate highways and trains to access the island working with the seaport and airport.

Thus, I hope that the map will reveal some of the world's most important Segue Cities; the cities that ship and distribute most of the world's goods.

This excel spread sheet is a quick matrix of what the map will try to show graphically. The following are two images from an early attempt at the new mapping:

Mapimation PowerPoint

2006-10-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

Here are the Mapimation videos: video 1, video 2

Mapimation Latest Updates

2006-10-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

Here are my latest mapimation images, hopefully a video will follow shortly. Only two airlines are mapped here and the trial video to come is not modeled after accurate data, but it'll give you the idea. Let me know what you think.

Mapimation Update

2006-10-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Modern travel, especially air transportation connects today’s world—air travel connects people and goods with any corner of the world within 24 hours or less. Yet the globe’s 15 largest airlines only represent seven countries. Though less realized, air travel holds similar status today to marine travel a century ago. Until recently, the measure of a nation’s power could be gauged by the size and power of its navy. Today, air dominance holds a similar status. A century ago, wars were won by ships, worlds were connected by ships and all goods crossing oceans were freighted on ships. Today, air superiority wins wars, one can fly to any corner of the world within 24 hours, and 36% of the value of all goods traded around the are world flown to their locations (pretty good considering that this 36% of value constitutes only 5 percent of volume, all other goods are moved via ship, truck, train or other mode of transportation). Air domination today is equivalent to naval domination centuries ago.

Of the 15 airlines mapped, seven countries are represented and coincidentally these countries have recently been some of the largest players in world affairs. Upon research of further statistics one finds that two major demographic factors become very telling of which countries retain air dominance. All of the dominant countries have populations over 40 million (except Australia) and a GNP per capita income in excess of the equivalent of 26,000 USD. There are many countries with higher populations for instance China and India, however, the per capita income in these countries is significantly lower than in the countries of air superiority. Other companies such as Luxemburg or Norway, have among the highest per capita incomes but their populations are to small to support a major air transportation industry.

Some exceptions to occur, Australia for instance has a relatively small population and yet Qantas Air slides in as the worlds 13^th largest airline according to passengers per year. Canada also seems as if it could qualifiy to have an airline in the top 15 yet Air Canada is barely excluded in the top 15 and comes in at position 19. However, neither of these exceptions or any others are far out of the theory that there is a strong correlation between a country’s population+per captia GNP versus that country’s air superiority.

My map intends to explore the spheres of influence of the major airlines and the countries they represent and it goes further attempting to predict future dominant powers as represented by air superiority. Based on the growth of airlines and the rate of change in population/per capita GNP the map predicts which airlines will rise next to bring their countries to the economic forefront of the globe. The best prospect, no surprise, seems to be China. Already having the largest population, the Republic of China’s GNP per capita is increasing at an incredible 9.90%. Other good possibilities lie in Taiwan, Russia India and Iran, all of which have significant populations, sufficient resources, and above average economic growth.

10.12.06

2006-10-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

The following images are my mapimation revisions from suggestions made in Wednesday's studio. I have narrowed the focus simply to destination routes of some of the largest air carriers in each continent. For each airline, the main hub was taken and each major destination served from the main hub of a particular airline was simply connected with the hub. In the top view the map begins to develop a dominant area or "world" which each airline dominates. In a three dimensional view, the data has been mapped as topography, almost like a mountain range; the largest carriers have taller peaks. Giving the data a three dimensional presence creates an interesting new way to explore the map, it can be viewed in elevation and my hope is that well place sections will also help to reveal new patterns. Elevations views help to put into perspective what parts of the world certain airlines are more prevalent in. For instance, of the mapped airlines, British Airways seems to dominate the northern most part of the globe, while Qantas Airlines clearly dominates the southern hemisphere. In plan, while the graphic is still somewhat weak, one can make out distinct patterns and connections that are directly related to earlier historical movements. The imperial ages of France, Holland and England, for instance, become very obvious through their continuing ties. One can see a strong correspondence between these nations and thier current and former territories.

Seven of the world's 20 largest airlines have been mapped, the colors coordinate to the airlines as follows: blue=Delta Airlines, purple=American Airlines, magenta=Air France/KLM, red=Japan Air, orange=British Airways, green=Qantas Air, and gray=Korean Air.

The next step will be to find a way in which animation can make certain patterns and the overall mapping clearer to understand. I also hope to add a volume to each of the flight paths rather than just a line. I hope that solid mass will create an airline mountain range across the globe which can be cut in different areas to study in section, in plan, in elevation, and hopefully also from a perspective point of view. Let me know if you have any suggestions on what you think could help the mapping.

10.09.03 Mapimation Update

2006-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

These updated animations show five of the world's largest airports over the past 25 years and their growth. Chicago O'Hare, Hartsville International (Atlanta), Los Angeles International, London Heathrow and Tokyo International airports are represented by thier corresponding metaball forms. The forms symbolizing each airport grow with the increase of airport traffic over the years. The paths connecting the airport metaball forms work in a similar fashion, that is, the diameter of the tubes connecting the airports corresponds to the amount of traffic traveling between the two points connected. In these videos, the tubes are speculation and do not yet reflect factual data. The nodes off of each central metaball form representing an airport symbolize generalized "spokes" of traffic leaving each airport to give a sense of connection linking the different points; while the representation of these side nodes in the posted animations are also speculation, the final animation hopes to point out patterns of connection between different corners of the world. The final project will map about 15 of the world's largest airports and their major connections over time in an attempt to discover if this information parallels with other social demographics. Here are the links to two animation studies; top view animation and perspective view animation.

Hopefully a more elaborate revision of the previous animations can be combined with a mapping of demographic statistics such as, standard of living numbers, per capita income, or city population growths and reflect a relationship between a city and its connection to the rest of the world. My hope is that these studies will offer a valid study of population growths, population shifts, economic development and global relations over the last two and a half decades.

Mapimation Proposal

2006-10-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing from the blog post on flight routes, my mapimation project will focus on the network of global flight patterns and air travel. My hope is to allow the overall visual appearnce of the project to have a connection with typical avionics mapings and flight charts to display data analyzing the growth and transfromation of air travel over the past 40 years or so; and example is posted below. The hope is that this study will offer new insight to issues beyond the narrow scope of air travel and that it will offer more general facts regarding changes in the political, social and economical status of the globe.

The first attempt at my mapimation is linked below. This animation is a fictional representation of Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta and its growth over the last 40 years. The metaball forms are used to represent the size of the airport in number of passengers per year, the main routes flown from the airport and the average distance of flights traveling from the airport.
Click here to see the animation. Also, this video, links to a 24 hour mapping of flights entering and leaving Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Mega Cities

2006-10-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

Mega City One is the fictional city from the Judge Dredd comic book. It is a fictional megalopolis around the year 2100 AD which covers the area that today stretches from Boston to Washington, DC. In the comic, it is one of three main civilizations surviving a disastrous nuclear war in 2070; with a population of 400 million the city is far denser than any city today. People live in city blocks that are so large they become towns in themselves and the mega buildings that make up these blocks are much like the Sky City that has been proposed by some Japanese architects.

Judge Dredd is not the only fictional prediction of the rise of such mega cities. Other similar ideas are illustrated in a plethora of books, magazines and films that are part of pop culture today. For instance both the films, Blade Runner (1982) and Demolition Man (1993), take place several decades into the future and depict an enormous megalopolis on the west coast stretching from Seattle to Los Angeles. Again a similar image is created as Mega City One from the Judge Dredd comic.

When indulging ourselves into these forms of entertainment, our willing suspension of disbelief allows us to imagine a world as is described in these stories, but the reality is that our world today is rapidly approaching these visions. A mega city is defined as a city with over 10 million inhabitants. The first mega city ever was New York in 1960 when it broke the 10 million mark. Today, Tokyo is considered the larges mega city with a population of around 30 million and there are 25 other mega cities around the world (though this figure may change by the time I have posted this blog). The most amazing thing is the exponential addition of cities to the mega city list. The graph below illustrates the number of mega cities from 1960 through 2006 and predicts visually how many more cities will be added to the list in five and then fifteen years from now.

Many regions in the US are already being studied as the fictional mega cities from comic books. The following map is of the Judge Dredd world and illustrates four of the post nuclear war mega city civilizations. Overlaid are images of what are the true beginnings of these cities. Mega City One = Bosnywash also known as Boshington (area from Boston to Washington DC, population - 40 million), Mega City Two = San La San (area from San Francisco to San Diego, population – 35 million), Mega City Three - Ft. San Haustin (San Antonio, Huston, Dallas, Ft Worth, population - 14 million) and Chicago Mega City = St. Chitroit (Chicago-Detroit area, population – 27 million). Amazingly, the Judge Dredd world map is not at all far-fetched as the beginnings of cities like Mega City One can clearly be seen. Many other areas of the world, with their rapid growth, are showing similar developments; China and India for instance have seen massive population increases in the last decade as can be seen in the map above. At the current rate of city growth, it doesn’t seem that it will take much longer until the scenes of Blade Runner, Demolition Man and Judge Dredd become reality.

Building Ground

2006-10-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

As the Earth’s population grows, people continually feel the pressures of living room acting upon them. While here in the United States, we may still take fore granted the spacious lifestyles we lead, this is not the case in many places. So what happens when the land runs out? In some locations, the solution is to make more land. This is not a new concept as civilizations have fought the ocean for living space for centuries, however, some very new and amazing strategies have been taken to steal land from the oceans, perhaps one of the most amazing to date is the construction of the Kansai International Airport. Economic pressures in Osaka, Japan and the lack of open space for a new airport have led to a 15 billion dollar man-made island in the Osaka Bay. The project has taken over 25 years to complete; the filling of the island itself required more than 10 million man hours; after which it was found that the island was sinking at a faster rate than calculated. Shortly after the terminal construction began, engineers realized that the entire mass was sinking far more quickly than predicted and a massive system of jacks was devised to lift the entire structure as needed.

Today, the sinking rate of the island has dramatically decreased and the man made island has successfully with stood the impact of a nearby earthquake (Kobe earthquake, 1995) and several typhoons without any major damages. However, due to the extra costs, the airport is often times considered a white elephant; interest alone runs 560 million dollars a year leading to extremely high landing fees for incoming air traffic. Despite the struggles, over the last few years, the airport has been able to survive and construction on a second runway has begun with prospects of a third runway in the near future. The Kansai International airport now has over 40 international carriers and acts as the airport for most international travel in the Osaka area.

In Genova, Italy, Renzo Piano (also the designer of the airport terminal at Kansai) has suggested a major renovation of the port area; the plan includes relocating the city’s airport onto an artificial island similar to what was done for the Kansai International Airport. Here the projected budget for the airport is 2 billion euros or roughly 2.5 billion dollars, a price which seems somewhat more reasonable that the 15 billion dollars spent on the Kansai Airport. The image below shows a size comparison of Kansai International Airport layed over Piano's port renovation plan.

Other similar land forming projects are appearing all around the world such as the island “neighborhoods” near Dubai. The idea of creating islands becomes very powerful and very realistic. The question is, could the ability of building land begin to solve issues of space and population growth for certain areas of the planet. Singapore for instance is a tiny nation island of 690 square kilometers with a population of 4,400,000 and thus has one of the highest population densities in the world. As overcrowded as the island already is, the population has been increasing an average of roughly 2 percent over the last few years and in twenty years from now will be close to 6,500,000. Where can the country fit 50 percent more citizens without losing the little precious undeveloped land the country has held onto? Could more land be built in a similar fashion to that of the Kansai Airport construction? Adding about 40 percent of Singapore’s current land area in a mega-island construction could house the growing population in twenty years with about the same population density that exists now. But this much land, 260 square kilometers would be the equivalent of about 48 Kansai International Airports, and given the cost of one Kansai (15 billion dollars) the grand total would be near 720 billion dollars, about 600 billion less than the GDP for Singapore. The option may not be possible quite yet, but the budget for the Genova airport already seems much more feasible at a projected 2.5 billion dollars (thought the Genova airport will be approximately half the size of the Kansai airport). It still seems doubtful that the price of building land will justify a solution to the lack of space due to the planet’s population growth, although as seen with the Kansai airport, it can offer a solution to situations.

Contour Crafting: A Housing Solution or the Death of Design?

2006-09-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

In today’s world, machines have become tools that simplify many processes; cars, clothing, furniture, and countless other goods are manufactured largely by machine rather than manual labor. Robotics have made thousands of goods we buy everyday cheaper, faster, and more convenient, at the same time robotics have put people out of jobs and in many cases diminished product design to a dull and repetitive process. Now, imagine that one could press print and in 24 hours or less, and entire 2000 sqft house would appear. Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California has created what he calls a contour crafting machine which he claims will do just that. Khoshnevis is in the process of developing a printer of sorts which can print buildings. He hopes that such machines in the future will be able to build houses, offices, schools and even hospitals. Khoshnevis claims that the first printers will be available for commercial purchase around 2008. These machines use a specially developed concrete mixture to lay down layers of concrete a few inches thick. The Contour Crafter will also be able to install electrical lines and plumbing; the crafter will even be able to do work as specific as printing wallpaper into place. The only thing left to do by manual labor will be installing windows, doors, and other fixtures. Khoshnevis speculates that in twenty years from now the contour crafter will replace most manual labor in the construction industry. The contour crafter is expected to reduce construction costs of a house by about 75% and the construction time to just one day. More detailed information including videos, media reports and a link to the Contour Crafting blog is available at the Contour Crafting website .

The hope is that the Contour Crafter will be able to solve problems of housing for people suffering from poverty, disaster relief, and just to make homes in general more affordable. Disasters victims such as those after Hurricane Katrina would receive relief housing with plumbing and electricity in a mater of days. Khoshnevis’ website uses the example of a recent earthquake in Bam, Iran (2003); five months after the quake, only 11% of the 75,000 left homeless had shelter. Current portable housing unites are too expensive, time consuming and primitive to alleviate the problem. Conceivably, an entire city could be built in a mater of days for relief victims with homes that are permanent and comfortable. The proposal seems quite amazing, but what effect will such a technology have in the long run? No successful city has ever been built over night, or entirely relocated. If all of the victims receive quality permanent housing, who will want to rebuild what was destroyed? It’s horrible to imagine an ancient city, rich with culture being replaced by an overnight suburban Levittown. Not to say that giving disaster victims speedy and quality should not be done, but would this be the right way?

On a different note, what would the Contour Crafter do to high end design? According to Khoshnevis, the Crafter can easily create complex walls, with curves and bends at a fraction of the cost that a conventional construction crew could. He claims that the machine can open the door to more freedom in design. It seems as though this may be true and may even be a goal of Khoshnevis’. However, the people who will most likely purchase these contour crafters will be contractors, not designers. Will architecture turn into just another mundane process? With cookie cutter padio homes so popular today will the construction of building go even farther and bypass the architect all together; customers will simply pick out a plan from a data base and press print?

September 13, 2006

2006-09-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today felt like a really good day in studio. We took most of the day to finish up our full scale model and materials experiments. For the first time I felt like good progress was made, there was a good energy in the studio and everyone seemed to have positive thoughts of where the communication center is going. I think that the larger models and test really helped us visualize how the project is developing and what changes need to be made. I was surprised at how easy it was to present the models via Skype as well, I had always imagined that it would be much more difficult to present a physical object over the computer screen, but it seems to have worked out fairly well. It's interesting to see the evolution of design and how many earlier ideas keep popping up, I'm interested to see where we end up.

September 1, 2006

2006-09-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Studio today started with a group video conference. It was a bit troublesome simply because of the connection but I feel like a better connection would make all the difference. Sound and picture quality were really good when the connection held up and the system seems like it could be very successful. I feel that the video conference has been the most successful means of communication thus far and feel that it is the easiest form of communication to adapt too.

Global Flight Patterns

2006-09-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

In the past few decades, air travel has changed the way the world lives. The world has become a smaller place in that almost any corner of the world is accessible within 24 hours. A statistic posted several days ago on BLDGBlog, states that over the past 30 years, international trade has increased 1,395% and today, 40% of the economic value of all goods is transported via air; not to mention all the passenger travel. Thus in a way, the airplane has become a partial replacement to ocean travel. This post began with some basic research which led to a study done at UCLA in which data was used from the FAA to create a visual mapping of all air traffic over the United States in a 24 hour period. Several short clips analyze different statistics and some very interesting patterns begin to appear; see:

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/index.html

To the right are some frozen frames which begin to illustrate some interesting points. The maps begin at midnight and inclucde several images frozen at different times. One of the most obvious activities is the waking of the country from east to west. One can clearly see how activity in the morning picks up on the east coast and then makes its way to the west. But when one would expect the same to happen in the evening, it never does. Activity across the country begins to fade uniformly. This is one of the most obvious patterns that can be picked out of the short videos, but as one conts to study them, more patterns become to appear.

Perhaps the most interesting animation in the UCLA collection is the last one titled 3D Bobular. The most abstract animation, in some ways, it also become the clearest animation. the lower three images are frames taken from the 3D Bobular model highlighting some of the most obvious activity in a 24 hour period. Early in the day one can distinctly make out red-eye flights traveling from east to west, then as activity picks up, trans Atlantic flights from Europe create a clear form and towards the end of the day, one can clearly see a wave of trans Atlantic flight leaving the states for Europe.

It becomes interesting to see how telling flight patterns are our everyday lives. One could almost make a science out of studying flight patterns in relations to society. One might find that flight patterns could reveal information about daily life or even record changes in society over time. For instance, what would the flight chart above the US have looked like on the evening of September 11, 2001? Now, there is a high correlation of flight activity between economically dominant countries, how will flight patterns reflect a shift in ten years, twenty years, thirty years? What could such a study say about global economy and well being?

Wednesday's Post Studio Post

2006-08-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Today the studio met for the second time this week. On Monday everyone had a one on one video conference which, for me, was interesting and somewhat frustrating. I was surprised to find that the one on one critique was not as foreign as I had expected via video conference and I felt pretty much right at home in our conversation. The most frustrating part was just the technical difficulties, simply, my computer wasn't able to handle the video feed, but hopefully all those kinks have been worked out, a trip to DCIT and a re imaged C drive should fix the problem for a while.

Today the studio tried a new means of communication. The entire studio entered a group chat to critique and gain insight from each other's posts. This again was a means of communication that I found had advantages and disadvantages. During directed conversation, we had some really interesting and fruitful discussion, the written log is also nice to go back and reference earlier comments; at times I felt like there was really good group conversation. The problems came it when several different ideas were tossed around at the same time, the conversation at times became jumbled and confusing. Also, if your work was being critiqued (or for Ron who was also being bombarded with questions and comments), it was hard to keep up with all the comments and I fear we may be at risk for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Overall, I feel that this could become an effective means of studio communication. This form of communication for a studio setting is of course new to all of us and so I think we still need to learn how to use the group chat effectively, like I said, there were times where I felt this was happening. The last thing I feel we need to look out for is verbal conversation amongst ourselves in the studio. Once or twice in the studio, there were conversations that didn't get completely delivered to Ron and this is also and issue which I feel is not a problem if the studio remembers to fill the professor in.

Cloud Nine

2006-08-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

Among Buckminster Fuller’s more far reaching ideas was his proposal for a Cloud Nine structure. Cloud Nine was a project in which Fuller suggested that large spheres constructed using his geodesic dome structure could float and support living spaces for thousands of people. The geodesic dome is a structure which becomes much stronger as it becomes larger; Fuller along with others feels that a sphere of this construction is quite possible and has calculated that a geodesic sphere, a half mile in diameter, with all of its structure would weigh only one thousandth the amount of the weight of the air trapped inside. A sphere one mile in diameter, with interior air temperature raise only one degree would function as a huge hot air balloon and could support several thousand people. In Fuller’s image shown on the left, he has suggested that such spheres could possibly float between mountains and be tethered to them. While each unit could act independently, Fuller also began to speculate how they could interact with each other and the world below; he suggests the use of photovoltaically powered aircraft (solar powered), an idea taken from Dr. Paul MacReady, as the primary means of transportation between these spheres.

On a larger scale Fuller hoped that Cloud Nine spheres could create communities able to migrate according to changes in environment, population, culture, or any other varying conditions. Another important part of the vision is that Cloud Nine would offer a means for people to “converge and deploy around Earth without its depletion.”

Little follow up has been done on this particular vision of Fuller’s, but it is interesting to speculate on how a Cloud Nine city would function. If we assume that the average Cloud Nine structure supports 7,000 people, it would take between 35 and 36 spheres to create a city of 250,000. A present day city of similar population is Raleigh, NC with a population of about 260,000 (Census 2000).

This first collage explores what a city of 36 Cloud Nine spheres might look like. Since each sphere is also meant to be a self supporting community it is interesting to picture such a city in landscape otherwise unused by humans. As mentioned, Fuller’s idea was that Cloud Nine would allow minimum disturbance to the natural environment below, it becomes interesting to note what a flock of these semi-permanent spheres would do to a landscape, for instance, the Cloud Nine city modeled below would create areas of constant shadow on the desert floor, a condition not natural to this location. Would the sphere cities also have other unperceived impacts on the environment surrounding the community?

Assuming that it would not be preferred for some spheres to occupy space below others, and that a certain spacing would be required between the spheres (for the purposes of allowing sunlight to enter each sphere properly), the map below predicts how the plan layout of a city of 250,000 inhabitants compares to the space covered by a typical city today of that size. The city of Raleigh, NC has been used in this map for means of comparison.

Finally, Buckminster Fuller only briefly mentions that the Cloud Nine spheres could support “several thousand” inhabitants. How would the space of the sphere be divided to allow for communities of this size to inhabit the spaces efficently. The following sketches are my own speculation and experimentation based on some rough statistics.

Sketch to come

Back on Campus

2006-08-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

After after leaving Clemson's campus for a year, it feels good to return for what I hope will be my last year. This semester's studio will be an interesting experiment for me and quite the opposite of my off campus experiences last semester. I am excited about participating in one of Clemson's first fluid campus experiments in which the faculty member is off campus and the students are on campus. For me personally, I hope to gain a better understanding of the wide range of tools available for communication today and how these can be integrated into a successful fluid campus system. Many of the programs that will be used to make this class a success are somewhat unfamiliar to me and I look forward to working with my classmates to gain a better understanding of what these tools can offer and how they can change the way I work, design, and communicate. Also, I hope that my efforts along with those of the rest of the studio can set a precedence for future off campus learning possibilities.