Solar Molecules

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS

In 40 minutes of daylight the sun releases upon the earth the amount of energy that is consumed by the entire population of the planet in one year. Each day more solar energy falls to the Earth than the total amount of energy the planet's 6 billion inhabitants would consume in 27 years. Currently, we harness about 1% of this energy. Photovoltaic cells are currently being used in large groups known as arrays to gather this energy and convert it into usable electricity.
A two-dimensional mapping was constructed to delineate areas of high Btu consumption, since the Btu is how we measure energy. Research shows that a considerable amount of energy is consumed in North America and areas throughout Asia. A datascape was then constructed based from solar absorption and irradiation along the earth’s surface. This information is an average of data gathered from satellites over a period of one year. The datascapes were combined to reveal further information at their intersections. After taking this new solar surface map and overlaying onto the Btu consumption map, it is apparent that areas the energy falling onto the earth’s surface lies in areas where energy consumption is not so prevalent.

THE SITE

After constructing solar maps, new areas were revealed at the intersections of the absorbed and the irradiated energy datascapes. These newly discovered boundaries become interesting areas for investigation since they exist in a solar environment and offer us suggestions of development that were not visible before. The new formations inhabit the sky, varying in height depending on the total area they cover- the largest being the highest in elevation. The only restrictions given by the site are its boundaries. The site remains in a static position above its location relative to the earth by either tethering itself to specific locations on the earth’s surface.

PROPOSAL

The sun is a body in constant motion. The spherical mega-body moves across our sky each day, east to west, in a repetitive cycle everyday. Utilizing photovoltaic technology, the surface of the panels needs to remain perpendicular to the sun’s rays in order to optimize its performance.

With all this information in mind, the boundaries designated by the site now become materialized into what can now be called transmission archipelagos. The transmission archipelagos function to constantly gather, convert, and redistribute energy to designated locations on the earth’s surface. This distribution is done by means of microwaves. Based on research of the Matrioshka Brain, energy gathered by the photovoltaic panels would be fed though wires to microwave generators, converting solar electricity into microwaves. The microwaves are sent to screens that reflect them to stations in various cities where they are converted back into usable electricity. To optimize the amount of surface area that is in contact with solar energy, a sphere is used as a form. The sphere is clad entirely with photovoltaic panels, becoming a massive photovoltaic farm. It is multiplied to occupy the inside volume of the transmission archipelagos, defining the exterior from within.
Since the transmission archipelagos are located within irradiated regions of solar energy, it is able to still collect this energy, as opposed to a surface. The newly defined solar molecules are constant moving bodies remaining bounded by the area defined by the transmission archipelago. Similar to hot air balloons, the solar molecules function in a similar manner. Buckminister Fuller’s project, Cloud Nine, became the precedence for this move. He proposed that uplift would be created within a geodesic sphere with the temperature of air within the sphere being increased by one degree Fahrenheit. The infrastructure sustaining the form would actually be one-thousandth the weight of air inside. Since the transmission archipelagos cover such a massive amount of land area, the constant moving solar molecules would benefit allowing sunlight to penetrate through creating animated shadows on the earth’s surface. People below may still enjoy the comfort of bright days and sun bathing.

Looking into detail at one solar molecule, it is constructed in three parts: the core, stabilizing/transfer rods, and solar panel cladding. The core functions to store the energy gathered where possible microwave generators can be located. Rods are a medium between the core and the exterior that offer structural support. Energy collected on the surface is fed into each rod then transferred to the core. A cavity is also formed as a result between the exterior and core. Since energy is transferred though the rods, excess heat is emitted slightly raising the temperature in the cavity creating uplift. Finally the exterior serves to collect solar energy. With this proposition, the percentage of energy harnessed can greatly increase to a point where it will solely sustain our needs.

Scale of one solar molecule compared to Empire State Building


Detail of solar molecule with solar panels exploded out

New site plan

Some final conceptual images..


hovering over cities in Brazil

Olympic stadium on Montjuic


Image at night revealing the Moon

proposal: Tsunami (resistant) Architecture

It was late on the morning of April 1, 1946, and on the island of Hawaii, children from the school at Laupahoehoe Point were the first to see the Pacific Ocean disappear. They watched, awestruck, as 500 feet of sand and coral emerged glistening into the sunshine. A few of the braver ones ventured out onto the exposed reef. Suddenly the water came roaring back, sweeping away the children along with the buildings near the shore and the entire waterfront of nearby Hilo. For nine hours, a teacher, 21-year-old Marsue McGinnis, clung to a piece of driftwood before she was spotted by her fiance, who had mounted his own rescue in a borrowed motorboat. "I saw a number of children floating near me, clinging to wreckage," she said. "We just kept floating out to sea, and some of the children disappeared." Five hours earlier, an earthquake had erupted under the ocean floor off the coast of Alaska. Officials of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, a branch of the Commerce Department, knew what might be coming toward Hawaii, even if they didn't know enough to call it a tsunami. (msnbc.com)

A Tsunami is a significant global threat that can exist wherever there is a large body of water. A mega-tsunami, is a much larger scale disaster ranging anywhere from 30 ft to thousands of feet in height. These events occur when a very large amount of water is displaced all at one time. Examples of this displacement include a meteor impact or a LARGE scale landslide (in contrast to a tsunami which can be caused by earthquakes and plate subduction). The explosion of volcanos can also lead to a mega-tsunami as the land from the volcano rapidly displaces water. Mapped below are 3 active volcanos that are potential threats for megatsunami's. One in the Atlantic (La Palma, Canary Islands), one in the Pacific (Kilaueau, Hawaii), and one in the Indian ocean (Piton de la Fournaise, La Réunion Island).

The ripples do not represent the waves themselves but rather their travel times spreading from an origin, with each peak being approximately 400 miles apart. The wave travels at speeds in excess of 550 mph.

section relating distance traveled to height:

each hash mark on the arrow represents 1hr of travel time

The above image is an overlay of all 3 potential mega-tsunami locations

Interesting sites of wave interference were noted.

The following is a death map created using noteworthy historical tsunami's as data points. The largest points being locations where deaths exceeded 300,000 and the smallest being under 5,000. The areas of interference from the previous map were then overlayed to produce the image below.

Two areas overlapped, one of these being the Indian Ocean disaster of 2004. This tsunami was triggered by an underwater earthquake that registered with a magnitude of 9.3 on the Richter scale. It was the deadliest tsunami recorded in history and killed people in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Tsunami(resistant)Architecture is being proposed to provide housing and counteract the thousands upon thousands of deaths that occured in these regions due to structures being unable to withstand the destructive force of the tsunami. Below a typical Sri Lankan house is pictured.

These dwellings typically consist of 4 solid cement brick walls and are fairly susceptible to a tsunami.

Analysis of tsunami debris was conducted. It was noted that load-bearing walls perpendicular to the coastline, vertical elements of buildings, and bridge supports most often survived the tsunami waves. With this information as a starting point, and using these images to learn from the tsunami it was decided that a modular, structurally sound unit was needed as a starting point. The shipping container fulfills these requirements.



The container is manufactured with heavy-gauge Corten steel, is very sturdy and resistant to the elements. They are built to withstand the violent forces on the deck of a ship at sea. So it makes perfect sense to use them in constructing Tsunami(resistant)Architecture. Below are single and double units, comprised of a shipping container(s), steel bracing, and a column that alows for 360 degrees of rotation.

The rotation of the units is to allow them to by dynamic, and in the case of a tsunami, to be oriented perpendicular to it. This is done in order to put up the least resistance to the wave and to remain intact as a living space. During calm periods, or increments of time where there is no threat of a tsunami, the units will be organized based upon user preference, being optimized for livability, creating both internal and external spaces, and not necessarily perpendicular to an impending tsunami. An example of this is located in the cluster of units below.

This image represents a single cluster that is part of a much larger whole, consisting of hundreds or even thousands of these clusters stretching along a coastline.

While the containers in the "calm state" are oriented based upon user preference, the containers in the "tsunami state" are oriented perpendicular to the impending tsunami. This is illustrated below. The first image represents the calm state, while the second represents the tsunami state.

calm state

tsunami state

plan view of a calm state cluster (left) and a tsunami state cluster (right)

In order to orient the clusters perpendicular to a tsunami, you have to know where the tsunami is coming from. In order to do this, thousands of nodes will be placed in the ocean hundreds of miles offshore. These nodes will relay information such as direction and speed of a tsunami via satellite to the clusters on shore.

node detail

Tsunami(resistant)Architecture consists of 2 components, the clusters and the nodes. The nodes relay information, but also act as part of a public warning system. Upon alerting the clusters of the direction the tsunami is coming from the clusters orient themselves perpendicular to it, essentially pointing at the tsunami. This gives the comunity time to react to the situation and either evacuate the area or seek refuge. While acting as a beacon pointing to impending danger, to an extent, the clusters also protect the inland by breaking up the tsunami waves.

diagram portraying the relay of information

the clusters orienting themselves (the distance between the nodes and the clusters is shortened for representation)

Future Proposal: Archipelago of Surveillance

The nodes floating offshore could be applied and used to warn communities not only of impending tsunamis but of a variety of elements. These elements could be anything from other forms of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes to issues such as refugee migration, military surveillance, drug trafficking, or even algae blooms. The nodes could be placed surrounding entire continents to act as a type of global warning system. Obviously there are many factors that must be addressed when creating this "archipelago of surveillance." Negative factors include potentially impeding migration routes and changing ocean ecologies, while the positive outcome would be a constant stream of information that allows the entire globe to react/adapt/change in response.

speculative image of surveillance archipelago

Mega Energy Archipelago

The Mega Energy Archipelago is the fusion of two very different energy sources-- oil and wind. This concept springs from the unique conditions affecting offshore oil rigs in areas prone to frequent tropical cyclones. The archipelago strives to both resist and respond to hurricane forces. It resists the wind forces of the storm by using an aerodynamic shape to deflect direct winds, protecting the structure itself and the oil rig inside. It responds to storm conditions by utilizing the high force winds to generate electrical energy. This combination of oil rigs and wind farms creates a unique tension between dirty, fossil fuel pollution and clean, renewable wind energy. The Mega Energy cities will be sites that simultaneously harvest two very different forms of energy in the same location.

The wind turbines are mounted on the front of the aerodynamic structures to catch the wind energy. The structures are oriented with the oil rig at their center and are able to pivot around that point. This allows the structures to point towards the wind direction to simultaneously catch the wind and deflect it from interior spaces. When tropical storms are not present, the stations will be oriented towards the prevailing wind, and they will rotate to point into the wind currents of storms as they come.

The Mega Energy Archipelago is located off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, as seen in the following images from Google Earth.



Exact locations of existing rigs show the close proximity of oil platforms, making the proposed energy stations easily connected to form a network of individual communities connected by a common transportation network.

Great attention was brought to this site in 2005 when damage done to oil rigs during Hurricane Katrina caused an oil shortage for the southern United States. The importance of this site is further validated with mappings of tropical storm strikes across the world. When individual storm strikes are mapped according to location, intensity, and frequency, a storm archipelago begins to form across the world as the strikes build up over time.
[2001]
[2003]
[2005]
As the storm impacts overlap each other, certain areas of highest impact begin to emerge. These areas reveal the locations of the most storm activity, as seen in the darkest red areas on the following images.



[MORE MAPPINGS]
Overlaying rig locations with impact regions reveals the areas that both share. These areas are prime locations for Mega Energy Archipelagoes.

Inside each structure are multiple levels of occupied space, with open space in the center to give sufficient room to the oil rig. Each level consists of housing and businesses, allowing each energy station to become a functioning community on the water.

In the center of the structure there is an opening at the top to allow any dangerous fumes or smoke from the oil rigs to escape from the enclosure. Fumes can also leave through the back of the structure which is open to let in sunlight and fresh air. These energy cities are accessible by car or train via a series of bridges that connect them together as a network and connect them back to land, forming the whole Mega Energy Archipelago.

Segue City One

Segue City One is a proposal for the first mega construction of a new global network of trade and transportation. The city discussed here is a result of research done earlier this semster in Mega Blog posts and the Mapimation project; links to these studies will follow.

The Mapimation project was the precursor to Segue City One; Mapimation began as an exploration of global flight paths and then turned into a study of the largest transportation networks covering the globe. The final 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 players in global trade are often characterized by unsightly ports, noisy airports, and disruptive road and rail networks which 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 region. In this way, undesirable characteristics of transportation networks are retreated to a single location at the Segue City leaving valuable real estate open on the mainland. A similar study named “What if Denmark was the new Port to Europe” explores the idea of locating the entire Danish shipping industry on a Super Port island in the Baltic Sea. The project discusses the advantages of freeing valuable real estate and how the entire Danish economy could change if all ports were moved to the Super Port. The Segue City will provide similar benefits but on a larger scale. It will address seaports, airports, the rail network and the interstate infrastructure of the region it supports.

Image 1.1

Image 1.1 provides a common view of a map of the world from the Mapimation model. The brightest areas on the map, those found along the east Asian coast, the north European coast, the northeast US coast and the west US coast are all areas that could be benefited by a Segue City.

Image 1.2

Segue City One is the first city of the Segue City network and the only one described in detail by this project. It is important however, to consider Segue City One as part of a network, not as an individual condition relevant only to its site. Segue City One is located in the North Sea; it serves Northern and most of Western Europe. Image 1.2 provides another view from the Mapimation project describing the site selected and Image 2.0 shows the exact coordinates of the city. This location was selected because it is roughly in the center of all of the seaports the city will serve.

Image 2.0

Segue City One is a composition of the cities it serves. The major ports served by Segue City One are the ports in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Le Havre; the major international airports served are London Heathrow, Amsterdam International, Frankfurt International, and Charles de Gaul airports. The goal of the city is to ease crowding and assist the economies of all of the major cities in Northern and Western Europe. To do this five main elements create Segue City One, those are: 1) the city itself which offers a place for all those employed at the ports, airports and other transportation networks of the city, 2) the green spaces which buffer living spaces from the major transportation operations, 3) the seaports replacing the need for large onshore port operations, 4) the airports which connect people and goods from North and Western Europe with the rest of the world, and 5) the rail/road circulation network allowing goods to quickly be plugged into European road and rail networks.

The city is a composition constructed of large samples of the largest cities of the region served—London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, 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 process of collages does not suggest that parts of London, Paris, or any of the other cities are directly replicated, but that the textures and spatial qualities of these cities are used to create an interesting intersection of urban fabrics. Cities created overnight often lack layers of development which usually results in cold and strictly planed urban spaces. The collage process throughout this project seeks to create a large city quickly without creating an obviously planned, rigorous environment. Image 3.0 is part of the early stages of the experimentation of the collision of urban fabrics. The illustration shows the collision of Paris and London and an attempt to resolve the stitching of two very different textures. Image 4.1 is a figure ground of the entire urban living space in Segue City One. This is a combination of the five cities mentioned earlier, starting at the top right and moving in a clockwise direction, sections of Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Frankfurt create the city. The city is approximately 8 miles wide and will house between 3 and 4 million citizens.

Image 3.0

Image 4.1

The next critical element is the green ring. Image 4.2 describes a ring of green grounds foreseen to have a park like atmosphere surrounding 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. Green parks trough out the city are either green spaces found in the textures of the original cities which inspired Segue City One or they are results of gaps in the collision between different textures.

Image 4.2

The five ports branching from the center of the city shown in Image 4.3 (below) beginning from the top right again and moving in a clockwise direction are the ports of Copenhagen, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Le Havre. Each port reaches in the direction of its original onshore location. The form of each port reaching into the ocean is the inverse of the port as it exists today, this means that what before made up the channels, rivers and canals of the ports has now become the docks. Branches from the central transportation loop (described later) extend along the port docks allowing goods to be moved directly form trains and trucks to ships and vice versa.

Image 4.3

Three large airports serve the city. These airports have been directly modeled after London Heathrow, Amsterdam International and Frankfurt International airports. The reason these three airports have been chosen is that their combined current flights per year equals what has been calculated as the number of flights per year needed to support the operations of Segue City One. These three airports will not only support goods and passengers to the city but will act as a hub, as the entrance and exit of most goods and passengers traveling between Europe and the rest of the world. Image 4.4 highlights the locations and orientations of the airports, from the top right moving clockwise, Amsterdam International, London Heathrow and Frankfurt International airports are depicted.

Image 4.4

Image 4.5

Image 4.5 shows all parts of the Segue City One collage. However, one more critical element of Segue City One is depicted in the video of the FormZ model. This video can be seen below or a clearer QuickTime video can be viewed here. The last major element of Segue City One is the rail/road loop. Below the surface of the city, a large loop connects all of the ports, airports and the urban areas of the city. This loop contains rail lines and roads that extend through arteries onto each port and airport. As described earlier, this allows goods to be quickly exchanged between ships, airplanes and the European rail/road network. A Chunnel system leaves the city on the west and east side leading to the mainland. The video describes how the transportation ring and its arteries operate beneath the city.