Containerized Creativity

In 1956, trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean loaded the first payload of standardized shipping containers aboard the refitted tanker ship Ideal-X and watched as they departed Newark for Houston. The implementation of his intermodal dream signaled a sea change for the movement of goods around the world, one in which truck/ship/plane/train all conform to one prescribed rectilinear form, and one in which container loader and receiver are the only parties privy to content while all others are left mystified by identical corrugated monocoque constructions.

This innovation changed not only the physical shape of shipping, but that of its leavings as well. In net importer countries like the United States, used containers pile up in storage lots after their usefulness comes to an end. Having explored these boxy boneyards in person, I've long been inspired to re-use them in the creation of space. No building is free of materials carried in these standards; formalizing the relationship by appropriating the container as containment method is a lovely reminder for future users.

Graft Architects has crafted the Platoon Kunshthalle arts facility in Korea out of 28 standard shipping containers. In order to utilize the wall-as-structure nature of the containers, they surrounded a central open space with smaller programs (artist live-work, offices, washrooms, etc.) which could make use of the container as-is. In doing so they allowed for a sweeping architectural gesture at the heart of the space, at the same time playing with the double-blinding action of fitting any- and everything under the sun into the same blank box.

Closer to home, DeMaria Design used the basic geometry and structure of the shipping container, but dematerialized it by replacing steel monocoque with glass curtain wall and stucco in places, inverting the relationship of cargo and crate. The resulting Redondo Beach House has an inviting modernist open plan in which the footprint of the shipping industry is still viscerally present.

Found objects have inspired art since the beginning of time. That this paradigm has continued in contemporary architecture is no surprise --- green meets steel in containerized reconstruction.

Vegas tiptoes towards Green?

Las Vegas is one of the least sustainable cities in the world. Its rise to the apogee of western U.S. tourist culture is riddled with environmentally damaging moves: first, found a wholly suburbanized metropolis in the center of a water-scarce desert. Then work overtime to bring residents into a region lacking fertile agricultural land within a 300 mile radius. Next, subsidize airlines to fly gamblers into an airport over 600 miles from any major carbon sink. Water losses, embedded-cost multipliers, greenhouse gas maximizing...so many threads of hubris woven into an urban web.

Now local developers are trying to green their image by funding the world's first Vertical Farm. A concept that's been pushed for years by the Vertical Farm Project, this structure stands 30 stories tall within the core of an urbanized area. The entire structure is dedicated to food production year-round and weather independent; cash crops can be produced locally by replicating their native biomes within the structure's controlled environments. All told, between 50 and 75 thousand people could be fed by a single Vertical Farm.Cash flow from produce alone would pay off the high ($200 million) construction cost within 8 years; projected tourism revenue would make the tower every bit as profitable as a casino, and add a smidge of sustainability to Nevada's largest oasis.

Energy Efficiency in the Darker Months

For many Californians, saving power in the summer is second nature --- we open windows and turn on fans rather than using central air conditioning. We turn lights off when we leave a room. We wait until nightfall to do laundry and dishes. The summertime tips are many and frequently stated; come fall, however, the wisdom dries up. Other than expensive things like re-insulating your house and investing in double- or triple-glazed windows, how can we be more efficient in the winter?

1. Wear more clothing and turn down the thermostat. I know, I know...total no-brainers. But really, make sure you have a sweater on before you turn the heat above 68°.

2. Use radiant space heaters instead of a forced air heat pump (except when every room is being used). Radiant heaters warm the surface of your skin, not the air surrounding it --- psychologically, radiant heat makes you feel much warmer than a forced air system set at the same temperature. In addition, air is one of the worst thermal masses out there; using it to transfer heat from furnace to every room in the house is inherently wasteful.

3. Use your ceiling fan on very cold days. As counter-intuitive as it is, a fan on its lowest setting will circulate the hot air which gathers near the ceiling without creating so much flow as to make you cold from convective heat loss. Fans draw just a few Watts and will make much better use of your heating dollars (regardless of heater type).

4. Re-arrange your furniture so that chairs/sofas/beds are near interior walls. In addition to keeping infiltration (drafts) away from your skin, it will allow what sunlight there is to heat the surfaces inside your space.

5. Open blinds when the sun is out; close them on cold, dark days. As mentioned above, using your floor as a thermal storage unit is very efficient; make sure the sun hits the floor when it's out. Conversely, convective cooling can be significant when the differential between house and outside temperature is >10° --- creating an airspace between window and blind effectively creates one more layer of insulation.

6. Place area rugs on hard-finish floors near frequently-used chairs, sofas and tables. Keeping your feet warm will keep you psychologically toasty.

If you want to know more, find more tips here.

Posted on Blog Action Day 2007: 8l0gg1ng 4 t3h 3nv1r0nm3n7s

Something Hydrogen This Way Comes

When I sold my car six years ago, I pledged that I would not purchase another until hydrogen fuel cell technology had matured, and a fuel cell car was commercially available. At that time the technology was mirage-like, shimmering on the technological horizon decades away from feasibility.

Honda recently announced that the FCX, a 130hp hydrogen car with a top speed of 100mph, will go into production in 2008. If this happens, Honda will beat Mercedes-Benz's 2012 serialization date and Ford's 2015 estimate into the ground, along with my personal guess at a timeline.

The car is only a one part of a complex equation, however. Hydrogen, a volatile gas at room temperature, is infamously difficult to isolate and transport --- Hydrogen production has been pegged as a process dirtier than fossil fuel rarefication (consuming more energy for the isolation process than is yielded in the finished fuel), and transportation has been deemed impossible due the the highly explosive nature of the gas.

The solution involves a paradigm shift, replacing centralized refineries with a dispersed system of mini-generators proximal to refueling stations. New processes use solar energy to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen and oxygen in a sustainable zero-carbon cycle (where older means of production used fossil fuels [hydrocarbons] as the hydrogen mine, freeing huge amounts of carbon to isolate the hydrogen).

The East Bay Area has two hydrogen generators / fueling stations currently in operation (Richmond and East Oakland), with a third ready to begin construction (in Emeryville near the base of the Bay Bridge). The new Emeryville station will be a solar electrolysis generator, the first of its kind in northern California.

O hai! Hydrogen solvency ahead of schedule. But...but...I'm not ready to own a car again!

Piezo Power

Imagine walking through a grand public space --- say the Transbay Terminal --- abreast with thousands of other city-dwellers secure in the knowledge that the simple act of walking provides light for the space through which you move. That footsteps power the system announcing arrivals and departures five floors below. That one person's mad rush to catch a train heats tea for a dozen others less pressed for time.

This could become a reality with widespread adoption of piezoelectric power generation. Certain crystalline structures --- including readily-available materials such as quartz, cane sugar and rochelle salt --- create an electrical charge differential in response to an applied mechanical load. If provided conductive polar pathways and not allowed to short circuit, this charge can induce voltage usable as electricity.

At this point, the technology has been deployed only in fairly unsophisticated applications. The smokers amongst you are familiar with slick single-click lighters, the one-button dealies lacking a circular flint strike. Those utilize piezoelectricity, transferring your thumb's point load to ratchet mechanism which strikes a quartz crystal to induce current across a tiny gap, creating an arc to ignite the gas.

Fade to clubs powered by the revelry inside them,

roads that recapture the energy expended in locomotion, containers gleaning power from the pressure of the substance stored inside...The opportunities are endless, end endlessly exciting.

Wind Power 2.0

Wind turbines have long had a place in the exurbs of California---what would the drive down the 5 be without white blades spinning in the hills? Inclusion of wind turbines in new skyscraper designs from Bahrain to San Francisco seems to indicate a sea change in progress: wind power is being re-contextualized, coming out of hiding in the rural periphery for integration into the urban fabric.

Along with increased interest comes exciting new technology. Take, for example, maglev wind turbines, just now transitioning from concept to reality. These turbines replace the mechanical connection between rotor and stator with a passive magnetic levitation scheme, usually utilizing the halbach array (a super-slick arrangement of magnets which cancels the magnetic field on one side of the array and amplifies it on the other side, all without electromagnetic input). This bearing-free design allows all of the wind's mechanical potential to be harnessed for conversion to electrical current, instead of a significant percentage re-radiating into the troposphere as friction-produced heat. These turbines are still limited by the efficiency of the impulse turbine (theoretically recovering ≤60% of the kinetic energy incident upon it).

Combine this technology with David Fisher/Dynamic Architecture's inclusion of horizontal wind turbines between each floor of a highrise and you have a perfectly inhabitable power plant which could pump hundreds of megawatt-hours back into the grid.

Added bonus: abatement of the urban wind tunnel effect all downtown inhabitants rue on the daily.

Holes in your Granny Smith

On July 20, the new national EnergyStar standards went into effect. These standards are, as expected, more stringent than the last set. They "are expected to save consumers and businesses more than $1.8 billion in energy costs over the next 5 years and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equal to the annual emissions of 2.7 million vehicles."

This is fantastic! As with the recent proposal to strengthen the CAFE Standards for the first time in 30 years, America seems to be regulating its way closer to carbon sustainability. This is change that is undeniably worthwhile, independent of the corporate expenditures needed to make it happen.

I'll give you one chance to guess what major computer manufacturer is blantantly disregarding the new conservation rules...think hard...you guessed it! Our good friend Apple computer. Not a single product in their lineup meets the new standards, though they knew months ago that this change was coming (Acer, Gateway, Lenovo, Toshiba get green points for taking heed).

iPhone Power Pwn

Years ago, the iPod brand spearheaded an industry-wide move toward planned obsolescence with the introduction of rapid-discharge devices sans consumer-serviceable batteries. While Apple claimed this move would improve post-consumer waste management by ensuring proper disposal of heavy metal laden batteries, it in fact worsened the situation as people discarded the entire device instead of just swapping out a dead battery.

Now Apple delivers another fantastic money-grabbing mobile power ruse: iPhone batteries that are replaceable, but only at a price. Consumers will be forced to "submit their iPhone to Apple for battery service. The service will cost users $79, plus $6.95 for shipping, and will take three business days" to complete, during which time the consumer has the option of paying almost that much again for use of a rental phone. Do you really think people will do it? Or will they just re-invest in a shiny new iPhone Nano, conveniently set for release around the time iPhone batteries will begin to expire en masse...

Here are three great technologies Apple should fund, technologies which might actually reduce their iWaste quotient, not just boost the bottom line:

• Stick in to the sun, Steve. Follow in the footsteps of Chinese technology manufacturer Hi-Tech Wealth, which recently released a solar-powered cell phone. Personally, I think that the iPhone's glossy top surface would be elegantly restated by a glass+photovoltaic laminate bottom, lending a textural unity to the whole (and denecessitating the strangely out-of-context rubber bum/antenna cover, as silicon and glass don't interfere with RF communications nearly as significantly as metal).
  
• Give it a sweet tooth. Almost five years ago, Scientific American reported on "a primitive microbial fuel cell that can convert simple sugars into electricity with 81 percent efficiency." In the years intervening, the technology has produced tiny power sources which run "on glucose, flat sodas, sweetened drink mixes and tree sap," are completely biodegradable and expel water as their only waste. Best use for the unavoidable teaspoon of post-drink backwash EVAR!
  
• Make it shakeable. A newly announced "sugar-cube-sized electric generator that feeds on environmental vibrations [converts] 30% of environmental kinetic energy into electrical power." Though it doesn't provide enough current to power today's mobile phones, when coupled with the trend toward ever lower device wattages, this technology could make such a dance-fueled device feasible in the near future. Finally, something for all of those Apple models to really flail about!