NON-PERMANENCE
A Rhizomatic Architecture

CAITLIN TOCZKO

As a culture, we have been evolving toward what we had believed to be a rather catalytic future, one in which an action between two forces is initiated by an agent which remains unaffected itself. In the recent past, we have slowly begun to reconcile with ourselves that this is not the case: we, as the third party agent, will not be left unaffected by these rapid changes. Motivated by research into symbiosis and the Earth’s cycles, a line of interrogation was opened regarding specific instances of natural cycles and the resilience in their ability to maintain a necessary position within symbiotic relationships when manipulated.

During recent periods of extreme rainfall, the Mississippi River has become too shallow to contain the water running its course, resulting in extreme conditions of severe flooding along the southern-most regions of the river. These floods are ruining neighborhoods, towns, and cities while causing collapses in economy as well as the livelihood of many who reside along the river. Because the waters are rising, they are also becoming contaminated with various pollutants which were previously contained along the riverside. These factors result in problematic situations for the plants and animals which call the river and its riparian zone home. Many of these contaminants cannot decompose or combust thoroughly within the natural environment. We must be aware of man-made materials and their decomposition as we cannot always control where they end up. They cannot simply be thrown away because “there is no such place as away.”

Mycelium, natural fibers which act as roots within the fungi kingdom, naturally forms an organic polymer similar to plastic when grown densely. Through the use of this rhizomatic system, an architecture can be developed which will naturally decompose. The occupants of the space must keep up minimal maintenance in order to prolong the life of the structure; but once they move on, the architecture will simply fade back into the symbiotic landscape and act as a “seed” waiting for another piece of architecture to grow.

REGENERATIVE MICROSTRUCTURE
Electrokinetic Extraction of Minerals in Tailings

DANA SHIN

Reasoning for things in multiple different scales, thinkers and designers in the world were able to interact between material property of forms and how they function. In the Greek age, the thinkers saw the repetition of the golden ratio throughout the world and all levels of reality as a step towards this unifying theory. It is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from one man to the entire human population.

The world of microstructure introduces that within this patterned network, the function of constructed materials corresponds to the scale of their forms. My initial research was to connect the micro and macro world in relation not only to the visual form but also to the functional interaction of its form.
The idea of form in microstructure expands my research further in cellular materials, and their ability to replace, attach, proliferate, migrate and regenerate damaged tissues in many different forms.

Applying this idea of regeneration to urban scale, I approached it in an attempt to bridge the gap between these two scales of fields and make damaged sites re-inhabitable, reconciling by using the form of “scaffolding” which could be replaced with the wasted chemicals in the tailings.

Introducing a destructive mine site, Sudbury mine in Canada with an ecosystem heavily contaminated by the mining wastes, I propose a new approach to this wasted materials in the tailings to be re-used as potential materials growing as building structures. The process of mineral extraction adapts the technique of electroplating which can remove the acidic materials in the tailings. Through the exploration of material research and investigation of adaptive reuse of materials, I came to the conclusion that adapting the form of “foam”, or porous structure, the scaffolding system can be applied to reconcile this environmental issues of the site. Sudbury mine can be regenerated and developed into a form of new material research facility and a mine museum where people can reinvestigate the value of the natural resources as they physically inhabit and experience the woven complex generated by the extracted materials.

DIRT, GERMS, AND HEALTH
Improving Our Built Microbial Environments

JUSTIN RUPP

Humans spend more than 90 percent of our time indoors, coming into contact with many microbes through breathing, touching, and interacting with other people. All of the buildings we occupy have controlled indoor climates that have been designed to keep us comfortable, keep us safe, and keep us healthy. We rarely take into account the profound impact the ecosystems we are creating have on our physical and mental health, and how important the microbes on our body and in our buildings are. Architecture needs to adapt from old trends of misophobia and public health, to a new understanding of clean buildings and healthier environments.

The city of Detroit is full of obsolete sites that have been abandoned after the automobile industry left the city. These are abandoned buildings and abandoned lots. Over the past few years more than 80% of Detroit’s public parks have closed due to lack of funds. However, there is currently a resurgence predicted to happen in Detroit within the next ten years of new people moving into the city and taking advantage of the cheap property and rich history and beginning to rebuild.

I am proposing an elementary school in downtown Detroit, located on one of these obsolete sites. The school will incorporate knowledge of our microbial environments, biodiversity, public health, and urban farming into the curriculum through immersing the students into various environments and classrooms. An important element of the project is also including public spaces within the school for the community to participate with the students in urban farming and learning about creating more bio-diverse spaces. The purpose of the project is not to create a single healthy building, but to help children and people in the city understand how to live in and create their own healthier environments for themselves, and redefine how they perceive dirt, cleanliness, germs, and bacteria.

CHARTER CITY
An Investment in Change

AVIEL RAPPOPORT

The Goal of this proposal is to initiate change in a stagnant environment. The project will implement research from case studies into Fordlandia, special economic zones in China, and imperialistic architecture to try and remedy the improper housing and unemployment rate that faces Argentina right now. The charter city will be situated south of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires.

Right now in Buenos Aires the villas which are urban slums are becoming overpopulated and are unsuitable for human habitation. This coupled with the unemployment rate which is not helping people get out of the financial situation they are in prevents them from leaving the villas. The new city will provide people from the surrounding area an opportunity for a job, home, and new community that will grow and eventually be owned by the people that inhabit the city. The city will not be a factory town and will not be owned by one enterprise or individual. It will also not indenture people to work for the companies there. The people and the government of the new city will be appointed and the constitution of the new city its charter will be drafted by the initial people that invested in its ideals. This will act as the catalyst to start a new economic growth in the country and hopefully it will pave the way for multiple new cities within the country.

INTO THE WASTELAND
Tailings Reclamation through Biomineralization

ANGELA McCRORY

Through an examination of the environmental impact of mining operations both historical and contemporary, an alternative building process is proposed that considers abundant mineral industry wastes as a material resource. This proposal intends to reconcile a people and an ecology to an existing mine site. That site is the Mina Escondida in northern Chile, the ecology that of the Atacama Desert. While waste cleanup or removal is not fully within the scope of the proposed intervention, both the visibility and accessibility of a previously “hidden” site is considered, as well as the change in perception about industrial by-products from inevitable waste stream to potential resource owned by and available to a people.

The architectural proposal seeks to take advantage of the extreme and unnatural conditions at the mine site. The proposed building site is at the mine tailings pond, an enormous artificial lake, which acts as the dump area for all mine wastes. Here a material transformation will be made possible through the re-consideration of the material-chemical potential of the substances dissolved and suspended in this lake. Through the application of new technologies for harnessing and directing the biomineralization processes, the tailings pond will be exploited for the materials it contains and also as an aqueous construction site where mineral-specific proteins can catalyze the deposition of minerals and free heavy metals out of solution and onto a fibrous scaffold. The structure will grow as long as the tailings pond is in use, finally emerging from solution when mining activity at the Mina Escondida ceases.

In this way, a literal “wasteland” becomes occupiable, reclaimed as an indication that it is no longer permissible for humans to lay land to waste. The construction will provide a level of exposure to the widespread yet largely mysterious methods of mineral extraction. The geological scale of mining operations, so difficult to comprehend through a photograph and so infrequently encountered in person, will be given a new measure through direct encounter and human habitation.

FROM DEREGULATION TO DECENTRALIZATION
Exploiting Biproducts for Public Reclamation

KATE LISI

This research examines the growing resistance against mass production, privatization, class stratification and environmental destruction (as seen both in recent protests and resurgent DIY craft culture) and how a subversive architecture might take part in this resistance. Open-source networks are enabling even the unskilled to develop new materials and systems. These developments offer an alternative to the current top-down model and clear a path towards a new economy and social order.

Dealing with the role of consumption in configuring our cities, the design portion of the project seeks to envision an urban condition where a DIY-oriented society of “prosumers” rises above the mass-production machine. The United States produces 250 million tons of municipal solid waste annually. Los Angeles, the iconic consumer city, produces 23 million tons (9.3% of the national total). LA’s primary landfill, Puente Hills Landfill, is the largest in America. In 2013 Puente Hills Landfill is set to close, drastically reducing local landfill capacity. And in 2014, LA will be making more trash than its landfills can handle and will resort to transporting its waste by train to remote landfills 200 miles east of LA. On top of this waste management crisis, LA has the lofty goal to be a zero-waste city by 2030 and reduce its CO2 emissions by an astronomical 18.9 million metric tons. This particularly daunting moment for the city of LA presents a perfect opportunity for the public to realize their own goals and reclaim their city. Through group efforts and incentive-exchange strategy, it is possible for the public to reclaim its city’s public space while confronting issues of production, consumption, waste management, sustainability, and economics.

The dichotomies present in conventional labor theory models are blurred between: production and consumption, exploitation and contribution, work and play, self and group, natural and artificial, and ecology and economy. The increasingly hybrid nature of contemporary social forces are investigated as standard binaries are confronted, leading to exciting, new spatial and social possibilities. With the core belief that design can be an effective driver of social mobility, the goal for this project is to be a catalyst for dialogue and community action.

THE COLLECTIVE MICROCOSM
Creating The Next-Generation Artifacts

KYLEEN HOOVER

Japan’s unique cultural identity is the perfect test bed for my thesis proposal which will propel the urban agriculture movement in Tokyo and offset the annual energy usage via a system that responds dynamically to climatic and cultural variables.

Japan is facing a nuclear phase-out since the meltdown of Fukushima Daichi’s Plant in 2011. Japan is now importing more fossil fuels and natural gas: causing its first annual trade deficit in over thirty years. My thesis proposal addresses the required decrease of electrical consumption by the residents of Tokyo by creating a system that collects water and utilizes solar energy to offset the electricity used in the household as well as the recycling of grey water through its structure to further absorb electrical costs.

Urban agriculture accounts for 33% of Japan’s produce output; in Tokyo alone, the agricultural production can feed 700,000 of the city dwellers. Unfortunately, with the aging of Japan’s population much of the work force which has been the backbone of urban agriculture since 1975 is dwindling. The proposed system runs concurrently with a hydroponic rice farming system which follows the development of the rice crop in all stages, using the collected water and light.

The Collective Microcosm is a system of supraterranean energy wells and subterranean networks. The supraterranean energy wells collect water from the air while reacting dynamically towards the time of day to orient its maximum surface area towards the sun. This vessel of light and water addresses the urban fabric via the transfer of light into the tight alleys of Tokyo’s residential neighborhoods and creating communal nodes. The subterranean network supports the greater infrastructure of the urban agricultural component of the project. Large caverns will be created which utilize the terracing typology of traditional rice farming into a hydroponic system of rice growth. These underground farms utilize the water collected from the supraterranean nodes as the source of water for the irrigation of the rice crop. The connections exist underground between each node and offer passages for safe travel from vehicles and the weather for the increasing bike population in Tokyo.

PHENOTYPIC PLASTICITY OF MARINE ECOSCAPES

CHRISTOPHER GREEN

Architecture must imbibe a sense of the imagination as well as be performative with respect to changing environmental conditions and user needs. In order to do this it must continually evolve and transform. The role of architecture has taken on new roles of ever-growing scope and scale; as such, we must endeavor to maintain a high level of craftsmanship while encouraging the growth that comes with new problems in order to develop unique solutions.

Reconstitution of plasticized particles in the northern pacific gyre will provide the structural material for the development of multiple research stations from which the constituent parts are made of recycled pacific plastics

The synergy of recycled plastics can be coupled with the program format of a united nations research vessel both places the world view of a systemic problem as a world issue as well as a worldwide effort to seek a solution.

By manipulating the landscape to accommodate both human researchers as well as supplying a refuge for the aerial and aquatic life, circulation programming will be developed into a vibrant island of life and the research necessary to perpetuate that life.

The adaptive reuse of existing particalized plastics into a floating, interactive research station providing all the amenities of home as well as professional laboratories to study the onsite conditions of the pacific gyre.

How has architecture affected the human sense of scale?
Why is it important to get out there and clean it up?
How do we recognize the connections of the past and the future and the effects of decisions on the world we live in?

EXPLORING NATURE’S RESILIENCE

RACHEL EMPENSANDO

Through biomaterial experimentation one begins to realize the capabilities of a material system to alter and sustain an ecosystem. The material composition can allow for maintenance of an environment, introduction of new species, and the integration of several bionetworks. Pripyat, Ukraine is a location in which nature, through its own resilience is carrying out the abilities and performances of these biomaterials.

This site originated as marshlands along the Pripyat River. As humans began to take over, elements and organisms within the natural environment were eliminated and driven away. Marshlands were converted into farmlands by Stalin to remove undesirable inhabitants from the area further morphing the natural biosphere. In 1970, Pripyat was founded to house the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant. The introduction of a larger human population and chemical debris continued the environmental alteration.

In 1989, a reactor explosion at Chernobyl caused radioactive material to spread throughout the site creating a nuclear fallout zone. As humans were driven out of the fallout zone, nature began to thrive and survive in this area. Although there is a large presence of radioactive material, animals are able live and survive within this area because the human footprint was virtually erased. The Wormwood Forest, the forest adjacent to Chernobyl, turned red due to radioactive exposure, but has now returned to its state as a lush green forest. Beavers have returned to Pripyat, restoring the sites original state as a marshland. Animals and wildlife are living in and taking over the built environment that was left behind.

Nature’s resilience in the absence of humans makes Pripyat, Ukraine a place where people can begin to learn from nature. This system of pathways placed within the site allow for an eye-opening historical and ecological exploration of Pripyat, Ukraine. The tunneling system allows for a minimally intrusive reintroduction of large human populations onto the site. Through the use of algal technology, overlapping biospheres will allow for cohabitation between humans and a variety of organisms once again. People will no longer see Pripyat as a radioactive ghost town, but as success of nature’s resilience.

TRANSIT HUB FOR THE GLOBALIZED INDIVIDUAL

ALEXANDRA DORN

The most radical architecture is that which exists in direct contact with the human body. Treatment of our truly immediate environments, our bodies, has evolved just as our treatment of our greater external environments. As we gain a greater understanding of where and what we live at smaller and smaller scales, our interventions become more refined and, as a result, at smaller scales and closer vicinity to the body. Now this idea of contact, scale, and vicinity are not necessarily in reference to attempting to make architecture something that can only exist physically connected to the body, but more of a nudge towards a closer feedback-loop between the building and the individual. As the most invasive undertaking of humans, the built environment needs to be more conscious of itself.

In this flattening world, the global individual is at the forefront of what is developing in this world. The globalizing world began with the search for the New World in the 15th century, and has progressed from a globalization of countries, then of companies, and now of the individual. With this, the individual, especially the student/young adult has been globalized both physically and virtually.

Focusing in on this globalization of the young adult and intersecting it with the drive to create an architecture that is in direct contact with the body leads to the development of the Transit Hub for the Globalized Individual in Keflavik, Iceland. The placement in Keflavik has drivers both in the environmental qualities of the place as well as it current status as a hub for cheap travel to Europe from North America. As a major crossing point for travel and in turn language, culture, knowledge, and behavior, this hub offers the diversity for the development of a truly adaptive place that tends to the globalized individual.

This transit hub will involve spaces designed virtually, and physically, responding to sensors on the body of the inhabitant. These will involve places for rest, learning, productivity, socializing, and entertainment. The main functions of the feedback sensor in the building will have to do with light, thermoregulation, and the disposition of a space.