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PDX Carpet y la gentrificación en Portland

Category: ⚐ ES+ciudad+creatividad+urbanismo

Hasta hace relativamente poco tiempo la gente en Portland, Oregón, se sentía como en casa nada más aterrizar en el aeropuerto. La culpa de esto la tenía la moqueta de aeropuerto más famosa de Estados Unidos. La PDX Carpet (PDX es el código del aeropuerto de Portland) era una moqueta de estilo ochentero con un diseño muy valorado por los hipsters que pueblan esta ciudad de la costa oeste americana. Muchos jóvenes, embelesados por su estilo vintage y su llamativo color verde, generaron un auténtico fenómeno en las redes sociales cuando, en el año 2013, las autoridades anunciaron la sustitución del diseño original por una nueva versión actualizada. En enero de 2015, la antigua moqueta fue sustituida por una nueva versión. Desde ese momento, y como consecuencia del fenómeno provocado en las redes sociales, se comercializaron numerosos productos con el diseño de la antigua moqueta, desde alfombrillas a camisetas estampadas.

Incondicional de la moqueta del aeropuerto de Portland con camiseta a juego. Fuente: The Guardian, Zachary Tyler George.

Incondicional de la moqueta del aeropuerto de Portland con camiseta a juego. Fuente: The Guardian, Zachary Tyler George.

Este fenómeno, que no tendría más interés que la simple curiosidad que lleva a plantearse las razones por las que una simple moqueta conduce a generar un movimiento de tales dimensiones, trasciende la mera curiosidad intelectual desde el momento en el que sigue leyendo

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¿Qué está pasando en el puerto de Valencia? Conoce el Civic Factory Fest

Category: ⚐ ES+ciudad+creatividad+eventos+urbanismo

Interior de la base del equipo de vela Alinghi - Foto: CivicWise

Interior de la nave que sirvió de base para el equipo de vela Alinghi, y que ahora se abre a la ciudad – Foto: Civic Factory Fest

Sobre los muelles del puerto de Valencia, en algunas de las naves que en su día ocuparon los barcos y equipos de la Copa América, está sucediendo algo tan interesante como difícil de explicar en pocas palabras.

¿Cómo imaginamos la Valencia de mañana? ¿ Y si fuéramos capaces de combinar la inteligencia, experiencia y habilidades de todos los actores de la ciudad para dar respuesta a los retos a los que se enfrenta nuestra ciudad? ¿Y si además fuéramos capaces de hacerlo conectando con colectivos, proyectos y expertos de la comunidad internacional?

Así, a través de preguntas, lo plantean sus organizadores: como la ocasión para reimaginar Valencia desde otros valores y otros modos de hacer ciudad, estableciendo una “fábrica” cultural local desde la que lanzar propuestas.

Y es una fiesta, porque la acción ocurre en el marco de un evento que, durante este mes, servirá para celebrar el empoderamiento ciudadano, la colaboración y la innovación urbana. El formato pop-up de “festival” permite experimentar ese tipo de espacios y dinámicas de forma temporal, tomando el pulso a una iniciativa que seguramente vuelva de nuevo con más fuerza, quizás para quedarse.

Y es una fábrica, porque la idea es reimaginar Valencia, pero reimaginarla haciendo, desde la intervención y la transformación directa y tangible de uno de sus espacios más grandes e infrautilizados: la Marina Real de Juan Carlos I. Una transformación espacial que convierte el lugar en un espacio de creación ciudadana y da soporte a la realización de las demás actividades.

Y es una iniciativa cívica, porque promueve el encuentro y la colaboración entre los diversos actores que contribuyen a hacer ciudad, buscando que estudiantes y profesionales, vecinos y visitantes internacionales, empleados públicos y empresarios puedan aportar algo a la ciudad, cada uno desde sus recursos, conocimientos, habilidades y experiencia.

Esquema general de espacios, actividades y temáticas - Fuente: CivicWise

Esquema general de espacios, actividades y temáticas – Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

El proyecto muestra lo amplio de su mirada desde el propio planteamiento. Por un lado propone la creación de diferentes tipos de espacios según las actividades: un taller para la producción, una escuela para el co-aprendizaje, una galería para la divulgación y un ágora para la reflexión. Y por otro, ocupando, desarrollando y activando esos espacios a través de la intervención de los propios participantes y la celebración de talleres, charlas y encuentros, apunta a la generación de reflexiones y propuestas en torno a seis temas clave de la ciudad: el desarrollo social, la formas emergentes de ciudadanía, la economía cívica, la cultura y la creatividad, la transición ecológica y la cultura de lo compartido.

A fecha de hoy las actividades, organizadas en cuatro fases, están ya a la mitad de su recorrido. El “lab” inicial, con actividades como el taller #PopUpFactory coordinado por Zuloark, Adrián Torres y Civic Factory, permitió intervenir en el espacio y prepararlo para las siguientes actividades. A continuación se desarrolló el “camp“, donde la comunidad empezó a instalarse en el espacio y reflexionar sobre sus posibles futuros a través del taller #caminaMarina, coordinado por Asociación Arquitectúria y CivicWise con la colaboración de EFGarquitectura y Carpevía . De ahí se abrirá más hacia el exterior con un foro de reflexión sobre la ciudad y se finalizará con una exposición que permita contar el propio proceso y sus resultados.

Calendario general del Civic Factory Fest: lab → camp → foro → expo. Imagen: Civic Wise

Calendario general del Civic Factory Fest: lab → camp → foro → expo. Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Las imágenes del proceso hablan de la gran transformación cualitativa que está viviendo el lugar, a través de intervenciones ligeras de medios pero cargadas de intenciones y compromiso por el desarrollo urbano y humano.

Instalación realizada durante un taller con Zuloark, que prepara el ágora para realizar encuentros y charlas - Foto: CivicWise

Instalación realizada durante el taller #PopUpFactory, que preparó la nave para encuentros y charlas – Foto: Civic Factory Fest

Vista de uno de los nuevos espacios creados durante el taller - Fuente: CivicWise

Vista de uno de los nuevos espacios creados durante el taller – Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Durante una de las actividades -Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Durante una de las actividades – Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Intervención en el espacio exterior que rodea la nave - Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Intervención en el espacio exterior que rodea la nave, taller #CaminaMarina – Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

 

Y pese a todo lo hecho, aún queda mucho por delante. Si estáis por Valencia durante este mes o tenéis la posibilidad de acercaros, no perdáis la oportunidad de sumergiros en el proceso, aunque sea durante un par de horas. Podéis participar en cualquiera de las actividades o simplemente acercaros a trabajar un rato, como si de un espacio de coworking se tratara, y respirar el ambiente. Durante la próxima semana las actividades alcanzarán un nuevo pico de intensidad con la celebración del foro —talleres, charlas y debates— sobre activación productiva, espacio público, urbanismo y participación.

Programa del foro - Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Programa del foro – Fuente: Civic Factory Fest

Detrás —y delante, debajo o alrededor— de este proyecto está CivicWise, una comunidad internacional de personas interesadas por el urbanismo colaborativo, el empoderamiento ciudadano y la innovación cívica, todos ellos aspectos estrechamente relacionados con el concepto de “diseño cívico“. CivicWise viene a ser como un enorme paraguas o una red en la que van condensando proyectos, y uno de ellos es el Civic Factory Fest, realizado con la colaboración de colectivos locales como Carpe Via, patrocinadores como la cerveza valenciana Turia e instituciones como La Marina de València o el Ayuntamiento de Valencia.

www.civicfactory.com

Puedes seguir las actividades de Civic Factory Fest en Facebook, Instagram y Twitter.

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public space for the extreme: evaporation

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture+city+networkedurbanism+research+sustainability

Fog Assembly, Olafur Eliasson, Versailles 2016. Image courtesy of Olafur Eliasson, Anders Sune Berg

Fog Assembly, Olafur Eliasson, Versailles 2016. Image courtesy of Olafur Eliasson, Anders Sune Berg

Evap·o·rate, to pass off in vapor or in minute particles.

All evaporative cooling rely on the energy required for the evaporation of water to absorb heat from the air and lower the temperature. This is due to the very high enthalpy of vaporization of water, the phase transition between the liquid and the gaseous state requires in fact a large amount of energy (which is more properly called enthalpy) that is taken from the air in the form of sensible heat (which is the temperature, something we feel with our skin and determines our comfort) and it is converted into latent heat (which is an energy “hidden” in the vapor component of the air). The result of this adiabatic process is a drop in the temperature of air and an increase in its humidity, therefore it’s clear that this cooling system is particularly effective in dry and hot climate zones where the higher humidity and the lower temperature can be both seen as advantages. Clearly the evaporating process is a key also for some convective cooling processes (that we treated here) but they rely also on the reduced buoyancy of cooler and more humid air to obtain the final effect while evaporative cooling techniques only rely on the evaporation of water.

Blur Building, by Diller+Scofidio, Swiss EXPO 2002. Image taken from https://vimeo.com/122910558

Blur Building, by Diller+Scofidio, Swiss EXPO 2002. Image courtesy of david huang

Although primitive evaporative techniques were used in ancient times (in combination with convective and ventilation devices like windcatchers and qanats in iran) and porous water jars are still used in many hot areas in combination with Mashrabiya other ventilation apertures to naturally cool down the interior of buildings the use of evaporation to cool down outdoor spaces is very recent. Evaporative cooling depends largely on how effective we are able to evaporate water, and a basic physical variable plays a big role in this case: surface-area-to-volume ratio, the more surface area we are able to expose the more energy we are able to exchange.  There are basically  two ways to proceed nowadays to maximize the surface area, evaporative pads and misting. Evaporative pads are generally used in evaporative cooling machines oriented to indoor cooling, these pads are cheap and effective but they are relatively fragile, require continuous maintenance and are most effective in controlled environments where the airflow can be adjusted and controlled, the “wetpads” are made of porous materials that have to be maintained wet while air passes through. The peculiar structure of these materials offers the largest possible surface area to the passing air which is then humidified and pushed into the building or the room. This technique can’t be used for outdoor cooling clearly because of the required control to the ariflow that is necessary.

Misting is instead widely used nowadays to lower temperatures both in buildings and open spaces. The use of water mist to generate passive cooling in closed buildings is strictly related to passive (or mechanical) evaporation towers and therefore to what we have been explaining in the convective technique post in open spaces the use of water jets and mist is instead very efficient (of course depending on specific climate conditions) and cost effective.

Although it is not strictly designed to be a bioclimatic public space, the Miroir d’eau designed by Michel Corajoud in 2006 in Bordeaux is one of the most successful examples of water evaporation usage in public space design. In this case a large square, just in front of the famouse Place de la Bourse, is designed to be a large water mirror where hundreds of water nozzles spray water from the floor either in the form of a fountain or of a mist cloud. In the first case, where tall gushes are produced, water evaporation is limited and the playful atmosphere dominates the large plaza, but when short mist clouds are produced the evaporation rate of the water is greatly increased and a cooling effect is produced, although in Bordeaux climate conditions are quite mild, and hot days are limited to few occasions during summer the square is very popular.

Miroir d’eau, Michel Corajoud, 2006, Bordeaux, France. Image courtesy of Tony Hisgett CC-BY-NC

Miroir d’eau, Michel Corajoud, 2006, Bordeaux, France. Image courtesy of Tony Hisgett CC BY 2.0

Vaporizing water coming from the floor is a quite common and effective mean to condition large open spaces, the effect that everybody has noticed of a slight refreshment when passing by a fountain in a square or, even more, while staying close to a waterfall is due to the very same thermodynamic principle, the small drops of water that the are created when water breaks while falling to the ground or splashing into more water dramatically increase the surface-area-to-volume ratio favoring a faster evaporation, the nebulized microscopic drops evaporate instantly causing a sudden temperature drop that can be magnified by the wind or other design inventions. In the Sevilla 1992 EXPO this effect was widely used, large fountains and water basins were placed all around the EXPO along all the main paths and squares to increment climatic comfort, in some areas even vertical walls of water were designed to expose the visitors to an even more effective cooling device, but the most common strategy was the use of conventional fountains and mist nozzles integrated in the many green shading roofs.

Calle Torricelli, EXPO 1992, Sevilla. Image Courtesy of Mapio

Calle Torricelli, EXPO 1992, Sevilla. Image Courtesy of Mapio

The design of these spaces has to be developed with special care, the effectiveness of the strategies used in Seville for example varied much depending on the surrounding conditions, evaporative cooling could be very effective if combined with the right design of protective and shading elements, with a correct sun and wind exposure and material use but could be also nullified simply by not considering the wind variation. Even if water vaporization is widely used in many terraces, bars, public venues, etc. because of its low cost, obtaining an effective bioclimatic effect is harder to achieve. Ecosistema Urbano employs evaporative cooling in one of their seminal project, in the Vallecas ecoboulevard, the Ludic and the Media Tree are not equipped with evaporative towers but with water spraying nozzles that are oriented towards the circular public space beneath them.

Media Tree, Ecobulevar, Ecosistema Urbano, Vallecas 2004. Image courtesy of Ecosistema Urbano

Media Tree, Ecobulevar, Ecosistema Urbano, Vallecas 2004. Image courtesy of Ecosistema Urbano

The main innovation in the use of evaporation in this case is due to the form of the designed public space, because, as we already said, there is not much to innovate about the nozzles technology itself. Actually the most important issue is the control of the water flow and pressure as it has to be correctly regulated depending on the actual dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature, relative humidity etc. in the case that those variables are considered, evaporation should be instantaneous without any dripping nor condensation. In the case of the Media Tree temperature and humidity sensors regulate the flow and the pressure of the water flowing to the spraying nozzles constantly adapting it to the weather conditions. In this case the design is particularly effective not only because of the cooling technology but mostly because of the shadow provided by the “trees” themselves and the protective design of the ground section that allow the cooled air to linger in the “inhabited” space and not being immediately dispersed.

Blur Building, Diller+Scofidio, 2002 EXPO, Switzerland. Image courtesy of theredilist.

Blur Building, Diller+Scofidio, 2002 EXPO, Switzerland. Image courtesy of theredilist.

But misting has a close bound with atmosphere and space, being one of the few atmospheric phenomena that we can directly observe fog and mist have been used also to define spaces, these new approaches, even though not directly related with bioclimatic architecture, open the door for future developments. In one of their most famous, and paradoxically iconic, works Diller+Scofidio designed a “formless, massless, colorless, weightless, odorless, scaleless, featureless, meaningless” that was basically made of mist and nothing else. Their explication for the work was open-ended, blur-building was not only the name they gave to it but also a factual assertion: the definition of it was also blurry. This event contributed to redefine, or to destroy, the meaning of building and the separation between what is a building and what is environment, up to even questioning what is architecture, for the first time the space was not defined by walls or windows or any stable solid material but was only an undefined mutating cloud made of vaporized water.
But this wasn’t in fact the first building that used mist water to blur its edges (although that they are all curiously related to universal expositions, more about expos here), the Pepsi pavilion in Osaka was the result of the fructuous cooperation between engineers and artists within the Experiments in Art and Technology  group and it was constantly covered with a thick layer of fog that partially hid it. In this case the building was still present and firm, a concrete entity with an interior and exterior form and a “conventional” space inside but the fog sculpture, designed by the japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya who spent her life working with fog, contributed to the creation of a memorable innovative pavilion.

Pepsi Pavillion, A.E.T. Osaka EXPO 1970, Osaka.

Pepsi Pavillion, A.E.T. Osaka EXPO 1970, Osaka. Image courtesy of A.E.T.

At the Seville EXPO in 1992 the so called “bioclimatic sphere” was also one of the main attractions of the whole exhibition and surely one of the most iconic ones. A tubular sphere was placed in the middle of one of the most important boulevards of the exhibition rounded by fountains and water basins as a part of the bioclimatic design of the open space of the exhibition. Although being highly symbolic and recognizable this sphere as reported in the follow-up publications about the Expo was not really contributing to any bioclimatic effect on the square or the boulevard, this depended basically on the fact that the device was placed in an open space and the diffusion of mist was not controlled in any way (a very interesting publication about the follow up of the climate conditioning in the EXPO 92 has been published by the same engineers that contributed to the design of the project and a short extract can be found here).

Esféra Bioclimática, EXPO Sevilla 1992.

Esféra Bioclimática, EXPO Sevilla 1992.

In 2016 also the famous artist Olafur Eliasson started working with fog and misting, naturally he is not concerned with the bioclimatic function of fog but more about the terms of landscape and vision and interaction between the user and the fog itself. Placed in the Versailles garden, “fog assembly”, is a ring emitting a swirling mist that involves the objects around and changes appearance depending on the site conditions. The user is invited to interact with the installation, crossing it and begin part of the fog it is producing, in this sense, this artwork can be easily assimilated to a public space generating a connection with the theme of this research.

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X International urban conference “City 2016. City management” in Katowice

Category: ⚐ EN+city+ecosistema urbano+events

Salesiam Museum in Katowice - photo by

Salesiam Museum in Katowice – photo by Ziemowit Cabanek on Flickr

Next Monday, November 14th Belinda Tato will be giving the ‘keynote speech’ on urban social design at the X International Urban Conference “City 2016. City Management” in Katowice, Poland.

This event is organised by Jan Olbrycht, member of the European Parliament, and Think Silesia, a regional think tank based in Katowice. Participants will reflect on environmentally friendly cities, discuss the conclusions on Habitat III and the opportunities behind big data and open data.

You can see the event announcement and the program at the URBAN Intergroup website.

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Public Space for the Extreme: Convection

Category: ⚐ EN+architecture+city+networkedurbanism+research+sustainability+Uncategorized

Digestible Gulf Stream, Philippe Rahm, Venice Biennale 2008. Image courtesy of Philippe Rahm.

Digestible Gulf Stream, Philippe Rahm, Venice Biennale 2008. Image courtesy of Philippe Rahm.

Con·vec·tion. Convection results from the tendency of most fluids to expand when heated.

The use of convective air flows with the purpose of cooling traditional houses was not alien to traditional Persian and middle eastern architecture. Joining the “simple” badgir ventilation system with more refined and complex cooling technologies was one of the most advanced points reached by Persian/Iranian building knowledge. Passive cooling systems in the Yazd desert were so advanced that iced formed (and accumulated) during the cold winters could be conserved frozen until the height of the long, hot, desertic summer.
In addition to sensible cooling, the cooling caused by a change of air temperature but not its humidity, badgir combined with a savvy use of water can provide also evaporative cooling which is generally more effective than sensible cooling alone.

Water deposit cooled with badgirs in the Yazd desert, in Iran

Water deposit cooled with badgirs in the Yazd desert, in Iran. Image courtesy of Flickr user dynamosquito, CC BY-SA

In order to do so, windcatchers have to work together with a water source that supplies water which is then evaporated cooling down the flowing air, this can be achieved in many ways. The first one is taking advantage of the of the basement damp walls of the windcacher itself, if there is enough humidity in the underground the basement walls will be constantly wet and when the wind tower is working as an air intake the evaporation of the thin superficial layer of water will cool down the downward incoming stream of air. The second solution is to put a water source, if available, right under the shaft of the tower, a fountain or a small pool is used in this case, sensibly and evaporatively cooling down the entering wind. A great example, found in Yazd, combines and refines even more these two methods placing the tower further than usual from the house (50 m) and then using an underground tunnel to connect the tower with the house. The tunnel, being underground benefits both from the earth thermal inertia and from the humidity of the soil and at the end of the tunnel a fountain is placed to cool down even more the air. The third, and more advanced, passive cooling system based on windcatchers benefits from an underground water stream to cool down the water.

Climatic Tree in the Vallecas Ecoboulevard, Madrid 2004. Image courtesy of Ecosistema Urbano.

Climatic Tree in the Vallecas Ecoboulevard, Madrid 2004. Image courtesy of Ecosistema Urbano.

The use of convection with the purpose of cooling public space is mostly centered on evaporative towers, in a normal evaporative (cooling) tower hot water is distributed in the upper part of the tower, the sprayed hot water release heat in the atmosphere condensing and flowing down to the bottom of the tower where it is collected and recirculated if it’s the case. In evaporative towers designed to cool the surrounding space the process is inverted, cool water is sprayed with nozzles at the top of the tower and rapidly evaporating absorbs energy from the air coming in from the top of the tower, the cooler and more humid air being denser descends to the bottom and causing the area above it to cool down. The design of an evaporative tower able to work properly is challenging, a single design flaw or dysfunction can cause the sprayed water to condensate an drip.

During the 1992 Seville Expo the white towers of the Avenida de Europa were originally designed just to be architectural objects landscaping one of the main avenues of the exhibition but considering a wider plan to improve public space comfort in the whole exhibition area, technically developed with the help of the “termotecnica” group of the university of Seville, were converted into evaporative towers to improve the environmental conditions in the area.

The design, obviously not conceived thinking about the cooling effectiveness, had to be converted a posteriori into a cooling machine. Two main modifications were made: a wind collecting cap was added to the top of the tower and nozzles were installed inside it. For six months the exhibition remained open and the engineers responsible for the bioclimatic design of the event collected data about the functioning and the performances of the design (the report can be found in this book). The added wind-collecting cap proved to be too small for the purpose it was installed and was not sufficient to “catch” enough wind during an average summer day. The second flaw was caused by the structural design of the tower itself, the internal part of the chimney wasn’t smooth and wasn’t totally free either, the secondary steel structure that stiffened the tower was in fact a lattice continuously crossing the chimney section, water nozzles were installed in circles on the inner perimeter of the membrane and functioned properly but the vaporized water copiously condensed on the lattice structure causing continuous dripping under the tower itself. This was obviously a major flaw and the towers functioned only partially, also due to the difficult maintenance of the water nozzles.

In 2004 Ecosistema Urbano realized one of its most iconic designs, the eco bulevard in Vallecas, Madrid. Each one of the three trees has different characteristics and each one is focused on a different aspect of public space, but in this case the most interesting is the northernmost one that was designed as a rack of twelve evaporative cooling towers grouped to form a semi-enclosed public space shaded and cooled by the bioclimatic tree. Each one of the cylinders is made of two textile tubes, the exterior and reflexive one creates a protective layer for the inner cooling mechanism, the interior tube is the evaporative tower itself. A cap, provided with three openings to collect winds from all directions, is placed on the top of the inner cylinder, right under the cap there is a fan that starts spinning when temperatures rise above 28ºC to increment the existing breeze or to move the air if there is no breeze at all. About at the height of the fan water is sprayed creating a fine mist and its evaporation greatly increases the cooling effect on the air descending in the inner tube and then exiting in the semi-enclosed public space, delimited by the crown of the cooling towers.

Ecobulevar- Arbol de Aire, Ecosistema Urbano, 2004, Ensanche de Vallecas, Madrid.

Ecobulevar- Arbol de Aire, Ecosistema Urbano, 2004, Ensanche de Vallecas, Madrid.

The ecobulevar, being a fully designed public space, can count on many other design characteristics that improve the overall functioning of the cooling towers, their efficiency and the energetic behavior. The design of the public space under the “tree” is very important, the enclosing section, creates a favorable space for artificial climate conditioning, though it is an open space the “habitable” part (the first 2m from the ground) are somehow closed by the design of the pavement itself, this design contributes to the refrigeration of the central area reducing the hot breeze influence at the ground level and avoiding the direct escape of cooled air. Solar panels contribute to the over sustainability of the artifact generating enough energy to power the fans and the pump for the water. Extensive studies on the ecobulevar, demonstrated that air temperature at the ground level can be up to 9ºC cooler than the air at the top of the tree and that the average temperature difference is around 6,5ºC.

The last two examples are practically based on the same design principle but there are huge differences concerning both the size and the technological character of the project.

The first one is the wind tower that the British architects Foster+Partners designed for the Masdar Institute in the planned city of Masdar, Abhu Dhabi (which they also planned). The Masdar institute is, as of 2016, one of the few built parts of the city, which, in turn, is facing serious development and financial problems with only the 5% of the planned area being completed. The core plaza of the institute hosts a 45m tall windtower that contributes to the climatic comfort of the plaza channeling down the breezes that often spire in the desert, it is important to notice that the tower is not the only element designed to improve the ambient conditions of the plaza but all the strategies are focused on the sustainability and the comfort of both the buildings and the public spaces, in this case the dense urban form is supposed to reproduce the one of the traditional local architecture and buildings façades are self shadowing reducing the reflected sun radiation in the square, streets are narrow, etc.

Masdar Institute Courtyard showing the wind tower. Image Copyright: Nigel Young/ Foster+Partners

Masdar Institute Courtyard showing the wind tower. Image Copyright: Nigel Young/ Foster+Partners

This tower is a hi-tech interpretation of traditional ones, its size is greatly increased (the highest windtower in Iran is 33m high) and many design details are engineered improvements of the original windwoter concepts. The 45m teflon sleek tube is naturally designed to offer the smallest possible resistance to the passage of the wind and to reduce the possibility of condensation to the nebulized water used for passive cooling. Computer controlled louvers opens and close according the direction and the speed of the incoming wind and reduces the suction caused by negative pressure on the downwind side of the tower, with this refined mechanism, and the triangular design, the tower is always exploiting the precious wind. To increase even more the cooling potential a ring of water nozzles, also computer controlled, is placed right at the top of the shaft transforming this tower in a evaporative cooling device.

A low-tech version, though very similar in the functioning is the windtower built at the Nitzana Educational Village, in the Negev desert at the border between Israel and Egypt. This design is constituted only by a vertical metal chimney topped by a fixed wind catcher oriented towards the prevailing wind. The playful design is enhanced by a clever usage of the bottom part of the tower, a perforated ceramic brickwork is used to enclose a relatively generous meeting place that can host dozens of people from the local community, to reduce solar gain on the habitable part of the tower a sun protection is installed around it permanently shadowing the ventilating part.

Nitzana Educational Eco-Village, Nitzana. Picture courtesy of the The Jewish Agency for Israel CC BY-SA 2.0 from flickr.

Nitzana Educational Eco-Village, Nitzana. Picture courtesy of the The Jewish Agency for Israel CC BY-SA 2.0 from flickr.

 

The cooling process is based on a combination of wind-catching, mechanical ventilation, and evaporative cooling. In the upper part of the shaft a large fan is installed to generate an artificial windflow (power is apparently generated by solar panels placed on the south side of the tower) and under the fan two rings of nozzles are placed to implement passive evaporative cooling. Though being quite a raw design, this cooling tower uses all the technical mechanisms to achieve a cost effective cooling for the small public it has to refrigerate. Compared to the Masdar windtower this one might have a major flaw, in both the Ecobulevar and Masdar the proper cooling shaft is always protected from the direct sunlight, in this case instead the shaft is thermally conductive and prone to overheating,

But the most advanced look at what convection means for the perception and comfort of the human body in the space has to be find in Rahm’s “Digestible Gulf Stream”. In this project, two white sleek metal boards are placed at different heights in a room, one of the boards, placed on the floor, is constantly heated to 28º C, the second one, hanging at a higher point is cooled down to 12ºC. The temperature difference between the two panels creates a convective flow, the air heated on the lower plan becomes less dense and lighter and tends to float towards the second object that gradually cools it down causing it to descend until reaching again the warm plate. This constant air flow is invisible but certainly perceivable by the human body, for the purpose of the exhibition in fact, actors with different clothing (from naked to well dressed) were standing on the plates showing various levels of comfort and doing various activities that had a different impact on the heat production.

Digestible Gulf Stream, Venice Biennale 2008 - Philippe Rahm. Image courtesy of Philippe Rahm.

Digestible Gulf Stream, Venice Biennale 2008 – Philippe Rahm. Image courtesy of Philippe Rahm.

Rahm’s pioneering work in “climatic architecture” is extremely interesting, in this case the space is defined only by its temperature which is something we are not really used to, our normal physical division of space (walls, windows, curtains…) is totally visual but then our comfort is determined by variables like air temperature, this is particularly true in public space, where usually there are no “rooms” and the use (or the avoidance) of space is more often determined by factors like shadow, noise, comfort, etc.

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The Political Lab: How Can Urban Design Facilitate Socio-Political Engagement?

Category: ⚐ EN+design+open culture+urbanism+video

Last year Mirian Calvo, postgraduate student of the Glasgow School of Art, contacted us to ask our vision on topics that have been very present in our own work lately: the relation between citizens and institutions, the role of “urban labs” or “urban kitchens” in urban development, and the use of urban mockups or prototypes to create spaces for interaction, engagement and transformation.

Some months later she sent us the the result of her research, turned into a proposal for the George Square in Glasgow. Here you can watch a short video and read a summary about the project. Thanks, Mirian!

The aim of this final Masters’ project is keep reading!