Nanotechnologies and Architecture

The biggest plans for the future of our built environment are actually very, very small. The eight billion dollar per year nanotechnology industry has already begun to transform our buildings and how we use them; if its potential becomes reality, it could transform our world in ways undreamed of.

Nanotechnology has the potential to radically alter our built environment and how we live. It is potentially the most transformative technology we have ever faced, generating more research and debate than nuclear weapons, space travel, computers or any of the other technologies that have shaped our lives.

It brings with it enormous questions, concerns and consequences. It raises hopes and fears in every aspect of our lives—social, economic, cultural, political, and spiritual. Yet its potential to transform our built environment remains largely unexplored. What, for instance, is the future of building if each of us possesses thermoprotectant skins that shelter us from the elements? How do we interact with our environment, and with each other, if walls and roofs become paper-thin, permeable, or even invisible?

Nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate matter at the scale of less than one billionth of a meter, has the potential to transform the built environment in ways almost unimaginable today. Nanotechnology is already employed in the manufacture of everyday items from sunscreen to clothing, and its introduction to architecture is not far behind. On the near horizon, it may take building enclosure materials (coatings, panels and insulation) to dramatic new levels of performance in terms of energy, light, security and intelligence.

Even these first steps into the world of nanotechnology could dramatically alter the nature of building enclosure and the way our buildings relate to environment and user. At midhorizon, the development of carbon nanotubes and other breakthrough materials could radically alter building design and performance. The entire distinction between structure and skin, for example, could disappear as ultra light, super-strong materials functioning as both structural skeleton and enclosing skin are developed.

The biggest changes to shake up architecture in a long time may have their origins in the very, very small. Nanotechnology, the understanding and control of matter at a scale of one- to one hundred-billionths of a meter, is bringing incredible changes to the materials and processes of building. How ready we are to embrace them could make a big differencein the future of architectural practice.

Already, this new science of the small has brought to market self-cleaning windows, smogeating concrete and toxin-sniffing nanosensors. Three hundred nanoengineered products are commercially available; $32 billion worth of them were sold last year, with sales expected to top $1 trillion by 2015. But these off-the-shelf advances offer only a taste of what's incubating in the world's nanotech labs today. There, work is under way on nanocomposites thin as glass, yet capable of supporting entire buildings, and photosynthetic coatings that can make any building surface a source of free energy.

Useful + Agreeable

If a Porsche 911 Turbo were a house, what kind of house would it be? Or if a Wilson Triad titanium tennis racket were a house, what would it be? How would it use state of the art technology, advanced engineering, on-board computer components and premium materials to outperform the other houses? We tend not to think of houses in the same light as consumer goods, but at least one firm of forwarding thinking architects is pushing the product.

Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson, partners in Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC), an avant-garde Vancouver firm, are currently in the final stages of research and development on a concept they call PAC Hous(e)ing. If they have their way, house buyers will soon be asking these same questions - beginning to think of houses as products and purchasing components of the architects' system which they can then customize.

The digital age, Lang and Wilson suggest, allows us both the ability to customize as did craftsmen in the agrarian age and the low unit cost associated with mass production of the industrial age. Previously, choice and mass production were seemingly at odds with each other. But, using computer technology and robotic production, we can now have the best of both worlds. The term for this is mass customization - and it has already proven popular in other sectors. Levi's custom fit jeans and Swatch watches are among the many popular and profitable examples of mass customization in contemporary design goods - the way of the future according to LWPAC.

LWPAC's answer to the malaise in the housing market, PAC Hous(e)ing, represents not a fanciful vision of a future house, but the logical next step for an industry catching up with the other smaller products such as computers, cell phones and running shoes.
The inevitable first question "what will they look like?" is somewhat beside the point. A central feature of PAC Hous(e)ing and mass customization in general, is that the appearance will evolve out of the process of determining an individual's needs. The computer generated images which LWPAC has produced suggest an appearance influenced by the smooth colorful curves and sleek hard edges more typical of the electronics industry than house construction.

The connection to electronics is more than skin deep. Traditional house designs do not adequately respond to the growing need for many computers and electronics devices within the home. PAC Hous(e)ing is being designed to encase the wiring of our growing list of gadgets much like a stereo or computer casing does on a small scale. Individual users' needs can be met by plugging everything from fridges to televisions, computers to lighting into the wall and connecting and communicating with the rest of the house and to mobile communication devices as well. Continuing the theme, the walls themselves are plugged into one another to add or subtract spaces and to reconfigure the homes at will.

More significant than the particular aesthetics are the materials being proposed. The materials of the future - thermal plastics, glass, steel and recyclable plastics - all begin in a liquid state and can be poured to fit a wide variety of customizable molds.

PAC Hous(e)ing is not a house style, but rather a system by which owners will be allowed to essentially design their own homes. Individual components can be chosen by the customer to be assembled and configured as they choose. Rather than purchasing a completed house with a set layout and size, the PAC Hous(e)ing concept is infinitely adaptable. If a family's or individual's space needs change, additional components can be purchased to dock onto the existing structure to add more space, windows or doors. Groups of PAC houses can be attached to each other in a multi-unit cluster to fit more units onto a given property in dense urban areas.

The name "PAC", is also a play on the word pack. The system which can be assembled and re-configured easily can also be packed up and transported when we move. Lang and Wilson have lived in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Vancouver in the past ten years - a degree of mobility not uncommon in our global era. In theory they could have taken their home with them.

Link
http://www.usefulandagreeable.com/lwpac.html
Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture - www.lwpac.com

The unconventional materiality

Along with the advances in the methods of construction and the discovery of materials employed for buildings, throughout history materiality has been employed not only to realize the building itself, but also as part of a conceptual idea or to make representational statements. The use of concrete was nothing new for the ancient Romans, but the technological innovation of the use of Pozzalana, a retardant additive, represented a break through which made possible the proliferation of western ideals throughout the Roman Empire. In the same way, the industrial revolution brought technologies which allowed for a different use of traditional materials such as glass and steel. The new era of modernity brought rapid social changes that were expressed in the buildings of the time through materiality. Today the new materiality seems to depend on scientific and technological advances which could bring new light to the building industry, but this is not quit tangible yet. The demand for rapid construction and budget limitations seem to restrict to a minimum the experimentation necessary to make considerable advancements in the field. It appears that inventiveness and creativity is a more suitable tool in order to achieve an innovative and expressive materiality.

Such is the case of Rem Koolhaas who in the turn of the new millennium has largely depended in the use materials to reinterpret program. In tow different project he has been able to accomplish this under different constrains and requirements. On one hand the Prada stores in New York and Los Angeles have given a new meaning to the shopping experience engaging the shopper with the product but manly with process of buying. for instance, the use of technology here comes to hand by giving control to the customer. The doors of the dressing room are made of Privalite glass that the customer can switch from transparent to translucent for control the privacy. Furthermore, a new material was specifically developed for Prada. It is a half matter/half air sponge like plastic which provides a porous artificial background for the merchandise and further expands Prada’s physical identity in the store. But here budget was not a problem allowing for experimentation at the level of introducing technology and giving some room for the introduction of unconventional material.

On the other hand, the Student Center of the IIT in Chicago addressed materiality in a similar way in a much larger building with only a fraction of the per-square-foot budget of the Prada stores. The unconventional use of material allows Koolhaas to recreate the urban experience of the campus inside the building. For example, the use of unfinished sheetrock as ceiling gives a different dynamic to the ceiling still providing the sensation of a monolithic and unifying element complemented by the sealed concrete floor. Also the use of Panelite panels in the restrooms and a portion of the exterior façade play with the ambiguity of privacy and the duality of inside and outside. The use of graphics also plays an essential role communicating the intentions and the distribution of spaces.

In general, Koolhaas’ non conventional use of material and the introduction of technology and graphic design help to minimize the dependency to the introduction or employment of new and revolutionary materials which are hardly available and would drive the cost of a building to the sky.

References:

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/koolhaas/prada/prada.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolana
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/prada/index.htm
http://www.arcspace.com/architects/koolhaas/McCormick-Tribune/
http://panelite.us/

Gaudi: Nature Complexity

In the middle of the industrial revolution when the steam engine was the driving force of the moment and the vehicle which made possible the greatest advances known to man, the idea of a computer was nothing of what we know today- perhaps the Chinese Abacus being the closest in definition. When the humanist ideals and the explosion of modernism facilitated by the emergence of standardization, Man made it clear that he had to dominate and be above the landscape. His creation was the greatest achievement and the landscape its canvas. Antoni Gaudi, an architect who might have been ahead of his time, looked at nature find inspiration. He was able to create complex geometry without the technology that we have available today. And he did it just by observing.

Gaudi constantly used nature as his main inspiration; we can see it in the structures, colors and rhythms. The comparisons with animals and vegetables, the constant movement of its shapes, are present in his mature works. He looked how nature defies gravity, study its nature; the shapes of the cove or a mountain, how animals build their shelter and how they structured society. His perceptions about details made him produce unique pieces in the History of Architecture.

In addition, Gaudi designed a method to analyze structures by a hanging model. He designed the Colonia Guell Church with this innovative technique. He integrated the parabolic arch and hyperboloid structures, nature's organic shapes, and the fluidity of water into his architecture. Gaudi designed many of his structures upside down by hanging various weights on interconnected strings or chains, using gravity to calculate catenaries for a natural curved arch or vault. Gaudi spent ten years working on studies for the design, and developing this new method of structural calculation. The outline of the church was traced on a wooden board (1:10 scale), which was then placed on the ceiling of a small house next to the work site.
References