While I was looking at ideas from nature on how to gather water. I came across two types of plant; a xerophyte and phreatophyte. Xerophyte plants are plants that have adapted to dry places and I was interested on how they store the water through out a dry weather. Phreatophyte plants are deep rooted and draws water from the ground. Both these plants gave my an idea of designing a water supply that would collect water underground and filter in out as it collects water. I thought that if some houses already collects water form the rain through their tanks, I thought this would be another way of collecting water from the ground and have the water stored in an underground tank that can be use when needed. I tried experimenting with sponge and wire mesh but did not worked how I envision it.
Our project idea of having a bio city have been developed to making an actual moving city, turning the city into a living organism that migrate, move and finds resource by itself and not being controlled by humans and just being maintained. We have raised up topic questions such as what it would be like to live in a city that is moving? would people live in a moving city? We have taken the metaphoric description of the city as being alive into a practical approach and still keep bio mimicry as an inspiration of the infrastructure of our city. We've also looked at 6 legged insects as an idea for our moving city as 6 legs can easily maneuver around and move to bumpy surface without tipping over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ascql_RoeBU
Because we are making a moving city I had to look at building structures that are strong enough to withstand and also energy efficient building structure, so I looked at a few buildings that can withstand some natural disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_dome
http://greenbuildingelements.com/2011/02/24/building-earthquake-resistant-buildings-is-best-for-the-environment-and-the-people/
http://hexdome.com/introduction/index.php
I also did some building design inspired by basking shark. I was interested on the structure of the body and how far the mouth can go. Its gills also gave me ideas of having natural airflow coming in and out of the building. Here is my experimental design where I've used a modeling clay.
The basking shark forms an arc shape when its mouth is open, thus arc shape provide a strong foundation to dome houses.
For the blueprint of our moving city we've decided to use hexagon as hexagon is commonly seen in nature and it uses the space efficiently.
I have been focusing on how the moving city will collect and generate power and I have been drawn to the v-gate that generate power through magnets. I did some simple experiment to see of it really works and play with the magnet to find its strength to see if it'd be strong enough to use it to generate power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-9nEVgseoo&feature=related
After a long research and testing that we have changed our idea from a moving living city and narrow it down even more to a living organism that lives in our city. As the moving living city could probably be hard for people to imagine as its a sci-fi and utopia type of city, we have set that aside as a research paper work project. Our new idea is now a living organism that live in our city. it moves and find resource it self. It is not a harmful creature and it gets afraid when it sees more people. to automate this creature, we use arduino and max msp. We also have some animated video to visually show a living organism living in our city. This new project idea is to study the symbiosis between a living organism and humans.
Now we are just finishing off the programing side of the project to fabricate it and make it look like a living creature. We had few problems especially with the legs of the creature but hoping to get it working again after we laser cut another pair of legs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ascql_RoeBU
Because we are making a moving city I had to look at building structures that are strong enough to withstand and also energy efficient building structure, so I looked at a few buildings that can withstand some natural disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_dome
http://greenbuildingelements.com/2011/02/24/building-earthquake-resistant-buildings-is-best-for-the-environment-and-the-people/
http://hexdome.com/introduction/index.php
I also did some building design inspired by basking shark. I was interested on the structure of the body and how far the mouth can go. Its gills also gave me ideas of having natural airflow coming in and out of the building. Here is my experimental design where I've used a modeling clay.
The basking shark forms an arc shape when its mouth is open, thus arc shape provide a strong foundation to dome houses.
For the blueprint of our moving city we've decided to use hexagon as hexagon is commonly seen in nature and it uses the space efficiently.
I have been focusing on how the moving city will collect and generate power and I have been drawn to the v-gate that generate power through magnets. I did some simple experiment to see of it really works and play with the magnet to find its strength to see if it'd be strong enough to use it to generate power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-9nEVgseoo&feature=related
After a long research and testing that we have changed our idea from a moving living city and narrow it down even more to a living organism that lives in our city. As the moving living city could probably be hard for people to imagine as its a sci-fi and utopia type of city, we have set that aside as a research paper work project. Our new idea is now a living organism that live in our city. it moves and find resource it self. It is not a harmful creature and it gets afraid when it sees more people. to automate this creature, we use arduino and max msp. We also have some animated video to visually show a living organism living in our city. This new project idea is to study the symbiosis between a living organism and humans.
Now we are just finishing off the programing side of the project to fabricate it and make it look like a living creature. We had few problems especially with the legs of the creature but hoping to get it working again after we laser cut another pair of legs.
