Community Greening Project

              We all know things that we don't like about our communities and for me the lack of greenery in a town that is essentially in the countryside is absurd. It was not always like that, old photos show tree lined streets, but where did the trees go? The answer is that they were cut down to improve sight lines for cars. As the traffic had improved sight lines it sped up and to slow it down the Council introduced hazards  as traffic calming measures. I therefore put forward a proposal to the Council on how to reintroduced trees within the urban landscape in such a way that they integrated with the cars. The 'parklets' are half depth parking bays so there is no sight line hazard and yet this simple action allows for the regular placement of trees.

          It is important to choose the type of tree carefully and with proper research. Do not pick trees with berries and that are known to attract birds as this will create a mess and start a negative reaction against the project. The choice of trees that do not drop their leaves is more cost effective to the Local Council who do not want  to allocate a part of their budget to clear up leaves every year.

                   More examples of work by Alex King can be seen at : Alex King Design

Power to you...

The design of the vertical power poles (VWT) in the above picture, was a response to the immediate needs of people in the aftermath of a major earthquake. Survivors talked of being trapped in the dark, battery life of mobile phones failing, injured in the darkness and cut off all communication. In such situations off grid power sources become all important. What would be needed was a power source that could be placed in close proximity to buildings and be able to provide lighting, free Wifi and charge points for phones. None of the technologies used to meet this challenge are new, and yet it led to exploring the possibilities for sustainable power generation opportunities in unlikely places.

We are what Buckminster Fuller called “energy slaves” and with World energy consumption predicted to increase by 40% by 2030, access to sustainable power sources is becoming increasingly important. The argument by traditional power companies is that sustainable power cannot generate enough power on a sustained basis – but maybe it is that new technologies require new ways of thinking about where they are placed and how they are used.

I am trying to follow Jacques Franco's idea 'of not complaining without offering an alternative solutions' – or as Fuller put it: “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. If 35% of energy created is lost in transmission, it would make sense that any new model is likely to work on local supplies – possibly as a bi-product of other activities. As in the above picture, could vertical wind turbines be placed in the dividing space on busy motorways or indeed beside railway tracks or the runways of international airports? How much energy could be harvested from the air-flow in such situations? With a slight modification the fixed baffles that increase energy production could ensure that there was no dangerous spray from the devices in bad weather. The power from existing wind turbines is reduced to a restricted rotation to reduce noise – but noise would not be a problem in such situations. We live in a strange World where the MOD in the UK are protesting against wind turbines in Cornwall UK as a 'security threat' and in the USA a 'nuclear weapons facility' tries to earn itself some 'Green' credentials by claiming to 'be powered by the largest Federal wind farm' and this makes some strange ideas seem really quite sane.

In Korea there are electric buses in operation that charge wirelessly from the road. Could this be the future for cars? Is there also the possibility to generate energy from the movement of the traffic on the road? Maybe we are just not seeing all the energy sources available to us? Could the movement of people on a busy street, the pressure of their movement on the pavement, provide the energy to light the street, or train terminal, or airport? This might seem 'off the wall', but apparently a night club is taking people power literally and harvests power generated by the movement on the dance floor. It sounds like I'm 'talking out of my behind', but 'Poop Power' has also been suggested as a serious sustainable option and let's face it, there is an almost unending supply of the stuff. It's the methane gas bi-product that provides the power source in this idea and why couldn't a sewage treatment plant not power itself by the methane it produces? Instead of just letting the methane from landfill drift up into the atmosphere, why not capture it and use it? If the methane from 'Fresh Kills' was utilized, it probably wouldn't be enough to power NYC, but it could help reduce consumption on existing resources.

Using energy created as a bi-product as something else is an attractive idea and it points to the idea that future power generation will be localized. In the USA an architect was asked to look at power generation for an olive factory – they had PV panels, but the factory operated day and night, so they needed to supplement the power source. He discovered that their waste product – olive pips, could be used as bio mass, which reduced the factories waste and provided power at the same time – other factories across Europe are using this idea, but could the idea be replicated with other waste products in other industries?

It is likely that there is no one sustainable solution to the energy problem, but rather that it is a case of using combinations of different energy producing solutions to meet different modern demands. It is 'eco – logical', we have the technological capability, 'the Future' is already here – it just isn't very well distributed yet. This means that as energy demand sky-rockets government policies should include measures for implementing the distribution of sustainable technologies and in a sense there is some movement in this direction, but we the general public have to do our bit.

Here is an idea that you can try at home and it is one that if you live in the right climatic conditions, will reduce your heating bills to almost zero. It is possible to heat your home from the air by using an 'air source heat pump'. My father has installed one in his home (see above photo) and so far the heating and hot water bills are a fraction of what he paid in a quarter with a traditional system. If he linked the pump to a PV Solar panel his heating and hot water would cost almost zero. I had thought that the system would need underfloor heating, but watch the 'air source heat pump' video on Youtube and it seems that some people have made the system work on a 'traditional' radiator system. Governments need to provide incentives to retrofit such technology in the same way as they might promote Solar PV panels.

How we generate energy is becoming increasingly important: Imagine a planet where everyone had $10,000,000.00 – but no basic resources: no clean drinking water, no arable land or access to food, what do they actually have of real value? It's a matter of offering alternatives to Fukushima and fracking, so let's put our heads together and see what we can do.

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouseʼ won the British Homes Awards in 2011.

Calling himself 'Designalexable', he occasionally puts a selection of what passes through his head on a blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

Future Proof

'Science fiction has a funny habit of becoming science fact'¹ - William S. Burroughs

'Hi-Tech' would by it's nature soon become out-of-date as technology moved with the times, so as an 'architectural style', could only ever be a fad or short term solution. At the same time any building that contains the latest components could be termed 'Hi-Tech'. Hardwick Hall - 'more glass than wall', would have been Hi-Tech in 576-97.  The pursuit of technology in building is nothing new - it is the terminology to promote ideas that is new.

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, England by Robert Smythson

      With the 'intrinsic flight into the future' ², it is now common to hear architects claim that their buildings are 'future-proof'³ – although, as we have very little idea about what the mirage of the future will bring, it is a slightly odd claim. It might be 'characteristic of the development of ideas that they do not appear as memories pointing to something that is past, but as expectations directed towards the future'⁴, but how could the design of an office be 'future proof' if in the future everyone worked from home? We simply don't know what will happen. A school may claim to be a future proof design and yet in the future all teaching may be via a computer terminal at home: It would make good economic sense for both government and individual families: The value of buildings would also no longer be inflated by their proximity to the 'best schools'; It would relieve traffic congestion, lower emissions, slow the spread of infections, stop class disruption, bullying and student shootings – it could also possibly improve education as the best teachers could reach the maximum amount of pupils via a medium that is known to engage their interest. Under such a future scenario the building would become redundant and what might be needed in its place would be more green space on which to socialize and play games. The claim that a building is 'future proof' rests on the fact that nobody knows what will happen.

What could be said of many modern buildings is that they have become less 'future proof', designed more as stand alone 'art objects', they tend to be less adaptable: When some large office blocks on Canary Wharf (London) remained empty at the end of the 1980s, one building owner complained, “a Nash terrace in Nottinghill Gate could be designed as a house, converted to offices, then to flats, it moves with the market – but what can I do with an acre of open plan office space when no one wants it?”

Oddly, what might in reality be the most 'future proof' of building types could be the timber frame buildings that were constructed in 1250 and are still here in 2013. These buildings might not look futuristic, but they were the original pre-fab kit houses and have withstood the test of time and are still sought after centuries after their creation. All that the architects of today mean by the term 'future proof', is that access can be gained so that the 'short-life parts of the building can be changed and its total lifespan can be extended'⁵. Changing a few wires does not make a building 'future proof' – especially if everything goes wireless. As Winston Churchill said, “It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see'⁶.

Futurist pre-fab housing circa 1250 AD

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

1 'The adding machine & other essays'. William S. Burroughs 1985 ISBN 0-7145-4073-0.

2 'intrinsic flight to the future' – Hegel's technological concept of history suggests that 'progress' has become mixed up with both technical progress and Darwinian evolution. This 'history underpins a technological bias of practice, often at the expense of architecture and making places for “life and action” - 'Architecture Re-assembled'. Trevor Garnham. 2013. Routledge.

3 The term 'future-proof' was mentioned by Norman Foster in his German TED Talks Lecture, it appears in Richard Rogers 'Architecture – a modern view' and has recently made an appearance in the RIBA Journal and other architectural publications. For architects the idea of the future has a long history - 'But in human beings the awareness of the future undergoes the same characteristic change of meaning which we have noted with regard to ideas of the past. The future is not only an image; it becomes an “ideal”... This belongs to the realm of prudence, not to that of wisdom. The term “prudence” (prudentia) is etymologically connected to “providence” (providentia). It means the ability to forsee future events and to prepare for future needs' ('An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P54-55. 1944. Yale University Press). This is a theoretical idea of the future, a symbolic future, more akin to expectation.

4 'An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P53 1944. Yale University Press. Original quote: William Stern.

5 'Architecture - a Modern View'. Richard Rogers. P53 1991 ISBN 0-500-27651-x

6 'The wicked wit of Winston Churchill'. Dominique Enright. P146. 2001. ISBN 978-1-85479-529-8.