smart materials

Architects who fail to run with the trend sparked by radical smart materials towards adaptive and kinetic buildings will be left behind, says a leading expert.

The use of materials that change their properties in reaction to heat, moisture or light will “revolutionise” architecture, German architect Axel Ritter said.

Buildings of the future will be able to change colour, size, shape and opacity in reaction to stimuli. Architects will be able to design buildings that change their geometry according to the weight of the people inside, he said.

“I’m currently working on a project with an expandable building structure using smart materials. I use a material that expands using water and I have created a large-scale activator … It leads to buildings that are reactive to rain water. Maybe, in the future, we could have buildings that expand or contract depending on rain or growing buildings that expand in one way depending on water. This could be combined with hydraulic or pneumatic components.”


the real benefit of smart materials is for sustainability. The materials take energy directly from the environment so they do not necessarily need to be on the grid. Smart materials are both the “sensor” and the “actor”, he said, so they also cut out the need for wires and tubes.

Using thermal bimetals can allow architects to experiment with shape-changing buildings, Ritter said. Thermal bimetals include a combination of materials with different expansion coefficients that  can cause a change in. Under changing temperatures this can lead one side of a compound to bend more than the other side, potentially creating an entirely different shape, he said. 

“The bending is temperature dependent. You can use this as a positioning element or directly to create other shapes or transformations.”

Collapsible, Flatpack Olympic Stadium

The organisers of the London Olympics are planning to pass on more than just the Olympic flag to the next host city when the games end in September 2012.

can the 55,000 seats stadium be dismantled, boxed up and shipped to the next country to be rebuilt?

The tactic of recycling the Olympic stadium has been billed as the first step in a new approach to the games, which could become more like a travelling circus to keep costs down and allow poorer countries to play host.

"If we could box it up and ship it to the next games, that's something that could benefit the Olympic movement," said Doug Arnott, director of sports and operations at Chicago 2016. "We have had preliminary discussions about what London's stadium design team are planning and how it might fit in. This is to do with the responsible use of materials and trying to avoid leaving infrastructure that will burden a city."

'pass-it-on'

Any sustainable minded surveyor of large scale events wonders if the expense and waste associated with showpiece stadiums could be reduced, even just a little. Well, the organizers of the London Olympics have a remarkable plan that could offset construction costs, and be sure that their stadium finds a purposeful second life. Currently there are plans in place to dismantle around 70% of the proposed London Olympic Stadium, pack up the components, and send them to the host of the 2016 Olympics! Finally, flatpacked, prefab stadiums!

The concept is part of a new approach to the Olympic Games. Rather than building everything new every four years, the “prefab” stadium idea allows facilities to be built in one city, moved as efficiently as possible and be adapted to existing arenas in the new host city. In the case of London, this particular stadium was specifically designed by HOK Sport to be disassembled and sold on, preventing wasteful obsolescence. The London Olympic Stadium is effectively designed as a 25,000 seat concrete bowl that has an additional 55,000 seats placed on top of it in a temporary structure. It is this entire upper structure which can be moved and installed somewhere else.

Currently, talks are underway with Chicago, but London organizers hope that their offer is taken up by whoever wins the games. If the plan goes forward, this would be the largest amount of seats ever moved from one place to the next, and the first time in history that a stadium of this size has been moved.

**Last year, 16,000 seats which had previously been used at the 2006 football World Cup in Germany were shipped to Barbados where they were used in the ICC Cricket World Cup
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/27/olympics2012.london
guardian.co.uk 

Inhabitat

Should London’s Olympic stadium be an iconic design?

YES!!
The stadium represents the image of the Olympics, and millions will see this structure.


If anything needs to be iconic, then it is the major sports stadium — look at Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing stadium or Renzo Piano’s beautiful San Nicola stadium in Bari, Italy, built for the 1990 World Cup.


Part of the problem is that there was no competition for architects. If you are going to have a great Olympics, then you need great architects.


- Will Alsop


NO!!


Content over style is the issue here. The significance of this Olympic stadium is its very difference from its forerunners. It is not intended to be a lasting icon carrying the memory of the London games.


In the short term, its task is to accommodate a major sporting event. Long term, its role is to facilitate the transformation both of itself and its surroundings.


The design resolves these issues with disarming and elegant simplicity. The size has been reduced to an absolute minimum: a scale comparison of its cross-section with its foreign counterparts is extraordinary. It is demountable and reusable, so offers real possibilities perhaps for Glasgow in 2014 or whichever city gets the Olympics in 2016.


-Graham Morrison


NO!!


Its legacy will be the pattern of the city that follows: think Piazza Navona, the stadium at Lucca, or even our own project for Arsenal at Highbury.


Hadid’s Aquatics Centre and Hopkins’ Velodrome will be part of the permanent memory of this games. HOK’s stadium, by contrast, has to meet a more complex brief. It is more a Tubbs Dome of Discovery than a Martin Royal Festival Hall. It is more like Paxton’s Crystal Palace than Herzog & de Meuron’s stadium at Beijing. And, perhaps surprisingly to its critics, it is a building we believe Cedric Price would have endorsed for achieving so much more than its obvious brief — and without pomposity. We should applaud it.


- Bob Allies


"Should London’s Olympic stadium be an iconic design?", bdonline.co.uk

Floating marina, floating dock, Pontoon

SIZE: 50*50*40CM

Product Details

Advanced Type floating marina
Economic type floating marina
Floating marina,
floating dock,
pontoon
 


1. Advanced Type floating marina:


Size of single floating marina: 50cm×50cm×40cm (length×width×height);


Weight of single floating marina: about 6.7kg±0.3kg;


Carrying capacity :320kg/sq.m.;


Material: HMWHDPE;




2.Economic type floating marina:


Size of single floating marina: 50cm×50cm×25cm (length×width×height);


Weight of single floating marina: about 4.5kg±0.3kg;


Carrying capacity: 220kg/sq.m;


Material: HMWHDPE;


Abstract:
This paper discusses the engineering design and construction of a large floating steel platform at the Marina Bay of Singapore. The floating platform was designed to be a multipurpose facility on the bay for mass spectator events, sporting activities and cultural performances. This floating platform, completed in April 2007, is believed to be the world's largest floating performance stage and hosted the National Day Parade (NDP) in the last 2 years. It has been an ideal venue for mega festivities, water sports and boat shows since; and it is a floating icon on the Singapore waters. It has also been earmarked as the venue to stage the opening and closing ceremonies for the inaugural 2010 Youth Olympics to be held in Singapore. Building the floating platform involved numerous challenges and innovatively adopted new engineering techniques, which will be described herein.


Singapore constructed its first large floating platform in response to the requirement for a temporary venue to hold the NDP from 2007 to 2011, while the National Stadium was demolished. The floating platform generates a usable space of 120 m × 83 m on the water, at the Marina Bay, and was designed to carry a heavy load comprising at least 9000 people, 200 t of stage props and three 30-t vehicles. A 27 000 seating capacity gallery along the shoreline faces the floating platform and allows the spectators to view the various events on the platform as well as on the water against the backdrop of the Singapore City skyline. This floating platform is a floating icon and a new landmark on the Singapore waters. The floating platform hosted the nation's spectacular NDP in August 2007 (see Fig. 1). It was the first time the NDP was held on water and Singaporeans were thrilled by the unique structure of the floating platform. The floating platform was made configurable for boat exhibition and relocatable so as to make way for boat racing event in the bay. Besides meeting all these requirements, the design and construction had to overcome many environmental constraints and technical challenges. At about the same time, the Marina Bay was being developed into a fresh water reservoir and planned as the new downtown and financial centre. This led to more restrictions as the floating platform must be environmental friendly and the architectural design needed to blend with the surrounding infrastructure developments. The building needed to take into consideration the construction of the barrage, the Marina Barrage, across the mouth of the bay, which limited the access and transportation by sea of the floating platform into the Marina Bay. The novel solution of using pontoon-type very large floating structure (VLFS) technology was adopted to create large usable space on water. This pontoon-type VLFS technology simply harnesses the inherent buoyancy force of the water to support itself. The floating structure was neither a ship nor a building infrastructure and its development and construction required multidisciplinary engineering. Engineers in civil, mechanical, marine engineering as well as naval architecture, had to work together to synthesise and balance the demand involving marine construction standards as well as building infrastructure rules and regulations.

alibaba 

floating_platform

via n55
|stituation|
|indoor|
|spaceframe| 

via n55

Thames Lido - floating pool

the floating pool was moored at Thames

structure allowed to float up and down with the tide

crystalline enclosure gives swimmer 360 view of London skyline

opens and closes as the weather permits

floor can be raised to become shallow pool for children or fully raised to transform into dance or performance area or sports deck

LANTERNS

more information at their website 

burning man art installation, inspired by weather balloons and YIPENG (or 'Loy Kratong')  lantern festerval  in Thailand. In Taiwan, they will also release the "Sky Lanterns" during the Chinese Sky Lantern Festival. Beautiful but the down side is that its not environmental friendly~

Thailand's Version

 Taiwan's Version

Inflatable Structures

 Inflatable Diamond Grid Eco-Pavilion


A mobile performance space for Yorkshire Forward. Based upon a set of structural concepts perfected in their collapsible stadium, the inflatable event space is ultra-portable, generates all of its own energy, and is 100% recyclable. The venue can be easily reconfigured to hold both small and large crowds, and it’s versatile enough to host everything from intimate gatherings to outdoor concerts.


It fully inflates in a little more than an hour, and should the pavilion’s lifespan ever come to an end, the entire skin is 100% recyclable through a process called Texyloop.


Additional innovative features include the mounting of solar panels on top of its shipping container, which allows the pavilion to generate energy while it is being transported. Once the structure has been set up, wind turbines will help generate the power needed to maintain the inflatable structure and any lighting systems deployed during the evening. The hope is that the pavilion will be completely self-sustaining and will provide a versatile performance space even in off-the-grid locations.


As this structure will erected 2-3 days at a time for a 6 month travel season you can extend the 5 year lifespan by 3 or 4 times when it comes to sun exposure. We were quoted more than a 5 year lifespan on the Ferrari textiles in question.


more at dezeen.

Each structure is typically comprised of two layers of a fire retardant composite textile connected together using formers of the same material. The cavity formed between the layers is pressurised with air producing an extremely rigid structural element which allows large spans to be achieved whilst keeping the overall weight of the structure to a minimum.

The unique welded construction of our buildings combined with the types of textiles used enables them to operate at higher pressures than conventional inflatable structures. This results in a much more rigid building ideally suited to both temporary and permanent indoor and outdoor applications. - tectoniks.

puffer fish look alike
puff the machine @ s-p-r-a-w-l

http://www.akairways.com/

zorb, berlin

 

http://www.archdaily.com/tag/inflatable-structures/

http://www.massstudies.com/#

outdoor events structure, Ibebi 

SIMSON's DOME

Dome over HOUSTON

 

CONSTRUCTION
Engineers are planning on using heavy-lift helicopters and a new type of helium filled dirigibles.
HELICOPTERS
Erickson S-64 Aircrane helicopter rigged to carry heavy loads at altitudes as high as 11,000 feet.


DIRIGIBLES
the next generation of lighter-than air-ships will be designed to serve as high-altitude heavy lifters. These modern dirigibles nonflammable helium gas and carry payloads of over 4,000 pounds. under the right weather and wind conditions, the dirigibles aircraft of choice since ther use little fuel and can hover over a work site for hours
APEX VENTS
at the Dome's highest point, an array of hinged panels can be opened to provide ventilation, help regulate temperature, clear humidity or pollution and reduce the load on the dome's air treatment systems. they can even be used to free captive birds.
ETFE
Engineers are using a strong lightweight plastic called ethylene tetrafluoethylene, or ETFE. the triple layered surface weighs just 1 percent as much as glass, won't shatter, can be easily repaired and will gently drift down to earth like a feather if it comes loose from the dome's frame.


more info on Airship or Dirigibles found in wikipedia
more information and videos on Houston Dome from discovery channel
inhabitat 

Emgergence - Model

The power of the SMALL

Photo from Ilan Kelman

Smallness. The power of the small to generate the impossible?  There are times when 'smallness' gets you to places that larger objects can’t reach. 

the SMALLNESS of things?

What does SMALL or being SMALL means? 

small (smôl)

adj. small·er, small·est 
1. Being below the average in size or magnitude.
2. Limited in importance or significance; trivial: a small matter.
3. Limited in degree or scope: small farm operations.
4. Lacking position, influence, or status; minor
5. Unpretentious; modest: made a small living; helped the cause in my own small way.
6. Not fully grown; very young.
7. Narrow in outlook; petty: a small mind.
8. Having been belittled; humiliated: Their comments made me feel small.
9. Diluted; weak. Used of alcoholic beverages.
10. Lacking force or volume: a small voice.

Noun

1. smallness - the property of having a relatively small size littleness

2. smallness - the property of being a relatively small amount

3. smallness - the property of having relatively little strength or vigor 

4. smallness - lack of generosity in trifling matters

Definitions from thefreedictionary