ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

Website Attempt

2007-01-19T02:50:00.000-05:00

So perhaps this is a step in the direction you had in mind?

the logo

2007-01-15T16:13:00.000-05:00

PANDEMIC/antiPANDEMIC

2006-12-07T12:57:00.000-05:00

link for presentation: video of AIDS attacking a human white blood cell.

PANDEMIC

The vastness universe is built upon microscopic particles. Life on Earth is little more than a series of perfect combinations of these particles, and death on Earth is a result of the destruction or incapacitation of the most vital of these particles.

Often, death may come from the inside out and grow from microscopic to MEGA. I'm concentrating on this idea: the MEGA effect of something that is entirely microscopic. This is a storm that arises from inside of people, from a cellular level, and overtakes their bodies and eventually claims their lives, and on the cellular level it spreads throughout the population, claiming lives in masses.

This is the AIDS PANDEMIC. This project focuses on the battle against a MEGA condition that is currently inhabiting an estimated 35 million lives. (To see a more detailed post showing mappings regarding the AIDS-infected population and the availability and prevalence of treatments, click here).

[[any images may be clicked for a larger view]]

The mapping on the left shows a decrease in the population when AIDS cases
are subtracted out (those uninfected are portrayed by the white mesh).
The map on the right shows (in blue) the areas where more than 10%
of the population is able to receive the treatment medications.
The network in the map on the right is the corporate, production and sales
network of Glax0SmithKline, the company that makes the drugs to treat AIDS.

When these areas of treatment are pushed together along with their GSK manufacturing plants, you can see from this MEGAcontinent that many of the manufacturing plants are located outside of areas that receive the bulk of the treatment. This means that while Jamaica, for instance, might have a plant to produce these drugs, they are being sold to other countries.

antiPANDEMIC

If architecture was the cure for AIDS, what would it be?

What is AIDS, formally and conceptually? This video shows the AIDS virus infecting a lymphocyte (human white blood cell). The virus enters the cell, causes it to empty its contents, and then uses it as a host to do the same to other lymphocytes, and so on. These still images of the video should give an understanding of what is happening.

The drugs produced by GSK (primarily lamiduvine and zadovudine) help to weaken the host cell and slow the spread of AIDS.

Attack/counterAttack.

When AIDS spreads slowly, it prolongs the life of the AIDS patient, increasing chances that the patient will be alive when the cure might be discovered. The smallest chemical bonds in a pill has the power to prolong the lives of 35 million people; the problem is that they can't all get it.

While the problem is very heavily political and economic, if there were an efficient and effective way to spread prevention methods and knowledge, care and comfort, and the medications themselves, political and economic support from governments and organizations could be more likely.

I could not help but think of Archigram's Plug-In City; towers of units that are transported between each other on a mega network. These are some conceptual collages of Archigram's work combined with my mappings.

What if architecture was an infection?

What if healthcare was flexible? What if it were made up of parts - cells - that could go virtually anywhere, and contain what is needed to combat AIDS? These cells could "plug" into certain locations, serve their purposes, and then be taken away to be refilled, repaired, or deconstructed. What if architecture took on the form of the AIDS virus for the purposes of fighting the AIDS virus, infecting the cities with health from the inside out and then passing it onto other cities?

a first attempt at a city scale

These images depict the AIDS treatment cells being "plugged" into a city.

MEGAhealth

I propose a hierarchical network of the GlaxoSmithKline company's AIDS division. From the headquarters (located in London) comes knowledge, technology, and the patent on the drugs. All of these are intangible and immaterial. These things reach the manufacturing sites, hubs, where the immaterial network is materialized. Cells are constructed here, as well as the drugs and equipment to go in them. Hospital rooms, information cells, AIDS pharmacies and AIDS testing supplies are all made and contained into the cells.

MEGAhealth can be applied in virtually any architectural, geographical, or sociopolitical situation. It is to be versatile and flexible and free. I chose these three sites for the following reasons:

1. Cape Town, South Africa is already a site for a GSK manufacturing plant, but I believe it is a good hub because it has the best resources in the southern region of Africa. The transportation and healthcare infrastructures are well in tact. There is a large amount of class separation, as in most cities in Africa, but MEGAhealth is made to go anywhere, for anyone. Cape Town will serve as the hub for these purposes.

2. Mesaru, Lesotho is the capital of Lesotho. It is small and the poverty level is high, not to mention a very high demand for AIDS treatment. It is very accessible - with a main railroad, a river, and an international airport. The healthcare system is out of date and low on funding.

3. Omusati, Namibia is an area in the wildest part of Namibia. There is a freight road that passes through it, crossing the entire country's width and connecting Omusati to a port. AIDS is prevalent in this area, and there is one missionary-run hospital with very out-dated technology.

The form I came up for the manufacturing plant with is made to mimic a cell in its lysing state. The contents are maintained within walls, and the contents spill out to go infect the rest of the city and the other cities.

There are roads or railroads that come out from the plant. The idea is that these pods can infiltrate the modern transportation processes, and the transportation network is somewhat virtual in that sense.

This virtual meganetwork - the bloodstream on which the treatment travels - is made up of the tiny components of modern transportation modes.

These units are shown here plugged into (first) a hospital in Cape Town, (second) a hospital in Mesaru, and (third) a framework built to contain them in a place (Omasuti) where there is no means to contain them.

These images are the small parts of the whole: particles causing a MEGA effect. In the same way that AIDS conquers the body and spreads across the globe, the GSK network might conquer a city and spread as well - spreading preventional knowledge, treatment, and care and comfort to those who cannot currently benefit from these things.

This is fighting the PANDEMIC with an antiPANDEMIC.

if we keep this up, the universe might implode

2006-12-06T17:21:00.000-05:00

Still attempting the CamFrog thing - I'm not sure if it's their website or my internet but it's not downloading.

I like the title of the window (Vinnie's nickname on my Skype) and the headphones attached to the webcam/mic on Trevor's computer. We didn't realize that's why they couldn't hear us.

i can't WAIT for my nobel peace prize

2006-12-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

I am trucking along slowly. I have spent a lot of the weekend getting together aerial maps, pinpointing locations of hospitals, and eventually (finally) trying to model the transportation networks.

I feel a little stuck. I can probably attribute this to the fact that it's been a little frustrating because I have pretty much learned everything formZ will NOT let me do, and everything I have done has been tedious, repetitive, and has shown minimal finished product.

Because I was stuck on design, I moved back to the network to get my mind reeling. I am thinking my end piece will be a large, artistic collage which can hopefully effectively show the conversion of the GSK network from virtual (knowledge and technology) to physical (the hubs and various pods). My other option is to show an animation to examine the conceptual movement of this network, and a collage to show it virtually vs. physically at a series of scales - that one can see how this network occupies the globe, and the tiny details (which I feel are quite important) on the human scale as to how the network occupies and alters the AIDS condition existing within the population.

This system will thrive off of the ability to move, and so I have started by showing the transportation networks (regarding my sites) as they relate to the virtual network coming from London HQ.

Looking at that second image labelled "Cape Town" I have provided a vignette to show how my system will latch onto the current transportation network.

research maps finally

2006-11-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

Here is the complete city-specific research on my sites, including the major transportation networks and healthcare facilities in each place. Now I am ready to model, woopee! I'm thinking, probably just for time's sake, I'm going to just concentrate on Cape Town and the network its GSK plant would distribute to - Mesaru and Omusati - to show the network IN ACTION.

bizarrchitecture

2006-11-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

This post is really a display of the research I've been doing to find sites, and a beginning to each site's analysis. My post for Wednesday will return to the design and architecturing of the condition based on the information here and the decisions I made in this post. I KNOW I need to show you a lot of the things I describe in this text, and I WILL, but this is sort of brainstorming, analysis of what I've figured out, and the game plan.

I want to advance the idea of a healthcare system that infects civilization in the same way that AIDS has infected its populations.

A challenge I am working to address is defining the hierarchy, both architecturally and programmatically. What are the functions of the network at a series of scales?

The final and, I think, the most important challenge is picking a site or series of sites to focus on for the purposes of this project. The purpose would be to observe the system as it could exist in a variety of situations - its ability to adapt to the diverse socioeconomic, transportational, and need-based dilemmas that exist in the world is key in the proposal being successful.

_________________
I. THE HIERARCHY

Previously, I had posted this image to describe the corporate hierarchy of GSK as a network. I'm going to stick to that general concept, except instead of "distribution cities" they will be "hubs," meaning that they will contain a manufacturing and distribution plant but it does not necessarily mean a city. I'll examine in further detail.

What HQ in London contains is the knowledge, the process (and patents), and the technology to produce lamiduvine and zidovudine. London distributes these things to the separate hubs in the chosen locations. This network is virtual; it purely exists within communicative means.

The hubs contain these items which apply the virtual materials acquired from London, the production of drugs, and the production of the pods and the equipment they involve. The hubs are the plants that not only produce the treatments themselves, but they produce their methods and means, the architecture that allows the drugs to serve their purpose. It is these hubs that convert the virtual materials into physical, functional materials. The hubs will also help knowledge to build, because they will also contain research which will gain knowledge that will travel both back to the HQ and will filter down to the pods.

The wellness pods are containers that can be installed in a certain simple framework - a framework that can be expanded upon as needed and a framework that is minimally invasive. The programs of these pods include: 1. a portable pharmacy (supplying an area with the needed drugs to treat its AIDS victims, see this previously posted image). 2. A portable doctor's office (or testing lab) which will be a room that can be either set in a remote village in order to test the population for AIDS, or it can be transferred to and installed within hospitals to function as an AIDS wing or AIDS section of the hospital. 3. A portable hospital room for those extremely ill or dying or an AIDS-related infection, willing to pay extra to have the treatment and room in the comfort of their own homes (see this image from the previous post). 4. A portable information center to educate the uneducated populations on what AIDS is, how it gets contracted, and providing birth control education and STI education.

_________________
II. THE SITES

I defined the criteria for selecting manufacturing sites to this: central locations of transportation networks in their regions, areas with ample population to support and contribute to the functioning of these hubs, and regions where there is a need for AIDS treatment.

I've chosen the following sites to use as examples of a hub infecting a city.

Hyderabad, India is a logical site for a hub because it is located in a region where there is a high demand for AIDS medication, and it is a center for rail transportation in India, which is one of the main modes of transportation and shipment in India. There is also an airport in Hyderabad, which could provide an extra mode of access.

major railways in India
in relation to Hyderabad

Capetown, South Africa is a center for transportation in South Africa, and also has a port which opens up new routes of transportation and distribution for AIDS treatment. It is located in close proximity to poor areas, and the port access opens up the opportunity to ship the supplies up the coast to some of the other areas in dire need of treatment. In addition to rail and port, Capetown is one of the few cities in southern Africa with an airport.

major highways and railways of South Africa
in relation to Cape Town

The beauty of the pod is that it can be transported and applied virtually anywhere. The following are some recipients of pods that I will use as diverse examples of how they can be applied and implemented.

Varanasi, India is one of the larger cities in India, but the crime and poverty rate are higher than the other developed cities of India. The AIDS pandemic has struck Varanasi and its surrounding towns and villages harder than the rest of India. Class separation is evident, and while health technology is up-to-date, it reaches only the fortunate few. The economy is based around ancient crafts with a few cutting-edge institutions such as Texas Instruments plants and international universities placed within its boundaries. It is connected to Hyderabad by rail.

the route the treatment would take
from Hyderabad to Varanasi

Maseru, Lesotho is the capital of Lesotho. It is a small city of about 180,000, and is primarily comprised of low to middle class dwellings and a high unemployment rate. There is ample transportational access; it is located on the Caledon River (see map) which incidentally also runs through Capetown. There is a small international airport here, and two major highways run through it.
Omusati, Namibia is a region of Namibia with ample access to the Namibian port city of Skeletkuste. Transportation is extremely underdeveloped here, except for a massive freight road stretching across this northern wilderness. The healthcare system in this region is adequate at best; basic healthcare can be found but hospitals are few and underfunded. Like Maseru, it can be served by Cape Town as a hub.

the path treatment would take from Cape Town
to Maseru and Omusati

_________________
III. OTHER AFFECTING NETWORKS

The GSK network is going to exist as a supplement to already present conditions in each location. At every site containing the location of a hub, the transportation methods and networks would be mapped and the GSK network would latch on - using the existing transportation conditions as a means transport these pods.

Hospitals that are already present - whether in cities, towns, or missionary hospitals in distant villages - will be mapped, and an AIDS wing will be made up of the aforementioned framework and placed alongside hospitals. In hub locations, the hub structures may exist as part of the hospital or an addition onto the hospital.Here I am zooming in a bit, and I've mapped the big transportation (mostly rails, that leave the city) and marked the significant hospitals.

Here I show the healthcare in Hyderabad as a network - making the hospital closest to the railroad leading to Varanasi the center of this mini-network. Perhaps this is how the GSK system can first invade the city at this point and attach onto the other hospitals via transportation, as an intra-city network.

I plan to do this level of analysis with all sites, whether they are hubs or not.
_________________
VI. FORMAL IDEAS

I found this video of the AIDS virus infecting a human lymphocyte (white blood cell). What is happening in this video, is that the clump of cells starting out at the bottom have already been infected by the AIDS virus and are attacking the lymphocyte in the middle, violating the cell wall and causing the lymphocyte's insides to come out, a process called lysing (it pays to have biologically smart friends).

Architecturally, I would like the GSK network to act as a counter-infection on the population. In the same way that the virus enters a lymphocyte, takes control of it, and causes it to attack other lymphocytes, I want the architecture to infiltrate the population, take over, and spread. My idea for this is a collapsable, expandable, and multipliable structural system.

Stay tuned for more!

megaHEALTH

2006-11-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

What would it mean to a remote village to have the opportunity for drugs with healing powers they never knew existed, or the opportunity to have the treatment with the equipment they need, and an accurate diagnosis of AIDS.

While this concept could be applied to a world of diseases, not just AIDS, for the purposes of this project I am focusing on AIDS because only GSK produces AIDS treatment drugs, and this concept is based through that company, which is headquartered in London, England.

I'll start from the largest scale, and work my way down. The HQ of GSK will be an entire city of parts to drug manufacturing plants (located outside of London), to be detached and transported to the manufacturing plants and locations in the map below (from the previous post).

The rings around the plants represent their production capacities based on the demand for AIDS treatment in that region, not the geographic region they serve. Because of the ever-changing world populations, and the spread of AIDS (reaching and affecting new and different populations as time passes, see this animation which maps the history of the virus's spread), these manufacturing plants' capacities will be easily altered by the detachability of and stackability of these resources that come from London.

These plants will subtly infiltrate the cities in which they are located, as shown below (see conceptual collage from previous post). They are subdivided into "wellness pods" which are small pods containing necessities for treating AIDS that can be transported to other cities as well as the most remote of areas. The animation shows one of these pods travelling to a remote area outside of the manufacturing city.

Here are a couple renderings of the system:

For the purposes of this project, I will be zooming in and focusing on Cape Town, South Africa and its surrounding region. One reason I am focusing here is that it is a good example of a town that produces AIDS treatment but sells it elsewhere, so that its own citizens do not receive the treatment (notice that it is not part of the megaContinent). Another reason is that the area that it is not serving has some of the highest prevalence of AIDS in the world, and therefore the highest demand for the drugs.

Here are a couple collages that put the model in the context of Cape Town.

These wellness pods will serve a few functions - one of which will be the transport of drugs, treatment and equipment, particularly to remote areas (shown below).

There is also the possibility of a new way of looking at hospiss care - GSK's wellness pods extending to those who can afford a more comfortable treatment system in their home.

megaHEALTH: the wellness explosion

2006-11-17T18:20:00.000-05:00

This post is a preliminary look at my process to lead into Monday's post.

The problem is this: the drugs needed to treat AIDS are produced by GSK all over the planet but are not reaching all the areas they need them. The idea is this: that the GSK megaHEALTH empire must self-divide and disperse itself to the distant areas of the planet where it is most lacked. So the question is this: how can these supplies be efficiently transported to these areas?

In the most rural areas, part of the problem is that if the drugs reach these villages, by way of charity or another form of goodwill, the people don't know who is to get the drugs and how they are to take them. Not only is the spread of medication needed, assistance with drugs and equipment - such as testing equipment - is needed.

I've chosen to pursue megaHEALTH at three different scales: the global scale, the regional scale, and the human scale, and the following images and explanations should show the direction I want to go.

My investigation of the global scale involves unifying the GSK empire and reworking the network. Each country (and some groups of countries) has a branch of GSK that exists at its own entity and privately sells to whatever government and/or private healthcare system can afford the drugs. As you can tell from the following mapping from the previous assignment, the network is inefficient.

current GSK distribution network

To help improve this problem, I wish to regionalize these 82 manufacturing plants, which are all located in or just outside of major cities. This is a clearer map very simply mapping the current locations of GSK.

GSK's manufacturing plants

The next map indicates what it would mean to regionalize the current plants. The rings indicate the particular plant's production capacity.

regionalizing the current GSK plants

As you can see from this previous map, regionalizing the plants as they are located does little good to many areas, even in the United States. Here is a map strategically relocating these plants based on population density and AIDS prevalence, and their production capacities are reestablished according to the prevalence of AIDS in the region.

relocated GSK plants

relocated GSK plants and reestablished production capacities

Reworking the network was a simple redirection of paths; to become more detailed, we have to examine this on a regional scale. What is the relationship between the manufacturing plant and its own city, the manufacturing plant and its neighboring cities, and most importantly for this project, the plant and the surrounding "remote locations."

conceptual collage of the "wellness pods" being distributed in a region

The first two scales are network and transit related. These are important to consider because it is a global company which addresses a global crisis, but it is also important to consider what exactly is being transported. Mechanically, what is the process by which the drugs will reach another city or a remote location? Once they are there, how will they be administered - how will the materials and the information be spread? AIDS is a human condition, and so it is quite crucial to address the human scale at an intense level of detail.

My next post will include a detail of what the headquarters (England) will do as a city, a city which is the root of the manufacturing plants mapped all over the planet. This city will distribute these, which are composed of the pods, which will be distributed outward to the cities and villages. This is shown in the diagram below. The next post will include details of each of these levels.

megaHEALTH

2006-11-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

Archigram, in the Plug-In City (see this post for some more analysis), proposes a series of units - rooms, energy, supplies, etc. - that are stored in silos and transported and "plugged" into other silos by way of trains, moving along tracks. I propose, now, that we view healthcare in this way - by making the transportation of these drugs from GSK manufacturing plants more efficient to the populations that need them, and the ability to transport hospital rooms to areas that can treat AIDS patients perhaps could help to break up the AIDS megaContinent and spread treatment into remote areas.

In this animation, these units are shown as floating to different areas of sub-Saharan Africa, but perhaps they are carried by cranes, or along paths.

pandemic: the AIDS effect

2006-11-08T16:29:00.001-05:00

Once thought to be the new Black Plague, AIDS has exploded across the globe in less than half of a century, claiming the lives of millions. It is estimated that there are well over 33 million people infected as of 2004.

In my first presentation, I examine the statistical effects of AIDS on the general population. Now, I am setting this opposed to the availability of treatments for the infection.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is the only drug company in the world to produce the chemical compounds that make up the composition of every brand of medicine used to treat AIDS. The most significant of these compounds are lamiduvine and zidovudine.

This series of mappings (generated by statistics as of 2005) aims to examine the AIDS pandemic as it infects world populations, and to compare it to the amount, availability, and location of these drugs produced by GSK. The following four mappings follow the key provided to the right. Any images can be clicked for a larger view.

reduction of the population

according to AIDS infections

GSK's manufacturing plants and the
percentages of treatment received by areas,
as an addition to the population.
The blue areas designate where more than 10% of the infected population
is able to receive treatment.

examining the GSK network only.
Make note of the locations of manufacturing plants
versus the areas of significantly treated populations.

When you examine each of these mappings under a real-world road map, you can see (something probably already obvious) that the more developed areas have more manufacturing plants. However, it is interesting to point out that while they may have more manufacturing plants, they don't necessarily have a higher treatment availability. In some cases, such as in Jamaica, treatment is manufactured but sold to other places, and the AIDS patients indigenous to Jamaica aren't receiving the treatment they need.

a satellite photo of the Earth superimposed
upon the treated population

the "world at night" imposed on the populations that

receive treatment

solar heat absorption map

superimposed upon the treated population

The following maps represent a rearrangement of population - the population that is treated for AIDS. It is referred to as the "GSK empire" and its manufacturing plants which are in the same scenario as the one in Jamaica are excluded from this megaContinent. It is placed opposed to the total untreated AIDS victims of the world, represented as negative land masses. The continent is composed of the treatment areas, arranged on top of each other according to the cities from which they receive the treatments. Take special notice of the manufacturing plants located outside of the continent but which fully contribute to supporting the megaContinent.

Here, the real-world map has been super-imposed on the megaContinent, showing the joining and connection of the most populated areas in the world.

the "world at night" as a treated megaContinent

solar heat absorption as a treated megaContinent

The next step, is to break apart this mass of healthcare and develop a means to transport these important drugs to the most remote corners of the Earth - the crisis areas that need them the most. Perhaps it can be a network with a series of travelling units containing these drugs, much like Archigram's Plug-In City proposes. The goal must be to break the megaContinent into small, functional, moveable pieces - components of a megaHealthcare facility that spreads the research and innovation of the developed world to the isolated ends of the globe.

So we know where AIDS is...now what about the treatment?

2006-11-01T14:17:00.000-05:00

I have spent my time researching the coverage of treatments in terms of the percentage of infected people in each country who are treated, as of 2005.

These two maps show (first) the prevalence of AIDS in 2005 and (second) the percentage of AIDS populations reached by treatment. The lighter areas in the first map indicate a higher percentage of AIDS prevalence, and the lighter areas in the second map indicate a higher percentage of treatment coverage.

the following map overlays the treatment coverage with the prevalence of 2005.

Monday's Presentation

2006-10-25T14:11:00.000-04:00

These are some highlights of Monday's presentation. I've posted some of the ideas that the jurors' comments sparked after these images and videos.

focus on the populations and their characteristics
say something NEW - what are the demographics that are affected by AIDS?

income

gender

race

religion

what can this map show about AIDS that is not already known or mapped out? maybe it can be mapped over some other mappings

overlaying it with wars (see Katy's map)

overlaying it with political unrest/developing countries

overlaying it with types of governments - making AIDS political

overlaid with weather conditions

overlaid with internet usage - Jason's language study

overlaid with airports - the travelling of the disease (Steven)

overlaying it with McDonalds locations (ha!)

could also relate to something like Walmart

relation of AIDS to global retail and language

3-dimensional population study

2006-10-23T14:54:00.000-04:00

2-dimensional animation

2006-10-23T14:52:00.000-04:00

formZ has AIDS

2006-10-16T13:57:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed working this weekend (well, as much as one enjoys working on the weekend) because we congregated at different people's apartments. Sometimes, it's a nice break to get out of the studio building and those uncomfortable stools, and it can be really motivational to just sit in someone's living room and all work really hard. I love how our work/studio is portable. I find it also helps me creatively to be able to change environments. Plus, I am less cranky and more interested in having brainstorming discussions with other members of the group than when I am stuck in Lee Hall.

I also REALLY enjoy this project - I think mapping is an extremely interesting subject - but technological problems are really taking their toll on my patience. So I spent the weekend struggling with formZ's error dialogues, and I have a lot of questions regarding simply forming the shapes I want. I must be a little rusty on all of this. The latest animation is also a little jumpy and I haven't quite figured out why. It gets the point across for now, though.

I am reposting the animation from last Friday, so you can compare it to today's animation right below it. I attempted to take Friday's idea and make it 3-dimensional. The height of the African land mass in this animation represents a population - the most populated areas being the highest, and AIDS cutting into the population.

Friday's 2-D animation:

Today's animation:

This animation was produced from a series of displaced surfaces using the following images. The lighest portions are the highest (and therefore most populated) areas of the land mass, and as you can see, this is a 2-dimensional representation of the infestation of AIDS.

the new Black Plague

2006-10-13T15:48:00.000-04:00

A brief return to 2-dimensional explores what it actually MEANS when a land is infected by AIDS. Does the clean, uninfected world remain as is, and the infected world become cast over by a shadow? Does the uninfected world turn a blind eye on the populations with AIDS?

The world turns its back on AIDS, as if people with AIDS disappear.
AIDS "eating" the world up until about 1993 (except for South America data).

AIDS nations shown without regard to actual land masses.

Another idea I am going to explore before Monday involves viewing the world as a series of populations, because AIDS affects populations, not land. I believe it will also make a more visually accurate mapping, because in places where AIDS has spread slower, there is also a lower population density, so showing the spread of the infection as shown above is somewhat misleading.

More on this to come Monday, which is why I requested to wait to have a desk crit, so I can get all my ideas constructed...since it took me constructing the above animations to come up with a better way. I need to move forward on my own a little, and still reflect on which type of map would best represent my data. I am struggling to understand what the types of maps even mean.

research...
I found this video of an AIDS cell attacking a cell in the brain. I thought it would be interesting, visually, to animate the spheres in these study animations as cells attacking the populations.

AWKWARD!

2006-10-11T14:35:00.000-04:00

I'm getting there - trying to work on not tracing. The latest animation shows factoring in the growth and numbers of AIDS-infected population. It does not take into account the ways in which AIDS was contracted, but the information is available, and I thought about mapping that through color differences, maybe.

Another idea I had was to have, after the spread of the disease is shown, the places where treatment is available (and how much of it is available in relation to the population). Therefore, maybe the difference between infected population and treatment availability could be mapped - showing the areas where treatment is in high demand.

If you compare the previous animation with the most recent animation, my idea is that these spheres leap from land to land, "infecting" it and spreading, as AIDS does to the human body. The land masses are supposed to be transparent (though it is hard to tell in these studies), so you can see AIDS "infecting" the land. I am having A LOT of trouble making the tools do things smoothly. The morph tool tends to make objects that seem like they should be simple, turn some of them into surface objects, etc (which is what happened in my animation for today).

Animation Creation

2006-10-09T14:26:00.000-04:00

Have started to try to plug my legitimate data into some sort of animation scheme, because I thought it was counter-productive to fool around with animations anymore, because I think I have a good basic understanding of how to do them.

Here is my animation from Wednesday.

Here are the beginnings of an animation with accurate data.

Thoughts on Breeze...
-The only thing I like about it is the file sharing and desktop sharing. I'm really not a fan of how the vocal communication works. Maybe it would be beneficial to speak through Skype while doing things through Breeze, too?

Next animation attempt

2006-10-06T17:58:00.000-04:00

Next attempt...sort of successful. Still can't get lighting to work, and just a matter of figuring out how to edit views. I want to be able to control the amount of time there is between view keyframes but I can't seem to do it.

Also, the shapes aren't at all looking nice how I want them to...but I guess you get the gist of it.

AIDS "jumping" to the US from Africa (1959)

PANDEMIC II: the global spread of frustration with formZ animation

2006-10-04T15:45:00.000-04:00

I've been messing around with formZ animations for the past couple days, and here's what I've done as far as experimenting with animations.

First attempt - showing a form growing across a map - used the morph tool.
Second attempt - experimenting with methods of animation, including:

changing colors
animating entities
animating along a path
morphing
having one object do many things at once
controlling more than one object at once

I attempted to control lights, but I had a problem where the light I was animating (and I tried it by both animating entities and simply moving the light) simply would not remain "on" while the animation was going.

Sea and Sky and everything in between

2006-10-02T01:18:00.000-04:00

At the moment, it is the largest standing hotel in the world. Dubai's Burj al-Arab Tower Hotel was built to be an icon; the oil-rich government of the United Arab Emirates hired South African architect Tom Wills-Wright to create a "Sydney Opera House for Dubai," something that would immediately say "Dubai" in the mind of someone who saw the magnificent skyscraper.

Modelled after a sail, it is highly structured in defense against the intense sea winds with a three-part exoskeleton. It is a lightly massive structure that appears to be floating on water - dangling off the coast by a mere miniscule land bridge. It is like a boat tied up, a boat that reaches to the sky and remains anchored.

To me, the most unique aspect of it is the fact that it has a helipad on its roof (alongside a tennis court and other "necessary" things) and a restaurant under it, which is accessible only by submarine. The entire hotel is also separated from the land. It is an island, essentially - a skyscraper island built high with dwellings. It reaches high to the airborn population with its helipad, and sinks below the water with its restaurant. It stands as a tall structure that touches all modes of transportation and levels of Earthly existence. These three "layers" of society are reached entirely by this one structure, but as it rests on the water.

I move on to ask this question: what happens when we have entire cities suspended off of a coast? Is this element of seclusion that the hotel already offers, which appeals to the wealthy vacationers, something that is desirable for people, whether vacationing or not?

Conceptually, in section the important part of this hotel is that it reaches these earthly elements of water, land, and air, enabling three different methods of transportation to reach the building. Otherwise, it is the fact that it is located so far off the shore and floating on the water - isolated from the city yet still connected through a spectacular view of the city, from the tennis courts atop or the rooms within.

sources:
Great Buildings of the World, Time. p. 128
Emporis Buildings (images and information)

both illustrations are original.

PANDEMIC: the spread of AIDS

2006-10-01T20:14:00.000-04:00

pan·dem·ic (păn-dĕm'ĭk) n. Epidemic over a wide geographic area.

BACKGROUND
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), caused by the HIV virus, is theorized to have originated in the species of chimpanzee known as the sooty mangabey, which mainly inhabit the region of Guinea-Bissau. In 1959, the two earliest known cases were recorded - the first one in the Belgian Congo, and the second in Manhattan. Cases were very sporadically diagnosed, steadily increasing in number and location over the next 25 years, adn then had a spike in the 1980s. Originally thought to have been related to homosexual sex, it was called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) until 1982, when it was decided that the number of cases found in heterosexual women disproved that theory. Today, there are anywhere from 33.4 million - 46.0 million people living with the HIV virus.

The data available contains some level of error. Before the late 1980s, doctors were not educated on the symptoms of AIDS and it was still thought to be new to the United States. For these reasons, diagnoses were rare and the disease was still not widespread. Later on, scientists examined remains of people who had died of similar symptoms in the 1960s and 1970s, and found that as a general rule, AIDS was not widespread and these people had not been misdiagnosed in their lifetimes. Therefore, scientists and doctors believe that the sudden growth of AIDS in the 1980s was not due to a raised awareness in the medical field, but does serve as a fairly accurate judge of the spread of the actual disease.

(click for larger view)

APPROACH
As you can see from the images displayed, I am working on compiling the data of the simple area spread of the disease, and I will show that in one or a series of flash animations. What will occur three-dimensionally will be done in FormZ, and that will include the data of population infected numbers in regions. The reason is that I want to show simply the spread of infection across the continents without regards to population statistics. The
three-dimensional map will show the problem areas, areas where the disease has most successfully infiltrated the population.

(click images for a larger view)

PURPOSE
I believe that this data can be useful conceptually as a visual display of the disease's spread across the globe. AIDS, like global warming and radiation, spreads rapidly and widely, being passed from person to person. I will express the areas of the Earth in which the disease is present during given periods of its development and spread, and I will also express the differences in population infection. The mappings will display the fact that the area where AIDS is the most prevalent is sub-Saharan Africa and least prevalent is Southeast Asia, for example. I hope that these mappings could give a good visual of exactly what it means for the world to be at the mercy of a pandemic, and a graphic understanding of the parts of the world that need help the most.

so close...yet so far.

2006-09-22T15:30:00.000-04:00

stealing the router...

sanding...

most of the chair...HOTT.

Weee!!

SUMOlicious

2006-09-20T14:50:00.000-04:00

Nate and Jason's recent test run:

Katy's SUMO man:

foamtastic

2006-09-20T13:54:00.000-04:00

All inner foam ribs are cut and glued in their pieces (5 layers thick). And our hands are covered in Gorilla glue/every particle of anything in the woodshop.

CNC update

2006-09-19T15:15:00.000-04:00

We've been working hard all day so far (and some of us last night) getting this foam cut - the foam is well on its way to completely cut, and the glueing process has started. Here are some process photos for you.

securing it to the CNC bed

CNC router in action

sanding off the tabs

jig set up for glueing

spreading glue

lining up the foam on the glue

the layers are compressed by scrap wood and left to dry

!

megaTunnel

2006-09-15T14:58:00.000-04:00

The subways have long been occupying the subterranean spaces of cities, and roads have cut through mountains and cliffs in the form of tunnels. Boston's "Big Dig" is an attempt to drop the major arteries of traffic below the city to expose space for beauty and leisure in place of chaotic traffic.

More important, I think, than the technicalities of what the "Big Dig" project is attempting to accomplish, is what this thinking - traffic below, walking up top - could accomplish if implemented in more cities.

Take, for instance, what this project is attempting to do to the pace of Boston's movement. The quick traffic hurries below ground, while short-distances are accomplished above ground. Two aspects of a day are separated by place: the fast-paced rush hour and the slow-paced lunch hour, for instance. It could mean the displacement of population based upon the time of day. It could mean that the dark underground is associated with fast movement, long-distances and getting from point A to point B, and the day-lit upper ground becomes the place for errands, working, and leisure.

original illustration

Could it be that from 8-9 every morning and 5-6 every night, the underground is lit with streams of headlights and tail lights, while the upper ground remains a calm, walkable city? For an American city, I believe this could be an accomplishment - to combine the incredible efficiency and speed of the American mentality with the leisurely walkable distances of a European city.

original illustration

Because the "Big Dig" will decongest the intense traffic in Boston, people will get from A to B more quickly as well, not having to combine with the slower people, wandering from here to there and parking and such.

While this project is being widely criticized for the amount of money and the technical difficulties it has experienced, I believe (especially now that there is no turning back) that the project is a worthwhile experiment and will truly lead to more urban possibilities in the future of city growth all over the country.

sources:
Boston Central Artery/Tunnel History

images courtesy of:
Boston Central Artery/Tunnel History
Boston Photos

cushion

2006-09-15T14:19:00.000-04:00

i've been experimenting with mattress coverings, and on the study model i applied simple egg-crate foam. right now it is pinned to a cardboard backing, but that won't be necessary on the final because of the solid nature of the structure.

i was planning to attempt a covering, but maybe we can discuss leaving foam cushioning exposed. i do think the egg crate foam actually looks pretty hott.

thoughts

2006-09-13T21:06:00.000-04:00

I felt that studio was really successful today...sometimes it's good to just be able to work through it and check in to show progress, unless we're really stuck and need some feedback. Or maybe on group projects it is a good idea that some people work while others talk. I do feel that our class-long discussions are important, but maybe not three days a week.

Anyhow, I'm really excited about our progress - it's one thing to have a model, and another to have a model that you can sit in. I think this project is going to turn out better than I'd originally imagined.

proposed materials/budget estimates

2006-09-10T20:41:00.000-04:00

This design is SERIOUSLY beyond our budget. We need to make revisions.

Plywood ribs:

At Lowe's, plywood costs $45.95 for a 4' x 8' x 3/4" oak sheet (7 ply).
There is also the option to use pine, depending on the other structural considerations, which costs $24.95 for a a 4' x 8' x 23/32" sheet.
It looks as though each rib area-wise will take about two sheets of plywood, because there is not a good way to orient the pieces in order to fit more wood on one sheet, unless the pieces are divided up smaller. It is proposed that each rib is two layers thick.

Each rib (using pine) would cost about $99.80.
So far there are six ribs proposed, amounting to a total in plywood alone of $598.80.

Joining the ribs would be 9 threaded rods.

Lowe's has threaded rod (1/2") for $6.47/yd.
This will require 9 rods, each being 30 inches in length.

The total for threaded rod would be $58.23.

Cushioning and Insulation:

The cost of a simple twin-sized piece of foam matress pad at Walmart is $9.94.
Spray foam (cellulose - used in attics) at Lowe's costs $7.97 for 40 sq.ft.
Fabric covering:

to cover the insulation, we need roughly 205 sq. ft. (2.5 width linear measurement)
fabrics at Walmart cost anywhere from $0.99/yd. to $40.00/yd.

selecting a mid-range linen (for durability), it is $4.99/yd.

I believe that 1 twin foam pad will be enough to cushion the occupiable areas, costing $9.94.
The one package of spray foam will be enough - $7.97.
We will need 23 yd. of fabric - costing $114.77.
The total for the cushioning/insulating system is $132.68.

It seems that the biggest challenge will be what to do about the transluscent side panels.

The side panels must have a level of structural value.
The most durable and translucent (or available in translucent shades) material is Lexan.
We need roughly 24 sq. ft. of Lexan , and most widths come in 4' x 8' sheets, so we would need to buy three.
The best option is Lexan 9034. The best price I found for a 4' x 8' sheet was 1/4" thickness for $307.82.
Half-inch thickness costs $672.60.

The cost of the Lexan, if we go for 1/4" thickness, would be $923.46.

Lowe's and Home Depot both did not have the high-density foam (at least according to their employees) and I am having trouble finding it online. My father's business actually works with Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) which the technical name for what we need, and he is going to email me a powerpoint about it later on tonight.

The total budget (according to the model presented today) that does not include the door, hardware, all AV equipment, material for the handle system and the foam is

$1713.17!!!

Wheel o' Ron

2006-09-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

Nate Dicks, Mandi Young, Nicole Carter, Jason Flemming, Melissa Vandiver, Trevor Jordan

The basic focuses of our project are portability, versatility, and privacy. We wanted to provide the occupant with the option of being sealed up for privacy, or occupying the exterior of the space. We maximize these choices by the cylindrical shape: not only does it provide portability, but also the choice to rotate it and occupy it in different ways.

side elevations (wheel is closed)

side sections

front elevation with wheel sealed (left)
front section exposing structure of seat and occupant (right)

Shown in the model and the above front elevation is a sliding door which will contain the monitor and a folding desk. Other proposals for entrance to the enclosed area (one would be chosen based on cost-effectiveness and technical feasability) include zipping into it from the side panel, or making the side panel able to be swung open.

The basic structure would be made of wood, and the sides out of translucent lucite panels. The interior around the structure would be coated in sound-absorbing foam, as well as the exterior seating places. More insulated foam would be placed inside the structure of the seating areas.

9/6/06 Revised proposal

2006-09-06T17:32:00.000-04:00

.....and....... Mandi's blog has more

the techniques of sound control

2006-09-04T14:09:00.000-04:00

by melissa and nate

Keys to soundproofing:
1. Density- making sound pass through multilayered material with different densities is effective in reducing noise.

Sound Absorbing Materials: cork board, carpet, open-celled foam, wood, chair, person, blankets (fiberglass, felt, wood wool), perforated tiles etc., lead

diffuser panel (diffuses sound to prevent interrupting waves)

foam

spray-in open-cell foam insulation

multi-density composite fiber panel

vinyl sound barrier

2. Isolation- isolating the station from other surfaces by using buffering materials will prevent sound from escaping and entering the station

-Rubber or vibration absorbing buffers between structure and ground/floor/walls

-Cavity within walls reduces vibrations (outer wall furred-out)

3. Shape-the shape of the station will determine how the sound is distributed. Because the station will be relatively small, this is not as important of an issue as materials is, but it could inform the design of the structure and overall shape of the station.

-Concave shapes reflect sound back to the source

-A spherical shape, like the egg chair Katy mentioned, will focus the sound to the center and not allow much exterior noise.

-Absorbent material will be necessary regardless of the shape because of the scale of the project.

Speaker Placement: the issue here is to prevent feedback between the microphone(s) and the speakers. If the speakers are kept in front of the mic, there shouldn't be a problem. A highly sensitive area mic would make Ron's voice echo on his end. A directional mic could solve this problem by placing the mic close to the user. This type of mic, however, should not be pointed in the direction of a speaker or feedback will result.

Here are some proposed methods to controlling the spatial characteristics of sound based on body position and environment. The following are mentioned in Sound:Space by Bernhard Leitner.

speakers are represented by blue circles

dotted lines designate the direction of sound waves
all illustrations are original

the Itaipu Dam, revisited

2006-08-31T23:00:00.000-04:00

image courtesy www.wikipedia.org

What are the basic points of importance in a dam? There is the creation of a floodplain, a new basin of land fit for inhabitance and farming - a new source of resources. There is the creation of a reservoir, in this case, the re-routing of the Paranà River between Brazil and Paraguay. There is the creation (generation) of power, the basic entity which allows modern society to function and develop.

Dimensionally, the dam is the largest in the world, spanning the same distance as the width of Manhattan Island. It generates the most power of any dam in the entire world, 90 billion kWh (kilowatt hours) per year. As shown in the following images, that is about 98 percent of the power that Manhattan Island consumes per year. The most powerful hydroelectric plant in the United States (Grand Coulee Dam) has the capacity to power only about three quarters of Manhattan Island.

This amazing amount of power is produced with very minimal carbon dioxide emissions - it gives modern society its fuel and causes very little damage to the environment. Hydroelectric power is still a relatively underdeveloped technology.

(above) Grand Coulee's capacity in relation to Manhattan Island
(below) Itaipu's capacity in relation to Manhattan Island

In the business of re-routing rivers, the Itaipu dam has created the seventh-largest man-made body of water in the world. The re-routing of the river is a mega-adjustment, a reconstruction of what Mother Nature had built on her own. I feel that this is the most interesting aspect of the concept of the dam - the re-routing of the course of nature. For the sake of power production and population growth, some of the world's major rivers may be re-routed. Perhaps entire cities will be built, displaced from where nature intended they be. The dam is a symbol of mankind's increasing power over its world but is a refreshingly safe way to control it.

unattributed images are original illustrations, photos courtesy Google Earth

SOURCES:
www.wikipedia.org
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/itaipu.html
http://www.itaipu.gov.br/

the Plug-In City

2006-08-30T14:30:00.001-04:00

Roughly forty-five years ago, Peter Cook of Archigram began work on the Plug-In City, and members of Archigram continued to develop the project in greater detail until 1966.

A megastructure of infrastructure connects towering silos of moveable units - later dubbed "capsules" - so that shops can relocate with changes in business and a family can move on a whim, all connected to a grid providing each capsule with its necessary functions - power, water, and means of communication. Each silo has its own purpose, from schools to commerce to dwellings.

The mobility of these capsules is provided by giant cranes which lift and move them; the mobility of the essential functions is proposed to be provided by hovercraft moving in between the silos.

drawing by Peter Cook

original illustration

On a human scale, the plug-in city represents possibilities and a return of civilized culture to a nomadic population, with the abilities and desires to move in short periods of time. It will turn into a mobile and well-connected culture, a population accustomed to following jobs and other resources as they move. The obstacles of relocation will be significantly reduced, and jobs, houses, and lives will become semi-permanent and more worldly.

This society built upon temporary elements would ironically become more permanent. The adaptability of the small details to a gradually changing civilization would keep society alive, revisable, and workable, reducing the need for mass reconstruction. The ever-moving and ever-changing elements of the design would create a large-scale level of solidity and stability that the world has not yet experienced.drawings courtesy of Archigram
original illustration

These semi-nomadic people, with their travelling shops and homes, would be part of a megastructure of resources, just as earlier civilizations built around their resources. This is just an expansion upward and outward of the resources. This level of connectivity via resources is a permanent house for impermanent objects.

This megastructure is meant to infiltrate the city as already built, using paths made by roads for cranes and expanding on infrastructure that already exists. Archigram even went on to propose that this megastructure could penetrate city boundaries and connect entire countries. Might we see entire countries covered in a mega-grid of power, water, and transportation (both the transportation of capsules and of people)?

drawing courtesy of Archigram
original illustration

The Plug-In City would serve as a physical representation of mobility and adabtability while also promoting a unity and connection that modern society has yet to see. We are exchanging information faster and further than ever before, and the Plug-In City would help to turn this virtual exchange into something tangible - the efficient and easy exchange of physical objects and space, and the direct sharing of physical resources over the vastest expanses.

sources:
ARCHIGRAM.
Cook, Peter
Chalk, Warren

Archigram: Architecture without Architecture.
Sadler, Simon

contact

2006-08-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

I believe that part of the point of studying architecture is to learn to establish a new means to the same end; in this studio, that means to find a new way to communicate the elements of a project. The reason (however intimidating it seems) I chose to remain in this studio section is to learn some new technologies and to exercise problem-solving skills in order to better be prepared for what the future of architecture and architectural study is.

I really look forward to sharpening my computer skills and learning some basics of web presentation, also attempting to sharpen my problem-solving skills by learning how to combine architecture with web design. I also hope to learn to become more self-taught in that the professor is not present and I will have to rely more heavily on my own skills in order to get things done well and correctly.