As technology makes communication and perhaps even sovereignty more fluid will humans flock to the sea to realize such benefits?
Parti Friedman, Executive Director of the Sea Steading Institute, paints a future scenario in which modular ocean-based living transforms government, democracy and, most importantly, quality of life.
In recent years forward-looking architects and designers have been pushing out the leading edge of advanced energy systems for built environments. Along the way they have created a new marketplace for integrated energy solutions with lower costs and improved performance. Their efforts have been supported by the growing list of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings.
On Tuesday, Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, NC, became the first hotel to be awarded the LEED Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED is the USGBC’s rating system for designing and constructing the world’s greenest, most energy efficient, and high performing buildings.
Opened in late 2007, the Proximity (videos) was designed to use 40% less energy and 30% less water than comparable hotels. It along with the adjacent Print Works Bistro are the first hotel and first restaurant to obtain the USGBC’s top level certification.
“When we started the design process four years ago, I would have never believed that we could use 41% less energy and 33% less water without one iota of compromise in comfort or luxury and with minimal additional construction costs,” says Dennis Quaintance, the CEO and CDO (Chief Design Officer) of builder Quaintance-Weaver “It just goes to show what a determined team can accomplish if they use common sense and get a little bit of help from the sun.”
By replacing valuable natural resources and costly labor with technology we can change the very equation around which the inputs and outputs of our built environments are constructed. The justification: we need more for less.
Our environments are poised to become hosts to ever more powerful technologies in the coming years that will seek to cause deep rooted and meaningful change in our everyday quality of life. These technologies will be increasingly pervasive, as they become commonplace in our schools, our offices, and more importantly our homes. Our homes, arguably the most important and widely used of all life’s platforms, are already on the brink of dramatic change. Environmental degradation, a crisis of sustainability in home-ownership, the need for enhanced learning and education, millions of people aging in place, and ever increasing demands on our time are the driving forces that have resulted in these social imperatives:
1. Reduce resource consumption
2. Integrate learning into everyday activity
in the home
3. Allow people to live long and healthy lives in their homes
4. Save time and improve decision making through better access to information.
With this understanding major companies and universities are striving to foster a massive convergence of off the shelf and cutting edge technologies with homes of the future.
I recently came upon an interesting article about a village in Japan being built entirely out of Styrofoam. The walls of these buildings are pretty thick, but it only takes three people a few hours to assemble and a layer of mortar and paint ensure protection from the elements. Here’s a short clip of the actual assembly…
Having grown up in a Bucky Fuller dome structure, I immediately took a liking to this shape. Not only is the dome incredibly strong, but it also uses less material than the average home. But having also been raised by hippies, any mention of the word Styrofoam sends chills down my spine. I agree, it’s a great material for a dome structure in that it’s highly insulated against cold and hot temperatures and, like in the video, very easy to build. But there are myriad problems with such a building material.
For instance, the disposal of the houses would be an environmental catastrophe. Also, imagine the toll that 20 years of sun and rain would exert on such a light and highly corrosive structure. There’s a reason water is called the Universal Solvent – it can eat through just about anything given enough time. The idea of an entire village, much less a country, having all its Styrofoam houses replaced is staggering (maybe ship them to war-torn countries to be made into napalm?).
Men have a infamous tendency to let their phallic tendencies dictate what they create. It is perhaps why some of the most famous builds like the Great Pyramids, Taj Majal and the Washington monument were made.
So, it didn’t surprise me when I recently read about an effort to create the world’s first male organ controlled computer.
So now that men have brought the inevitable to the realm of technology, I wonder how else humans of the future might interact with their computers?
With the recent (or not so recent) popularity of Nintendo Wii and its gyroscopic features, the rest of the human-computer interface market seems to have entered an innovative period. It looks rather likely that we’ll soon be playing games through VR googles, gesturing in the air to perform fluid dynamics calculations and maybe even writing Dear-John letters by thought alone.
Best of all, we won’t have wait decades for many of these advances as some amazing new products are already in prototype and will be market-ready in the very near-term. Here are some of the particularly interesting interface candidates:
1. In 2004, four people, two of them partly paralyzed wheelchair users successfully moved a computer cursor with a sensor cap that reads your brain with electrodes. In late February, technology pioneer Emotiv Systems announced the EPOC neuroheadset, a light weight, inexpensive ($300 USD), wireless headset that detects conscious thoughts, expressions, and emotions. Emotiv’s aim is the video games market and could open up a whole new generation of emotional immersive-ness in games.”
2. A modern take on a classic: The Livescribe pulse Smartpen is a pen that doubles as a stereo voice recorder, a music player, and most unique of all, a tiny infrared camera that picks up commands from a specially designed notebook. The ‘Dot’ notebook has record, pause, stop, playback, and navigation ‘buttons’ that you can tap on the bottom of the page to control the pen.
3. How about turning ANY surface, wall, table, or floor into a primary input device that can read handwriting, act as a musical instrument, a touchpad, or even a keyboard if you’re so inclined. The technology is called Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction (TAI-CHI) and the power is in sound waves.
James Law Cybertecture International has just debuted its design
of the so called Intelligent Egg, a building that represents an
unprecedented combination of architecture and technology.
The intelligent environments created in the design offer a
glimpse into what we might see in homes and buildings in the next
ten years. Intelligent environments (also called ambient
intelligence) offer the opportunity to drastically change our
quality of life, our level of interaction with our surroundings,
and our ability to choose our surroundings. They represent a
plausible evolution that brings aspects of the virtual world into
our built environment.
Intelligent systems and design are incredibly ambitious in the
so called “Egg” project. Looking at the occupant as a user systems
are designed around very personal and customizable need. Bathrooms
are designed to monitor a “users” health and alert a doctor if
needed. So called users can also change their view, choosing from
real time scenery from around the world.
So called cybertecture is a form of design that integrates
multimedia, intelligent systems, technology, and interactivity to
create customizable living and working spaces focused on
experiences, health, and productivity. coined by James Law in 2001,
IT aims to create environments of the future with a focus on
technology and lifestyle. Interaction with ones environment through
the use of this technology is a key design philosophy. In
Cybertecture the hardware (buildings, interiors, materials) are
intertwined with software (the use of technology) creating a
balance design view whereby both have equal prominence.
Cybertecture has begun to focus much more on the residential
market. Recently it was announced that a company in Dubai has
commissioned James Law to construct a large residential tower for
young professionals below the age of thirty.
Events of the last five years have shown us that living on the
grid, dependent on large utility companies, has been anything but
stable. Large electric companies, still reliant on fossil fuel to
generate power, have been forced to raise prices dramatically. An
antiquated series of electrical lines, transformers, and switches
have produced devastating blackouts that have cost our economy
billions. With global demand for energy expected to rise, and the
cost of upgrading infrastructure approaching hundreds of billions,
living off the grid may become a highly plausible and desirable
future for many people.
In order to live off the grid you need to tie production and
consumption together, creating small scale systems for water and
power that require no outside support. It also requires a heavy
dose of conservation and efficiency, utilizing a system that
operates within the constraints of a limited source. Living off the
grid requires a large up front investment in equipment and
expertise, and a pioneering spirit. Costs for solar and wind
generation systems routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars,
yielding a cost per kilowatt hour that exceeds that of the grid.
Nonetheless it is becoming an option many people are beginning to
consider as the marketplace changes. More and more people are
looking to raw materials for energy that are free, inexhaustible,
and clean.
As innovation and subsidies collide in the market to create
critical mass for residential solar and wind systems, it is
reasonable to expect demand for these technologies to grow.
According to Solar Buzz, a San Francisco-based industry research
company, demand for solar power has grown 20-25% a year for the
last twenty years. Many of these applications of solar power come
in the form of on the grid solutions, however many of these are
distributed at the point of use. It is however the biggest choice
for off the grid applications. Demand has grown so fast that more
silicon now goes into photovoltaics than computer chips.
(cont.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveils an exhibition that shows
the technological innovation behind the pre-fabricated home. These
made to order homes may represent the homes of the future.
Highlighting the growing innovation in pre-fab homes, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled an exhibit highlighting the
technological innovation behind the pre-fab home and how designers
are responding to global trends.
Unveiled at the show will be a full scale prototype of the
System 3, a design by Architects Oskar Kaufman and Albert Ruf.
After years of pursuing the optimum in high quality low cost
design, the System 3 is the pinnacle of austere elegance. Looking
like a direct cousin of a shipping container the System 3 abandones
traditional notions of architectural design. The truly intersting
aspect of it’s design however is it’s ability to be “stacked”,
taking multiple units and creating anything from hotels to office
towers and luxury villas. (cont.)
With all the media attention focused on the financial chaos of
the housing industry, technology is emerging as an even more
powerful force of change. More and more home buyers are placing
emphasis on technology, or lack thereof, in the process of buying
their new home. This is causing a surge in demand for technologies
that are changing the way we have looked at homes for generations,
all driven by an increasingly educated home buyer that’s
looking toward the future for efficient new products and
solutions.
Industry experts, corporations, and consumers are all pointing
to the same trend within the housing industry: the home is no
longer looked at as mere bricks and mortar, but rather as a
technological platform with the capability to adapt. Technology is
seen as a means to carry the concept of an affordable and liveable
private home into the 21st century, a concept now under attack.
Homes, followed by cars, represent the single biggest investment
for the average American. They also consume the most resources,
causing the biggest pain to our wallets. They are also a place
where we spend a significant amount of time, perhaps our most
important resource of all. There is no doubt that the home
represents a major part of our lives, both economically and in
terms of quality of life.
Despite some advances the home has been slow to change hundreds
of years. Studies have shown that the housing industry has been the
least innovative of our major industries despite its size. Most
people realize this is unsustainable, given the problems facing the
world today. In response consumers are creating an insatiable
demand for technology within the home. (cont.)
When form meets function in an elegant manner the new whole can
more than equal the sum of the components. That was the second
thing that popped into my head upon seeing the new interactive drum
table created by a company called Musical Furnishings.
The first was that I want one of these tables to bang on,
ASAP! (Hint, hint, future present
givers.)
Take a look for yourself:
As far as future relevance, a compelling drum table allows me to
imagine just how interactive ALL
furniture, and physical objects in general, will eventually become.
As sensors get smaller, the whole world will become an interactive
I/O device. Throw in some augmented reality, huge content (sound,
visual, 3d) databases, and haptics and all of a sudden our concept
of reality is challenged.
The economy is a funny thing. As oil prices, and commodity
prices in general, have gone wild in the past year or so, there are
many interesting ripple effects. Some are obvious and quantifiable,
such as the increase in venture capital investment into
green/alternative energy sources and plummeting SUV sales. But here is a micro-trend that could gain
some traction if oil prices continue to rise. A farmer in Indiana
installed a drill on his property that produces about 3 barrels of
oil a day – worth almost $400 dollars at today’s price of about
$130/barrel.
Of course you have to have oil in your backyard to actually make
this work – but if oil ever gets to be the same price as gold –
then we’ll really see a trend in backyard prospecting.
Inspired by the hover board flown by Marty McFly in Back to the
Future Part 2, released back in 1989, British company
HoverIt,
Ltd. has designed the world’s first consumer-ready hover chair.
Available fot just under $10,000 U.S. the hover chair works like a
mag-lev train, floating above a set of powerful magnets.
Check out this demo to see for yourself:
In case you’re concerned about the lifespan of the hover chair
there’s no need to worry. The magnets require no re-charge and will
shed just 2% of their power over the first 20 years of use.
While the hover chair of course falls into the novelty category
at this early stage, I can imagine a variety of future applications
for long-lived magnetics that include shock absorption while
walking or gliding, new-fangled fitness training equipment and
ultimately some sort of hover board that works in concert with a
gyroscopically regulated platform such as the one at the heart of
the Segway
human transporter. (cont.)
justification: we need more for less.
driven by an increasingly educated home buyer that’s
looking toward the future for efficient new products and
solutions.