NYMPHAEACEAE
Aquatic Energy Carrier System
DS1 2011/12
Seif El-Din Shawky / MAA 2012
Our purpose is to formulate a fragment of infrastructure, an input/output component that integrates into a supply-demand based adaptive mainframe, or the aptly named smart city. In this case of our studio’s agenda, my objective was specifically an energy-driven design with the starting point being a power source, animated by the potentials of salt as resource and out-at-sea deployment. It was always meant to produce more than it consumes, a culmination of conservation, filling in the gap in the urban operating system. Continuing that, the proposal revolves around the development of a prototypical unit, which moves across the aquatic territories of Barcelona, yet moves seemingly on its own. It’s propulsion is the wind, it’s battery is a salt-fresh chemical cataclysm, it’s generator a simple piezoelectric bimorph energy harvester, and it’s guide a control center at the Estany de cal Tet in Llobregat’s marshland. Working essentially on the parameters of wind speed, direction and a feedback inverse rotation mechanism, it is parametric in the sense that it is dynamically-oriented in both program and form. Nymphaeaceae acts on two levels; as a singular unit, and as a collective. It is not a notion of imposition, it is an environment that succumbs to its surroundings.
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‘Ode to Salt’ is a series of films with focus on remedying the Llobregat delta’s delicate eco-system and symbiotic relationship with the port of Barcelona through a milieu of reformative interventions. The title is inspired by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s poem ‘Ode to Salt’, and is derived from salt as a tangible yet ethereal and elastic medium through which the emergence of large urban structures out at sea may crystallize.
However, note the following film is a narrative-driven segment with an atmospheric quality. It is not meant as a concrete realisation of physicality but rather as a demonstration of the forces at play and the underlying potentials existing within the site.
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‘RS1 : Emergent Territories second phase studio workshop at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalunya’
iaacblog.com/maa2011-2012-emergentterritories/
Ode to Salt Series 3.2012
Ode to Salt Series 4.2012
Prototype Development : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZeRDMue4cY&feature=youtu.be
IaaC MAA_11-12 Emergent Territories