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

'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.

-

'DS1 : Emergent Territories second phase studio workshop at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalunya'

http://legacy.iaacblog.com/maa2011-2012-emergentterritories/

/ June 2012

The current agenda is a take on the notion of juxtaposition; a nomadic town on the aquatic landscapes of the Mediterranean sea by the port of Barcelona that expands and dilates standard urban protocols over an entire site, in this case being the open sea. Anchored at the Llobregat delta by the port, it focuses on the notions of autonomy, public ownership, and a dynamic process of formation, using the potential of the sea itself as a deployment environment in which salt is the key ingredient.

Construction is based on a fast setting process. Using the latent technologies in digitally-controlled construction and fabrication, these constructions take place in basins, in which a highly concentrated brine solution is injected into. A mesh is placed in the shape of the desired cast and iron rods are charged with a minor amount of electricity further accelerating the final growth stage till first transport.