Soundscape is a landscape itself and sound is our building. The cloud of particles, sound waves and vibrations, there is a great potential for an extraordinary future… This is a celebration, this is an innovation, this is future… This is “a new humanism”. Basically, the project itself is an innovation. It is a proposal for future energy generation alternatives. We are focusing on piezoelectric technologies to develop them regarding using sound vibrations.

Sound is everywhere. When we go deeper in nano-scale; we can realize that every particle has its’ own movement, vibration and sound. Even our body, organs and movement have the specific vibes. Imagine capturing this great noise; and converting it to something incredible. Think, how our world will change if we can charge our devices with out own heartbeat. Realize how much you can produce if you cooperate with the other people. We are making people aware of their own potential power and uniting them on the way of producing more…

Our Soundscape is taking reference from Jeremy Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution, and it is theoretically applied to the project. As an ecolé, our project is a “power plant” which as it is own energy cycle and completely self-sufficient. All the consumption could be maintained by the expected sound production, converted to energy.   ıt is very important to know the expectation and respond with the suitable amount of device, particles, technology and structural approach for our design.  As we are particularly interested in really small scales, we needed to be more precise and depended into scientific values.

Introduction : http://youtu.be/QFffczQLqrg

Our project is called Soundscape; which is a open innovation area, regarding energy generation. Soundscape is located in Barcelona KEY Project site, which is a research and development project, so that, it is a great combination in order to responding the projects goal. Barcelona Key Project is located at the end of Avenue Diagonal, and it is the extension of Barcelona city. As a result of this, it is developing and mostly under construction. In cooperation with Barcelona City’s’ municipality, BCNKEY Project is all about knowledge and educational and economic up growth.

Coming to the analysis of Barcelona City, we mainly focused on economic and sound data of the city. The city is leading Spain, towards tourism, knowledge and economy and it is classified as 22^nd best city in Europe regarding science in excellence and the top 10^th city which; people mostly desire to live at.

Focusing on Barcelona’s sound data, it is obliviously seen that it is a highly noisy city. This issue could be classified as a negative point of a peaceful city, but in out case, this is not a matter of disadvantage, moreover, we want to have more sound and noise in the city, and turn our to be a benefit for our Soundscape Project. Sound and music is perfectly blended with the city atmosphere and it is a huge part of it. Even Barcelona’s economic turnover somehow consists of sound festivals, mainly called, Sonar Sound Festival and Primavera Sound Festival.

To explain the sound analysis more specifically; at the first step we searched for the most noise producing activities in Barcelona; such as schools, traffic, festivals, football games, and focused on their contribution to the sound pollution. According to the sound pollution survey of the Barcelona Municipality, we found out that music events and nightlife consists of more than %20 of the sound pollution, whereas traffic is only %4.

Apart from the survey, we measured Barcelona KEY sites’ sound input and also the citys’ activities in order to have the real-time data and mapping of sound. As a result, the sound levels appeared less than 60dB, if there is no activity and people interaction. Additionally, the weather analysis combined with sound data shows that, wind and rain contributes to the city sound input, with more than 50 dB, with more than 55 days per year.Barcelona Key sound levels can be classified as 3 categories; low, medium and high; following the numbers, 65 dB, 70 – 80 dB and 95dB, depending on the day, time, traffic, people interaction, activities and weather.

Finally, we did another analysis on our site regarding the sound; to calculate and theoretically propose the direction of sound, to make the basic decisions of our design, location and orientation. This analysis with arduino and sound sensor and visualized the directional sound data of our site.

Soundscape is an interactive space, working with cooperation and exploration. It is a free will, to choose your own path, and also realize your own power in your personal journey, moreover interacting with the others and creating empathy with all the participants and realizing the amount of power that can be generated with cooperation.

As the surrounding layer of all metaphors, sound is our building on our site. Sound is a bubble, which we live in, and it is a significant over if you know how to look and see it. More than being a space, we are proposing an experimental atmosphere, which you can live, feel, contribute, experiment and experience everything depended to sound. We are proposing 8 experiences on our site; such as, acoustic levitation, visualization, city sound footprint (heat with sound), echo, resonance mediums and presence of absence; which is silence. These 8 experiences are not only considered as understanding sound properties, but also creating empathy and interaction between participants, at the same time producing energy. In soundscape, you are expected to use all your senses beside hearing and sound making abilities, and cooperate with all the people there, to grow the energy produced.

In our case, if there is sound, there is the building. If there is the building, here comes energy production. That means, we only have to create some vibes, as our heart beats continuously.

As a result of the program; in our Soundscape, everybody is both creator, participant and power supply of new generation.

The table shows the experiences related to the source of sound that is introduced, the senses that are activated, the state of users (if they are active or passive) and the
number of people needed to participate for the best performance. Each experience has a value, a reason for which is implemented and it contributes to empathize people
with the sound energy production.

Grid: from rigid lines to fluid curves

Layers
Water, People, Vibrations

Building with Sound
Sound is a wave. It needs a source to be produced, for our case people and the city, a medium to be vibrated. Main aim of design was from the bigining to play with these unseen and exciting properties of sound. So, rather than designing a typical building we started designing possible configurations of these sound layers.

Technology :   http://youtu.be/qFL1T54wvfw

Our aim of this research was to find new ways to use the sounds that is caused in the city by various activity and produce energy. We found piezoelectric materials are the best material that can produce energy from vibration. Our major challenge was to prove them productive. We treated sound as a vibration and started applying sound of various frequency and amplitude.

We started our research of finding the best piezo material. Initially we used the piezo disc, which needs an external object to vibrate with sound and continuously tap on the discs. But the amount of energy produced by that was very low. Later as we continued the research we found researchers form Sungkyunkwan University (Republic of Korea) are generating new nanomaterials that can capture very minute vibrations and produce energy. They used zincoxide nanowires and graphene sheets. Using zincoxide nanwires they were able to produce 50mV. We even found piezoelectric fibre composite materials are capable of capturing vibrations and produce energy, study on this materials made to visit Department of Applied Physics, UPC. With the discussion with Diego Ocha we were able to understand the properties of the materials.

We started applying sound on the piezoelectric fibre composite material strips of varying width and found the one 54mm wide gave us more output of about 3.5 V/sec the maximum and was giving a output of about 1.75 V/sec on an average. This made us to use the materials as an important element for our design and we started developing a component.

Our component is a pole that behaves like the theremin music instrument. It reacts with the radiowaves of people, vibrating itself and producing sound. It is alive like a tree. It grows with sound and it is feeded with it. It captures solar heat and converts it into sound. As As was the case of dandelion it has leaves, thin and flexible ZnO nanowires, that vibrate with sound and produce energy.

The Component

The component that we came up was verticals poles with the strips that can change their height as per the real time sound around the site in order to capture maximum sound vibrations into the strips and even to control the effect of external sound into the site. Every pole were made up to 4 poles of reducing diameters for allowing the pole to go inside one other to have a free vertical movement to react to the real time sound data.

As per our design we ended up having around 3518 poles with each pole having around 2500 piezo strips. On an average every component can produce around 4375 V/sec and when you add up to the whole site, we can produce around 15391.5KV/sec.

http://youtu.be/3XaF5gAmXiY

The added value of Soundscape is proposing a new alternative to energy generation, which is sound. The aim is to make people be aware of their own potential power and they can be future energy generation devices.  As we mentioned before, Soundscape is proposing an incredible potential for new human generation…energy is in the air, energy is within the particles, it is inside us… Soundscape is future…“it is a new Humanism…”

On the 25th of June in IAAC 2013 from 10:00 am to 08:00 pm

Tutors:

Enric Ruiz Geli
Mireia Luzárraga

Support Seminar Tutors:

Silvia Bures
Josep Perellò
Iker Mugarra

International Jury Board:

Manuel Gausa - IAAC Dean
Areti Markopoulou - MAA Director – IAAC
Manja van de Worp - AA School of Architecture
Eduard Bru - ETSAB – Department of Design
Jaime Coll - ETSAB – Department of Design
Ulrika Karlsson - Stockholm Faculty of Architecture
Lluis ViU - Max de Cusa Architects
Bea Goller - Congortime Arquitectes
Gonzalo Delacámara - IMDEA Agua
Pablo Ros - Cloud 9
Luis Fraguada - IAAC Computational Expert

The beginning of the crisis is the end of the economic model based on carbon and oil. Science and technology advance fast. However, millions of jobs in manufacture and services were eliminated because they operate in THE old model that cannot support them.

We are living a revolution that links technology, communication and energy.  To beat the crisis we need to live in this new paradigm, rely on innovation and create a knowledge society to organize the Third Industrial Revolution.

But who are these millions of jobs lost?

We have

*The workers whose technical abilities are now obsolete.

*The person with academic knowledge without a job

*The entrepreneurs whose companies are in crisis

No matter their background, they’re left behind because they operate in the old economic model. Our SOCIAL INNOVATION INCUBATOR performs through an educational path and is set in a revolutionary environment, it gives people a platform to innovate and find their job opportunities.

Let’s see how it works.

You have no job opportunities. You enter the Social Innovation Incubator and start a learning path

01 the building responds to the context and inspires innovation

02 you are introduced to advanced knowledge, tools and processes

03 you practice test and perform innovator projects

04 you connect to people in different levels and fields

05 you are motivated to now generate or find jobs

06 you come out to become a seed of innovation in the knowledge community

SOCIAL INNOVATION INCUBATOR: What is it?

In order to promote innovation, both the building itself and the processes happening around it, should be innovative. Therefore, we developed a Learning Methodology based on the analysis of several educational models and theories that were revolutionary in their times or are now shaping the new methods, paying specific attention to the Steiner Education and the Bauhaus.

The Learning Methodology of our SII is founded in 6 pillars: Contextual, Comprehensive, Adaptive, Active, Self and Know-how Learning. They allow the learners to count on a holistic approach, multidisciplinary and multilevel strategy, lifelong learning capacity, career and life project oriented education in a fast track learning. On the other hand, the Learning strategy allows 200 new learners to enter the SII every week and complete their learning path 3 weeks later.

The program is organized in circuits that respond to this methodology and learning strategies. Training, Networking, Performance, Cultural and Service circuits, provide the learners with the spatial characteristics to learn, connect to others, be productive and interact.

The building grows along the learning path by aggregation. There are 3 basic modules that are located in different parts of the circuits, according to the activity of the program and the potential density of the space. The main structure of these modules is made of card board tubes that contain panels of diverse materials. The heavier ones lay on the bottom and grow lighter to the top.

The different panels allow transparency, natural ventilation and, the ones that obtain more exposure to the solar incidence, enclose one of our power sources: the Mediterranean Energy Tool. The MET is a battery that works with salt water and gives energy to the sensors that open and close components to control the entrance of light and heat to the building.

All these processes are evident in the building to generate an environment of innovation and inspire the learners. As the learners come out, they spread into the new knowledge community to become part of the 1% of the unemployed people of Barcelona that has now a revolutionary perspective.

THE PROJECT

https://vimeo.com/68999725 - INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

(TISC) is the future of the textile industries.
This future Textile Industry is a true iconic gesture that responds to its renewal in terms of ETHICS, INNOVATION and SUSTAINABILITY.

Retrofitting the industry, the “Urban Fabric” is a three-dimensional mesh envelope based on cell organisation in plants that combines farming, photovoltaic panels, metal, fibers, water and technology.

https://vimeo.com/71499414  –  IT’S ALL ABOUT PARTICLES VIDEO

This modulation from structure to plants, insulated to uninsulated, skin to nature, adapts to the seasons and reflects the environments of future activities.

https://vimeo.com/71499419 THE  BUILDING AS A WATER PLANT VIDEO

The radicalness of the project marks the starting point of a new revolution in this industry.

https://vimeo.com/71499418- THE BUILDING

https://vimeo.com/71499412- REPLICATING MODEL IN THE WORLD

https://vimeo.com/71499409- MODEL IN ACTION

moritz begle, stuart maggs, urte naujekaite, dori sadan

(click)—————–>INTRODUCTION: AIR POLLUTION local becomes global <————————–

Air pollution on a global and urban scale is a huge problem. Levels of C02 due to human activities have reached record levels of over 400PPM. Opposed to 350 ppm which is cited as a safe level (Hansen, James, et al. Target Atmospheric CO2: Supporting Ma- terial. April 7, 2008) On an urban scale the World Health Organ- isation predicts that life expectancy is reduced by 8 months due to air pollution.

The Jungle creates a system for cleaning the air on our site, which could be applied to others around Barcelona or the world.

A cloud problem requires a cloud solution. The jungle senses the cloud of pollution from external sources before reacting, creat- ing a cloud on site which captures pollution. This cloud is then manipulated to rain on site through over seeding, removing the pollution from the air.

To create a self sufficient system energy is needed. Algae takes c02 and waste water from the Tersa power station creating bio-mass to power the cloud. With this two pollution sources are filtered whilst simultaneously providing energy. The algae system becomes economically viable due to the proximity of co2 and waste water to create bio-mass competitive with traditional sources.

Through the combination of these two systems, the jungle pro- vides a viable solution to urban air quality on our site and a model applicable to other locations.

(density simulation of people acting as a virusing effect on the site to occupy key areas)

    (study of morphologies according to program, area occupation, environmental data and hydroponic space requirements)

Our building component is the means to allow people to learn and teach with specific targets of urban agricultural research; not just for gastronomical reasons but also material research, Automobile research and contemporary craftsmanship; with the aim of producing from what has been harvested.

(roof scape morphology heat analysis showing water collector(blue) and shading systems(yellow) according to circulation areas(yellow) and hydroponic area(blue))

(physics computational explanation of the project)

The result of the project came about from the program set and environmental data collected according to requirements for agriculture and how current buildings can benefit or be of aid by recycling waste and in turn collaborate. A regenerative prospective process of economic and environmental prosperity. (video coming soon)

(bio-illuminated model showing virusing extent of harvesting incubators)

In order to define our project we looked at various aspects of current environment – from political, to economical as well as philosophical and physical.
Finally, we chose to work on Barcelona’s industrial area of Poblenou. Once a prosperous zone, the site in Pere IV has been severely affected by economical issues and is in a state of decay with high rates of unemployment, heavy pollution, and dying industries.

We decide to treat our design proposal as an infinite loop; where energy, matter , production and distribution at the same time follow an endless cycle.

Magora is about free off-the-grid clean energy, urban agriculture, cultural public spaces and cradle to cradle production. 

Presentation: http://youtu.be/sjFQtglOvps

Magnetic Agora – Elevated magnetic infrastructure, Field lines manifestation

A public space

As a proposal we will have an energy infrastructure taking the shape of a perpetual magnetic motor supplying off-the grid clean energy. The produced energy will be stored in liquid nitrogen form.

This stored energy will be used to run a turbine and supply power on demand.

MAGORA – SITE PLAN

Our design intention is to articulate concepts coming from Tesla, William McDonough and Jeremy Rifkin – these 3 conceptual milestones are the initial ideological leaders manifesting and activating our design intentions.

In terms of energy, Tesla inspired us with his ideas of generating unlimited free energy for everyone.

In terms of matter, Will McDonough, made us review the concept of waste and place it in an infinite perpetual matter loop.

In terms of economy, the previous ideas co-exist in a harmonic way under Rifkin’s principles of the third industrial revolution. This revolution is about – buildings as autonomous power plants and the alteration of the existing global manufacturing model.

A landscape of energies and fields

Ultimately, what we achieved was to conduct a global proposition of how people, energy, economy and nature may harmonically co-exist by gaining from each other. To conclude, we turned our proposal into an open forum-agora landscape where people will experience science, technology and energy. Magora breaks the borders between humans, science, energy and technology; it brings them together both physically and mentally by making them think…

We are living a transition era; the current energetic, economical and social model will in the next decades be replaced by a new model. As in every crysis, uncertainty about the future is the most challenging element, for it is the one that causes lack of confidence, in individuals and companies. Sola Morales used to talk about the importance of handling Uncertainty in Urbanism, managing time and key players in the extremely complex process that is the life of cities and territories.

This thesys analyses the problems of an edge condition Urban Area. An area without important equipments such as elderly daycare centers, bicing stations or recycling points. A negleted and somehow abandoned area.

The goal of the Thesys was to retrofit the area through surgical interventions, and improve it and boost its economy. The challenge was to do so building as least as possible and reusing available resources. To do so the strategy encompassed retrofitting 6 empty sites close to important public or private buildings. Each site gains a specific vocation, related to the building next to it, and together with the other sites defines a Masterplan for the area.

The use of renewable energies and recycling strategies in each site was key to set the bases for energy self sufficiency and more competitive businesses. The hope is that investors, states and citizens realize that retrofitting existing buildings, sites and infrastructures, together with energy efficience is the way out of this global crysis.

A strategy that will provide jobs to millions of people, improve their quality of life and help manage the shrinking available resources and biodiversity of our, still, beautiful green and blue planet.

This link opens a new window with the presentation of this Thesys: https://vimeo.com/69340452