Hasta La Ideas

News: Architectural Association graduate John Naylor has won this year’s Foster + Partners Prize with his proposal to introduce bamboo to the construction industry in Haiti, which is still struggling to recover from the 2010 earthquake.

Presented annually to an Architectural Association diploma student who best addresses themes of sustainability and infrastructure, the prize is awarded to John Naylor for his Bamboo Lakou project, which combines a sustainable bamboo-growing infrastructure with the development of the vernacular “Lakou” communal courtyard typology.

Naylor explains that Haiti’s current construction practices contributed to the massive devastation caused by the earthquake, which caused the collapse of 280,000 buildings and killed 316,000 people, even though a far more powerful quake in Chile caused the deaths of just 525. “This was a disaster of Haiti’s lack of lightweight building materials, working practices, and construction, not nature,” he says.

As Haiti has massive deforestation, Naylor wants to establish a long-term bamboo planting strategy and then gradually introduce it as an earthquake-resistant replacement for concrete.

“In a proud culture such as Haiti, preaching a new form of building to the construction sector is riddled with problems,” he explains, citing low skills, lack of equipment and illiteracy as obstacles. “This rematerialisation of a construction industry and subsequent demand aims to engender bamboo growth in Haiti.”

Naylor proposes a four-stage strategy that will begin with assessing the existing stock of bamboo available. A small group of workers would learn the techniques and as the material became more widely available the systems could be introduced nationwide to construct thousands of new Lakou courtyard houses.

AA director Brett Steele commented: “John Naylor’s project demonstrates the ways in which infrastructural ideas and architectural imagination might today expand beyond the cliches of Modernism to become life itself, literally breathing life into communities, cities and entire countries, today and long into the future.”

Past winners of the Foster + Partners Prize include a community for scientists in the treetops of the Amazon rainforest and a sanitation infrastructure concept, also for Haiti. See more projects by Architectural Association students.

See more stories about bamboo in architecture and design, including prototypes for modular homes in Vietnam.

Here’s a project description from John Naylor:

John Naylor – Bamboo Lakou

At the local time of 16:53 on 12th January 2010 an earthquake of 7.0 hit one of the most densely populated suburbs of Haiti’s capital, Port au Prince.

An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. 250,000 residences, 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed, a million people homeless and 316,000 people dead. One month later an earthquake 500 times more powerful, hit central Chile resulting in the deaths of 525. This was a disaster of Haiti’s lack of lightweight building materials, working practices, and construction, not nature.

Set in the context of Haiti, a country with massive deforestation and threatened by earthquakes, only heavy concrete and cement are the building materials of choice. As an integral part of a wider reforestation strategy, this project merges a sustainable bamboo infrastructure along with the vernacular ‘Lakou’ communal courtyard typology.

This aims to encourage the physical use of bamboo in the Haitian construction sector. The material properties of bamboo provide design opportunities to provide resilience to hurricanes and earthquakes, and affords an assembly logic which intends to communicate a parallel understanding of bamboo’s application beyond the building site. This rematerialisation of a construction industry and subsequent demand, aims to engender bamboo growth in Haiti, a material with wider ecological benefits.

Introducing any new practice of working is difficult in any field. In a proud culture such as Haiti preaching a new form of building to the construction sector is riddled with problems. Low skills, lack of equipment and illiteracy, not to mention theft from a project, whether political corruption or material theft on site, all cause an environment not in a position to implement quality output which is all the more dangerous in Haiti, a site of huge seismic and natural threat. Materials in this location are defined by skill and natural resources. A lack of timber due to deforestation has resulted in concrete becoming the 21st Century vernacular and as a result any skills associated with construction have been aligned to work with concrete.

Initially the ‘Lakou’ courtyard house forms the fundamental urban block and this itself is broken into four stages.

(1) Occupational Strategy; which aims to determine a means of developing solutions of occupation for the local population grounded in the existing Haitian ‘Lakou’ typology of courtyard living.

(2) Material Strategy; looks at what is available in Haiti right now and speculates on how what is available can be compounded in the short term with bamboo. The typology and properties of materials will then determine any subsequent strategies.

(3) Structural Strategy; looks at how bamboo can be implemented into a structural system which allows for the Haitian vernacular ‘Lakou’ design to be implemented. The structural strategy also looks at the limits of design versus materials in seismic areas and tests compounds of materials as well as seismic building techniques to develop a low cost, easily buildable structural system with proven seismic credentials.

(4) Construction and Assembly Strategy; will produce an assembly logic explicit enough to work initially in a workforce mostly illiterate and yet can result in the successful implementation of aspects 1, 2, and 3. It is also designed that this logic has aspects of construction and material awareness which can propagate nationwide. This being either skill or outsourcing construction beyond the proposed new urbanism. This aims to create standards, knowledge, respect for the material and new economic opportunities.

This technical strategy forms an integral part of making a new timber and bamboo urbanism possible in Haiti. Through initially encouraging the physical use of bamboo in the Haitian construction sector at the building scale, the material properties of bamboo provide design opportunities to provide resilience to hurricanes and earthquakes, and affords an assembly logic which intends to communicate a parallel understanding of bamboo’s application beyond the building site.

This rematerialisation of a construction industry and subsequent demand, aims to engender bamboo growth in Haiti, a material with wider ecological benefits and lay the foundations of a new biodiverse dynamic Port au Prince.

The post Bamboo construction for Haiti
wins Foster + Partners Prize 2013 appeared first on Dezeen.

You know summer is in full swing when even our bathtubs are stretching their legs and kicking back, hammock-style. That’s good for us. The more ways we can include that slouchy, forgiving form in our everyday lives, the more likely we are to experience the easy relaxation we associate with it. Here’s hoping.

Splinter Works, a design studio headquartered 30 miles south of London, has fused two furnishings—the hammock and the bathtub—into a serious relaxation tool. Constructed from aerospace-grade carbon fiber and foam, even the woven structure evokes the tree-suspended swing. Water fills Vessel from a freestanding tap, and a drain in the floor catches suds released by way of a plug at the tub’s lowest point. Like any good hammock, it’s strong enough to cradle two.

(more…)

Ingvar Kamprad put the “IK” in IKEA (the “E” and the “A” are for Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born, and a neighboring village, Agunnaryd), but he left Sweden in 1973 to escape the hefty taxes and settled in Switzerland. Now the 87-year-old IKEA founder, whose fortune is estimated at $51.7 billion (that’s enough to buy more than 8 million Billy bookcases), is coming home. “To move back to Sweden brings me closer to my family and my old friends,” Kamprad said in a statement. The country’s tax laws have softened since his departure, according to the Wall Street Journal. A wealth tax has been abolished and income taxes have been lowered. Kamprad recently stepped down from the board of IKEA’s parent company, Inter IKEA Group, which is now chaired by one of his three sons.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

3D-printed casts for fractured bones could replace the usual bulky, itchy and smelly plaster or fibreglass ones in this conceptual project by Victoria University of Wellington graduate Jake Evill.

The prototype Cortex cast is lightweight, ventilated, washable and thin enough to fit under a shirt sleeve.

A patient would have the bones x-rayed and the outside of the limb 3D-scanned. Computer software would then determine the optimum bespoke shape, with denser support focussed around the fracture itself.

The polyamide pieces would be printed on-site and clip into place with fastenings that can’t be undone until the healing process is complete, when they would be taken off with tools at the hospital as normal. Unlike current casts, the materials could then be recycled.

“At the moment, 3D printing of the cast takes around three hours whereas a plaster cast is three to nine minutes, but requires 24-72 hours to be fully set,” says the designer. “With the improvement of 3D printing, we could see a big reduction in the time it takes to print in the future.”

He worked with the orthopaedic department of his university on the project and is now looking for backing to develop the idea further.

Jake Evill has just graduated from the Architecture and Design faculty at Victoria University of Wellington, with a Major in Media Design and a Minor in Industrial Design.

Read more about how 3D printing is transforming healthcare in an extract from our one-off publication Print Shift, including bespoke prothetic limbs and printed organs for transplants.

Here’s some more information from Evill:

After many centuries of splints and cumbersome plaster casts that have been the itchy and smelly bane of millions of children, adults and the aged alike, the world over, we at last bring fracture support into the twenty-first century.

The Cortex exoskeletal cast provides a highly technical and trauma-zone-localised support system that is fully ventilated, super light, shower friendly, hygienic, recyclable and stylish.

The Cortex cast utilises the x-ray and 3D scan of a patient with a fracture and generates a 3D model in relation to the point of fracture.

The post Cortex 3D-printed cast
by Jake Evill appeared first on Dezeen.

The following is a sponsored post from Staples about a product we believe in. For the past month, I’ve been aggressively testing this product and the review is based on my first-hand experiences. We agreed to work with Staples because they sell so many different products in their stores, and our arrangement with them allows us to review products we use and have no hesitation recommending to our readers. Again, these infrequent sponsored posts help us continue to provide quality content to our audience.

When I travel (for work or pleasure) or have special projects, I almost always organize the corresponding paperwork in a three-ring binder. I like to have all of my necessary information in one storage system so I can grab it and go. I also usually have a scanned backup of the same data in Evernote or on Dropbox, but I see these digital copies as being useful only if something happens to my original binder. Usually I need physical copies of the papers I’m keeping, especially with projects, when the papers may be something I’m giving to clients or need to file with a legal entity.

Earlier this year, I was introduced to Staples’ new Better Binder system, and I’ve been using them ever since. I’ve taken them to a conference, on vacation, and am currently using one to store all the paperwork for our second adoption. When finished using the binder for one purpose, I’ve removed the FileRings and dropped them into my filing cabinet. They could also be useful for keeping yearly family or tax information or anything project where you’ll be actively using the paperwork for a period of time and then need to archive it when you’re finished with it.

In short, it is a three-ring binder whose FileRings spine pops out and allows you to file the contents of the binder directly into your filing cabinet. The binders themselves are reusable and additional removable FileRings are available for purchase. (They are currently in the $4 range for the replacement FileRings.)

Removing the FileRings is incredibly simple, especially after you see it done. Pull on the plastic pieces at the top and bottom of the FileRings spine to pop it out. You then push in the top and bottom plastic pieces to hang the FileRings in your filing cabinet. Inserting the FileRings is also simple — set them in place and then push in the top and bottom of the FileRings spine to secure them into the binder.

They also have available Better Dividers, which I really like. The tabs can be inserted on the top or the side of the divider, making them extremely versatile. There are times when having the tab at the top of my binder is helpful, especially when I only have a need for two or three divided sections.

The binder comes with a blank spine label you can tear off and easily slide into place, so you don’t have to cut up a sheet of paper to make one from scratch. The front panel of the binder also allows you to slip in a cover sheet of your own design.

Better Binders come in the traditional size (11” x 11-3/4”) for 8-12″ x 11″ sheets of paper. They’re available in 1″ (275 sheets of paper) for roughly $8, 1-1/2″ (400 sheets) for $9, 2″ (540 sheets) for $11, and 3″ (600 sheets) widths for $14. The binder comes with one removable FileRings spine, but additional FileRings must be purchased separately. Current colors are white, red, black, pink, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, dark teal, fuchsia, plum, olive, and multi-color combinations of some of these colors. I use the different binder colors to make it even more obvious which binder I need to take with me, in addition to the labeling I use on the binder.

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