Hasta La Ideas

Bartlett School of Architecture graduate Viktor Westerdahl has devised a fantasy scenario where the discovery of a new liquid energy cues construction of a remote city in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Viktor Westerdahl completed the project as part of the Bartlett‘s Unit 10, which asked students to imagine a fictional future and assess the impact it could have on architecture and communities.

“I’ve based my speculation on the impossibility that, rather than honey, bees would collect liquid light, a clean and green energy source that is similar to solar power and has an efficiency of 96 percent,” he told Dezeen. “What if this energy all existed on one island? The community would have to become the beekeepers of a new ecology.”

Westerdahl envisages the scenario for Diego Garcia – an island where the indigenous community were expelled in the 1960s to allow the US government to establish a military base – and suggests that the discovery of liquid light would prompt the construction of a new infrastructure for harvesting and trading the zero-carbon energy source.

“The question is, how do you urbanise the island without risking ruining the thing that allowed it to be created?” he asks.

To avoid disturbing the existing ecology, Westerdahl proposes that residents construct their new buildings on stilts, which would emerge amongst the lily pads of the island’s central lagoon. A community bank would store the harvested energy and trading would take place in a new marketplace.

Liquid light would also affect day-to-day life, as its glowing presence would be visible on the flowers and water lilies, as well as on the bees buzzing through the skies overhead.

A previous graduate of the Bartlett’s Unit 10 presented a science-fiction world in which London grows a jungle of crops for fuel and food. Other past graduate projects from the school include a conceptual community powered by faeces, electric eels and fruit, and a sci-fi animation where robots battle with police. See more projects from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Here’s a project description from Viktor Westerdahl:

The Liquid Light of Diego Garcia

“In ancient times Lixus was the site of a famous grove which bore golden fruit. Its flowers have petals like golden foil… …Insects like bees with metallic bodies and golden wings gather the juices of this fruit. Inside their nests, these insects… …manufacture a honey like substance for the nourishment of their young.” – Pliny the Elder, Inventorum Natura, 1st cen. AD

Instead of honey, a honeybee ecology yields Liquid Light – an energy equivalent to the extraordinary future potential of solar power at an efficiency of 96%. This invented nature is inserted into the real social and ecological context of a remote island, Diego Garcia. Its previously dispossessed local community is empowered by this new zero-carbon, sustainable energy, collectively cared for in commons trusts. Trade in Liquid Light underpins the existence of the island as an independent city state.

The fragile ecology of the island is nevertheless placed at risk by the process of urbanisation necessary to harness its Liquid Light. To minimize the impact, a string of villages are placed floating in the lagoon. These form a soft infrastructure of continuously adaptable elements constructed with a context specific materiality. Buildings are thatched with woven palm leafs and structural aluminium segments are produced cleanly with the aid of the abundant energy of Liquid Light.

On Diego Garcia energy is not only an integral part of its ecology, but also central in enriching the experiences of daily life within its communities. Below a glowing sky of Lixus Bees, floating houses circle fields of luminous flowers. The village square is illuminated by vertical beehives and towering above the settlement, a community bank is sparkling with the daily harvest of Liquid Light.

Project tutors: CJ Lim, Bernad Felsinger and Rokia Raslan

The post The Liquid Light of Diego Garcia
by Viktor Westerdahl appeared first on Dezeen.

Faeces, electric eels and fruit would power conceptual communities designed by Bartlett School of Architecture graduate Catrina Stewart.

The City Farmhouse project proposes housing communities on stilts above clusters of public toilets, where visitors would be required to donate faeces and urine on arrival.

Electricity would be generated from methane gas released when the harvested excrement is broken down.

Faeces and urine could also be used to produce compost and water for community gardens.

Streetlights would be powered by fruit acid and elevators would be powered by electric eels, kept as pets by residents.

In 2009 Dutch designers Tjep designed a series of self-sufficient farms that reuse waste and could be scaled to accommodate a single inhabitant, a small community or an amusement park.

Other recent architecture graduate projects include an upside-down skyscraper and a tower that shoots artificial bees into the air – see all our stories about this years graduate shows here.

Here are some more details from Catrina Stewart:

London City Farmhouse

The City Farmhouse project is a prototype that looks at forming new self-sufficient communities, which integrate agriculture and housing within the city of London.

The Farmhouses and vertical colour gardens will be open to the public, and will rely on its colours and visitors to achieve self-sufficiency.

Visitors and residents will be expected to make a donation of faeces and urine when they visit the building. These will be used to produce water, compost and electricity for the Farmhouses. Methane gas released by the waste produced in biogas digesters can then be used directly or to produce electricity.

Without its public toilets the community would not be able to survive. The more visitors the building can attract the more power, food and water will be produced. New public toilets will be erected across the borough in order to collect human waste to power the Farmhouses. New communities will begin to grow around the more popular public toilets, creating new Farmhouses.

The Farmhouse project explores the use of colour to attract people to the building and entice them into using the public toilets by using the same principles used for colour in marketing and advertising. Colours are therefore used less for their aesthetics and more for their functional properties.

Nothing in the Farmhouse is disposed of, everything is recycled and reused to fuel something else.  Old and new technologies are used to harness energy and food from almost anything, animals are no longer used for their meat but rather as a source of energy.

Cows are farmed for their methane gas, electric eels are kept as pets to power the elevators in the building and fruits are used to to power the street lights.

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Oogst by Tjep.	Public Farm One by Work Architecture Company	Union Street Urban Orchard by Heather Ring