NOMINATION: CAST
ALEXANDRA KHARAKOZ (UNITED KINGDOM, LEWES)
Sonic Landscape
Sonic Landscape is a sound installation /pavilion for London’s Millennium Bridge to boost awareness of and interest in exploring the world through sound. Unexpected sounds suddenly emerge to surprise the listener. The installation is designed to facilitate listening to and producing sound. People interact with the site to generate sound, following the sound paths in the pavilion to turn it into a large-scale, real time sonic sculpture.
NOMINATION: CITY
CHAK MING SIN (HONG KONG, HONG KONG)
Evaporative Cooling Capillary
Building C is located on the periphery of the Tongji University Siping Lu campus in Shanghai. Its isolated location and poor environmental qualities create many ventilation, heat and pollution problems for users.
This project aims to solve the problems by incorporating a capillary system into the building that will act as an evaporative cooling mechanism. The design is inspired by termite mounds which use an evaporative cooling system to regulate their interior temperature; a continuously open and closed vent discharges air through a channelling system. This is in effect a highly intelligent technology: evaporative cooling. Inspired by nature’s solution, we decided to incorporate an evaporative cooling system into Building C to solve the ventilation problem. The Spanish Pavilion at the Zaragoza Expo 2008, which used a porous ceramic pillar for evaporative cooling, was also a reference for me. It proves that increasing the surface area allows a longer contact time for heat exchange between air and water particles which improve cooling efficiency. Further experimentation proves that an increase of approximately 20% in surface area can yield 1 degree celsius in temperature decrease.
Our solution acts like a blood capillary, offering an increased surface area for nutrient exchange to body cell. Besides improving environmental quality, the new capillary system also offers users and vistors a new architectural experience. We envisage that this evaporative cooling capillary can serve not only as a solution for Building C, but also as a structure in itself. It can become a tower or facade system that can be applied to any building typologies in the future to ease various environmental problems.
BERNIER SAMUEL (CANADA, MONTREAL)
Project RE_
A third industrial revolution is taking place. Digital manufacturing is creating a world where mass customization becomes possible… and cheap. 3D printing technology is improving every day and many companies have made it possible for anybody to have a machine at home. I dream of an industry where there is no environmental impact associated with products being shipped across the globe… several times. A world where anybody can download what they need from a virtual library of objects and materialize it locally. This project is a transition phase where additive manufacturing is used to upgrade or transform existing objects reaching the end of their useful life. A little input to give some of our most daily junk a new function. The subject chosen for the first experiment is glass jars and tin cans, very useful for their regular dimensions. There are so many ways to reinvent objects we forget to appreciate: bird house, snow globe, watering can, piggy bank…
