Design Ideas Progress

So I am trying to move away from the idea of the container and more to the idea of the module. As when discussing my design people seem to lock onto the idea of the container and not the essence behind the idea. This is idea is about using an already established infrastructure to allow the transportation of housing. The only reference to the actual shipping container is the sizes and the lock joints on the corners to connect the housing modules to other containers for transportation.

The container size module allows flexibility as well as diversity in forms, as demonstrated in this diagram of possible organizations of housing forms, consisting of a floating foundation and a housing module.

World Preservation Foundation: Maldives

This is a link to a video on the World Preservation Foundation website about sea level rise in the Maldives and some of the effects and problems caused by it in this country.

http://www.worldpreservationfoundation.org/topic.php?cat=humanCosts&vid=55

Container Design

After wading through a whole lot of information on containers I found current housing designs that use containers, as mentioned in the previous post. But after that what I found was the use of containers as a cheap way to provide housing to areas affected by natural disasters, such as New Orleans and the Pakistan floods and many other places. Having the flexibility to bring a standardized structure into these places to provide relief housing with minimal cost and effort is an aspect of designing on the water I want to include.

A guy called Richard Moreta has a particular design I find interesting for Pakistan. Much like my case study of BACA architect's design for flood resistant homes in Holland, Moretas design's for housing that floats in floods relate very much to my design proposal. However these are individual units on land and are not integrated into a community that connects within itself, but it is a good starting idea for my design.

Here is a link to information about his design

Richard Moreta's Floating Container Design

Flexible Architecture

Flexible needs to be standardized. It needs to be modular. It needs to be transportable. It needs to be easily put together and taken apart.

For this the shipping container (proper name is an intermodal container) provides a good start in designing a space that can be lived in. Many housing types have been created through shipping containers. I find it interesting that the very name, shipping container, relates to water, it is something that crosses large amounts of water yet no one has used them on water.

90% of all goods in the world are transported using shipping containers. Shipping containers are designed to be water tight because if they fall off the ship they will float. Floating. Floating structure. Floating buildings, already a good start for designing a floating community.

I have been checking out container designs, LOT-EK have a focus on the shipping container as a building tool. This Puma store slash function centre is an example of their work. This is quite large, I am looking at a smaller scale, but what I find interesting is how they have keep the container but altered it into different combinations, check out their website to see it in a lot more detail. I love how individual units connect to form a whole, like my original concept model I made. These designs are almost like Archigram's idea of a plug in city.

Here is a link to their site.

LOK-EK

Soft Infrastructure

Soft Infrastructure is currently defined as:

"A reference that refers to all the institutions, which are required to maintain the health, cultural and social standards of a country, state or sometimes even a company"

http://www.opendb.net/element/19099.php

This can be interpreted in a variety of ways, however when I use the term soft infrastructure I am referring to the ability of design through natural resources to protect, defend and connect the coastal cities waterfront.

There are already existing natural soft infrastructures that work. In tropical zones Mangrove forests exist between the coast and sea to help reduce erosion and effects of storm surges and flooding. In temperate zones the mangrove equivalent is the tidal wetlands or salt marshes. In New Zealand these are numerous and the hardy New Zealand coastal vegetation is very successful at protecting the coast from the sea.

Tidal wetlands are a excellent tool for creating soft infrastructure as they work on a number of levels:

- Next to tropical rain forests, tidal wetlands are the most biologically productive resource in the world

- Wetlands also improve water quality acting as natural filters, reduce turbidity, trap nutrients and buffer storm and wave energy.

- Tidal wetlands stabilizes shorelines and buffers erosion.

http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?A=2705&Q=323824

Using tidal wetlands as an element that can interact between the city and water community, I think a very successful relationship can occur using this type of soft infrastructure to improve the coastal city.

Design Precedents

Mentioned before in my case studies I really appreciate the problems addressed and solutions created in the design for New York's Upper Bay. This actual picture was a contribution from dlandstudio who have some interesting work in relation to sea level rise.

dlandstudio identify that

"research works to identify how natural ecologies such as mangrove forests and tidal wetlands, systems that have evolved over millions of years as natural protectors of coastlines, can be adapted to create engineered systems to serve the same purpose. Abstracting the essence of natural systems into engineered solutions is the best way to combat the environmental challenges that face us over the next 100 years"

Here is the link to their site

dlandstudio

Go to: Work - Research - Come High Tide: A Model For Managing Sea Level Rise

Potential Site Photos

East view of Sky Tower and CBD from beach

North East view of CBD and the end of the marina

Site Criteria

I am currently on the look out for a site to base my design on. My site search in Wellington, New Zealand didnt work out too well so now I am in Auckland and think i have found a site in Saint Mary's Bay in central Auckland.

One of the issues with choosing a site is a variety of issues,

1: The site must be in the central city, as I am exploring a way to create density in the city I cant choose a site that exists in the suburbs as I cannot contribute to suburban sprawl as this is an issue i am fighting against.

2: The site must be located next to a certain amount of flat land. I am wanting to use the idea of soft infrastructure to connecting the floating community to the land. I have realized there needs to be a intermediate element between the city and the water community and as this is in the central city there is not room for this space to serve only one function, it must address a variety of issue and be multifunctional. Soft infrastructure uses natural vegetation to help defend the city against sea level rise and effects associated with it like storm surges. If this is located at the bottom of a hill it serves not purpose as the buildings on the hill are protected to a large degree by their height on the hill, so to help protect the city this soft infrastructure must be located next to land of a low gradient close to sea level.

3: The site cannot overtake essential existing city services and infrastructure.

4: The site must have enough room for a small community to exist, although I have yet to define how many people i expect to live in the community it will be under 40 houses.

5: The site needs to be close enough to the city centre to reduce the need for extensive use of the car. Walking is to be encouraged and so the site must have available a number of access routes and links to the central city.

Saint Mary's Bay is a 7 minute drive or 25 minute walk from the Sky Tower, a land mark in Auckland City. This is in down town Auckland and is entering the CBD. This location makes it easy enough to walk, is located very close to the city but also exists across fro exisiting msuburb houses so as not to be out of place.

Also one of the benefits of this site is the Auckland waterfront redevelopment is occurring only 200m away and although some industrial buildings and functions occur between this residential development and my propose site, there is the potential for this redevelopment to continue along the waterfront and eventually connection with my water community greatly improving and connecting a valuable land use area of Auckland.

Seattle Houseboats

I love this photo. It is from Westlake in Seattle. These are houseboats as opposed to houses on water. I am exploring how communities can live on water rather than individual houses themselves so I have not chosen the Seattle house boats as a case study, but in terms off aesthetics I think this looks amazing. I do appreciate the ability of the houseboats to moor to the piers and have the flexibly to power themselves. These are somethings I will look into outside my case studies.

Selected Case Studies

Kampong Ayer

Kampong Ayer is an area in Brunei's capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan. It is an an area built completely on water. Kampong Ayer is home to roughly 39000 residents. Although all the buildings are built on stilts it highlights a way of life on water. A step to realizing independent floating communities on water

Thesis Introduction Draft

Introduction

Literature Review Draft

Literature Review

Aesthetics and Environment

While doing reading for my literature review I came across this quote that I think explains quite well part of my own personal interests in design:

"Sacrificing immediate visual clarity and order may be a welcome price to pay for the somatic appeal of indeterminacy and discovery"

Berleant, A. (2005). Aesthetics and Environment: Variations on a Theme. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

A Way to Think

“The world we have created today, as a result of our thinking thus far, has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.”

-Albert Einstein

Representation Model

I made this model for a presentation about my potential design. Fairly simple. I liked the idea of individual elements functioning fine by themselves, and have the choice to do so, but when joined they form something so much better. These individual elements combine to form a whole, acting together to form a vibrant diverse community. This is something like what im wanting to achieve through my urban system.

Floating Villages

Like I explained in my proposal, I'm looking to traditional floating villages to develop an urban system for water living. My main focus is on villages in Vietnam and Cambodia, particularly Tonle Sap Lake. They are pretty beautiful places, heres a few photos.

Research Proposal

Piers Bowman Research Proposal

Why Build on Water?

In cities like Wellington, New Zealand, they are blocked by the coast in front of the city and behind the city are steep hills which make it difficult to expand and let the city grow. For cities looking to expand this greatly restricts the opportunities to do so. Cape town in South Africa has a similar situation.

With rising sea levels the front of the city is threatened, so doesn't it make sense to slowly move the front of the city onto the water making use of the largest open space for building in the world, the ocean.

Also a bonus for building on water in the coastal city is that normally these city centres are located around the waterfront, so by building on water there the city can achieve greater density in the CBD or waterfront area without overcrowding, mint!

70% of the world is covered in water, kinda makes sense to use some of it for building on.

Rising Sea Levels

So did you guys think that sea level rise was a problem for the future? Well its not. Have you heard of the Maldives?

Heres a bit of info about that Maldives,

The Maldives is the lowest country in the world, with a maximum natural ground level of only 2.3 metres (7 ft 7 in), with the average being only 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) above sea level, although in areas where construction exists, this has been increased to several metres. More than 80 per cent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered over an area about 850 km across the equator, is less than one metre above sea level (thanks to wikipedia).

As you can imagine even the smallest increase in water level change affects this country. In 2009 the new president, Mohamed Nasheed, issued the message that he was obliged by rising sea levels to buy land in Sri Lanka and relocate his people (Keuning & Olthuis 2010).

To help countries like this continue living we need to build on water!

Keuning, D. & Olthuis, K. (2010) Float: Building on water to Combat Urban Congestion and Climate Change. Frame, Amsterdam.

Research Aim

Best summarized my research is looking at -

Building on water to combat urban congestion and climate change.

To define 'building' I am not specifically looking at actually single house structures, more I am exploring how I can develop an urban system that enables an adaptive way of living on water, rather than applying traditional city urban grids from land to water.

My research aim is -

Can living on or within the ocean offer an adaptive way of life to combat urban congestion and the affect of global warming on the coastal city.