design – brightbuilding

30 June 201430 June 2014

Lighten up: the power of water and bleach

This concept has been introduced a couple of years ago, the result however is very impressive so I’d like to put it in the ‘spotlight’ again. In 2002 Alfredo Moser in Brazil came up with the idea to use bottles filled with water and bleach as a light source. Nine years later in the Philippines Illac Diaz from the MyShelter Foundation and students from MIT further developed the concept. They made the ´solar bulbs´ available to the public by means of a “local entrepeneur” business model. This approach combined two great initiatives: providing light in dwellings without electricity and creating jobs for locals. Within a year over 200.000 bottle bulbs were installed. The goal of the MyShelter Foundation is to light up 1 million homes by the end of 2015. At the moment the solar bottles are being installed in over 15 countries.

The concept of the solar bottle bulb is fairly simple: a used plastic bottle is filled with a mixture of water and a little chlorine – to keep the water clean and transparent. The bottle is sealed and pushed through a galvanized steel sheet that serves as a metal lock to prevent the bottle from slipping. It is then embedded into a corrugated iron roof. Only a small part of the bottle is left outside while the rest protrudes into the dwelling. The sunlight that enters the inside of the bottle becomes omni-directional through the refractive qualities of the water. The effect: an amount of light equal to that produced by a 40-60 Watt electric light bulb.

More info at: Liter of Light.

19 April 201419 April 2014

The Ooho: ‘edible’ water

Designers of studio Skipping Rocks Lab have created an edible water ‘bottle’ using a technique called spherification. This technique originates from the 1940s and has been reintroduced in 2003 by El Bulli chef Ferran Adria. To create the water bottles or Ooho’s as they have been named, water is frozen and the ice is placed into a solution containing calcium chloride and brown algae. When the ice meets the solution a thin, flexible and edible skin is created. The skin consists of a double membrane, which makes it possible to dispose of the (less hygienic) outer membrane before consuming the Ooho. The inner membrane can be consumed together with the water or be thrown away ‘sustainably’: the membrane is biodegradable. Ooho’s are easy and cheap to create, you can even make them in your own kitchen. To provide the Ooho to as many people as possible the team is planning to make the recipe open source. Next to the environmental impact also the financial impact is promising. Producing an Ooho is cheaper than producing a conventional water bottle: the producers claim that the costs are 2 versus 10 cents. At the moment the team works on improving the user friendliness of the design. If a feature like a lid would be added (it is not yet possible to close an opened Ooho) and Ooho’s could be consumed more efficiently, the days of old fashioned water bottles might be counted. More info and a movie here.

4 April 2014

Thinking outside the rectangle

Sometimes a project brings a kind of innovation that is not groundbreaking. It does not reduce our impact on the environment or provides new medicine to cure diseases. Sometimes a project just makes us look at our daily environment in a different way. Looking at things in a different way however is how groundbreaking innovations are born. So take a minute every once in a while to observe the details in the world around you, find the peculiarities, reflect, and see where it may bring you :). More info at Alts Design Office.

31 March 201431 March 2014

Emotional equations

Researchers of University College London found that when mathematicians were presented with an equation they perceived as beautiful, their brain showed increased activity in the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Surprising is that the orbitofrontal cortex is associated with emotion and that this particular region in previous tests has shown to be correlated with emotional responses to visual and musical beauty. This result is amplified by the fact that most mathematicians agreed on which equations were beautiful. A control group of people with little in depth knowledge of math did not show such a pattern, their preferences turned out to be rather random.

Apparently emotion can be guided by ratio. Interesting thought, but logical as well. We perceive (near) symmetrical faces as more beautiful than imbalanced faces. Regarding reproduction this is a rational choice because evolution taught us that symmetry indicates a smaller chance of genetic defects. Favouring symmetry increases our chance of survival. The same conclusion might apply to the appreciation of elegant mathematical equations: they have the potential to bring mankind to the next level. This raises another question: what would be the contribution of Mozart’s ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ or Ustad Isa’s ‘Taj Mahal’ to evolution? More info on the study at Scientific American.

27 March 201427 March 2014

Home for life: an intelligent new species

One of the most interesting requests I received while working in building physics has been to evaluate the energy efficiency of the project ‘Home for Life’ according to Dutch energy standards. This dwelling is an example of the active house strategy: the dwelling is energy efficient (even produces more than it needs), creates a comfortable living environment and relates to the local context. A combination of sensors that register heat, CO2 and humidity in all rooms, an outdoor weather station and an intelligent control system ensure a comfortable indoor climate. To optimize energy efficiency a hybrid ventilation system has been applied: the house is naturally ventilated during summer and mechanically, with incorporated heat recovery, during winter. During summer this means saving energy that otherwise would be needed to operate fans. Some more extraordinary measures: when the indoor temperature exceeds the programmed values, windows in both facade and roof automatically open to create a ‘chimney effect‘ which helps reduce the temperature. And automatically controlled solar shades not only exclude excessive heat during hot (summer) days, but are also used to insulate the facade during cold nights to keep heat inside. When focussing on energy efficiency in buildings, designers generally aim to maximize the insulation of the skin by minimizing the total amount of window area (the weakest link). The quality and amount of daylight within the ‘Home for Life’ however is impressive: over twice as much window area is implemented compared to a standard dwelling. The intelligent building concept manages to enable an exceptionally bright indoor atmosphere while maintaining a high level of comfort within the dwelling. More info at Active House.

25 March 201426 March 2014

Smog Ring: “turning dust into diamonds”

Surprised by the level of smog he experienced in Beijing, Daan Roosegaarde set a goal to create clean parks in Beijing. To achieve this Studio Roosegaarde has been working on an electronic vacuum cleaner to remove smog particles from the sky. To raise aditional awareness for the smog problem the collected dust will be used to create two types of ‘smog’ rings. The regular type will contain a milimeter cube of compressed dust, created with a hand-operated press, which symbolizes the cubic kilometer of smog that has been cleared to create it. The dust used for the limited edition version will be compressed enough to turn into something very similar to a diamond while still retaining some of it’s characteristic pigment. As Roosegaarde puts it: when buying a ring, “you are buying a cubic kilometer of clean Beijing air”. More info at Studio Roosegaarde.