Sections

Limited Access Pile Driving

This looks like it could be used on steep terrain via temporary paths that follow the contours of the slope.

Architecture as Erosion Control

This image diagrams the evolution of form beginning with options for the first criteria of design: soil control. Options are found under categories including Terraces, Retaining Walls, Meshes, and Piles/Anchors. Secondary design considerations involve the ability to provide shelter.

Terraces perform well for water retention as well as agricultural purposes. They also provide a basis for a variety of design options, yet typically rely heavily on retaining walls and/or the existence of significant root structure. Other than providing the blank slate of small patches of flat ground, terraces provide little benefit to the secondary design considerations.

Retaining walls prove fruitless as they are susceptible to hydrological undermining and rely heavily on mechanical fasteners like anchors (which are further explored as isolated strategies).

Meshes, like terraces, prove excellent tools for the maintenance of terrain, development of plant life, and resistance to erosion. Also like terraces, meshes provide little benefit to the secondary design considerations of providing shelter, at least on the traditional scale. On a larger scale, meshes mimic the performance of piles/anchors.

The piles/anchors category seems to provide the most benefit for the integration of building systems into the category of soil retention. Piles also provide significant architectural opportunities.

Benefits include (but not limited to):

Erosion Control

Allowance of ground cover

Allowance of small landslides

Prevents flooding of occupied space

Deep foundation

Keeps people off of new growth

Elevation/introduction to canopy level

Feels like a treehouse

Design Considerations

The primary design consideration for this project is to address the chronic erosion that plagues the area. This becomes problematic for the sustainability of the project in its sheer potential to wash away any architectural interventions.

Local farmers are addressing this with the implementation of various erosion-proofing procedures aimed at strengthening the hillsides. Swaling and drainage interventions seek to slow rainwater, allowing it to percolate the soil and feed the plants. The plants then develop root systems which further strengthen the soil, assisting in the redevelopment of the hillsides.

These interventions have been made for agricultural purposes. Can they be adopted to suit the needs of an architectural intervention? Can architecture be used to deter erosion and join the regenerative cycle? Can Architecture provide benefit and enhance its natural surroundings?

Borrowing from the philosophy of polyculture, this project seeks support by supporting the soil on/in which it so greatly depends.

Topographical Data!

It is embarrassing, really. I have spent a large amount of time and thought on how to obtain topographical data from the remote str

etches of Galan, Costa Rica. On a whim, I figured that carrying a GPS device would help, but I never new how exactly.

At the very least, I could extract each waypoint, which I knew to contain information regarding latitude, longitude, elevation, and time of day, but there are a lot of waypoints. I even hand-traced a map from the 1.5 in screen so that I would have some graphical information to go on. I downloaded all of the information off of the device onto my computer in every format that the device would allow in the hopes that I would figure it out once I got back. Google search after Google search left me with more questions and a growing feeling of defeat.

Finally, yesterday, I was using the old, crude satellite images from Google Earth to remember the paths and locations and correspond them with the existing data, when I found the GPS tool. There is an option within this tool, to import the .gdb files that I have been slaving over for months. Once imported, all of the tracks and way points were layered, providing me with exactly the sort of data that I was hoping for when systematically trekking around the site.

Eco-Tourism facts from allbusiness.com

The following are from a recent two-part study conducted by National Geographic Traveler for the Travel Industry of America.

* One-third of all travelers are influenced by a travel company’s actions to preserve the environment and/or history and culture of destinations, indicating that travel companies’ geotourism efforts do get noticed by a good portion of travelers.

* Although most travelers are concerned with price and value, 58.5 million Americans say they would pay more to use a travel company that strives to protect and preserve the environment. Most important, the majority (61 percent) of those who would pay more to use such companies would in fact pay 5 percent to 10 percent more.

* Authenticity is important to travelers. Many (61 percent) believe their experience is better when their destination preserves its natural, historic and cultural sites. In addition, 41 percent of travelers say their vacation experience is better when they can see and do something authentic.

* The majority of travelers are ready to act to preserve and protect our natural sites. Nearly 91 million travelers (59 percent) support controlling access to and/or more careful regulation of national parks and public lands in order to help preserve and protect the environment.

* A significant number of travelers (54 million) are inclined to select travel companies that strive to protect and preserve the local environment of the destination. For a smaller group of travelers (17 million), the environment is top of mind when actually making decisions about which travel companies to patronize.

* Millions of American travelers will buy from companies and organizations that are culturally and socially oriented. In fact, 46 million travelers buy from specific companies because they know that these businesses donate part of their proceeds to charities.

Source: http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/laws-government-regulations-environmental/218197-1.html#ixzz1hmYNddR4

What's so sustainable about a bankrupt project?

It becomes easy to categorize an energy-hogging system as that which is not sustainable. There are a whole host of products providing creature comforts to which we have become accustomed and grown to expect within the last century. It is due to such systems that our collective quality of life has increased only to have the bottom drop out at the realization of their environmental destruction.

I recently ran across an article suggesting the validity of an air conditioner at an “eco-resort” in a tropical rainforest. At first glance, this seems a contradictory, counterintuitive, and blasphemous abuse of marketing for the sake of greed and profit. Upon closer inspection, it is this very “eco-resort” which has employed the locals to pamper its guests and provide a somewhat distant experience of the forest that they call home. It is because of the financial success of this resort, that these individuals are able to maintain employment. Without employment in an industry based on preservation, these locals would likely revert back to the next most profitable industry; logging or poaching of expensive or endangered resources.

Clearly there is a negative side to luxurious and perhaps unnecessary modern requirements such as air conditioning, but this must be considered on a large scale. Guests, specifically guests who are paying a lot of money, like to be comfortable. Guests who are not comfortable, are unhappy, and are unlikely to come back.

It is only with this meta-comprehension that the whole picture or system can be understood and concessions can be made. With this comprehension, an educated compromise ceases to be a failure in design and can become a component for the ecological, social, and of course financial success of a project.