So we had our first tutorial today, very similar to last year. Discussing concepts surrounding the four theme groups and possible future scenarios.
After the jump is an overview of our discussion.
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Urban
We started off discussing the urban scenario of removing vehicles from central business zones as London has since early last decade.
- Reclaiming Roadways for Urban Farming
With the roads being mostly free from congestion there is the opportunity to utilize this space for other activities, the first one that came to mind was urban farming. As farming is inherently a space consuming activity that requires a connection to both the ground and the sky to work effectively. Although the surrounding buildings hinder this connection to the sky and the earth is covered and heavily compacted there are ways around this.
As shown above you could locate the deep planting to the center of spaces to minimize roots interfering with foundations and services. the space would also have more and less light zones which could be utilized accordingly, and activities that don't require light could be located appropriately. - Access for Emergencies
As the city centers are still quite populated with people there will invariably still be a need for vehicular access in special circumstances, for example; medical emergencies, construction, goods delivery, cleaning and maintenance procedures and a range of other activities that are made easier or even possible with the aid of vehicles.
So unfortunately it seems the above idea of totally reclaiming the road space for production is infeasible, it could still be adopted on a reduced scale though. - Public / Personal Transit System
If the central congestion zone is large enough then a public or personal transit system would be required for quick easy movement throughout the space. This could be anything; a light rail system, trams, bicycle network or even a Futurama-esque pneumatic people tube.
The main point is that all of these solutions would still require space, and very probably that space would be similar to the ones we have allocated now. The existing infrastructure would at the very least take time to depart from this model. - Boundary Conditions
This is a really interesting concept that we stumbled onto in our rantings, but its to do with the idea of change between environments and the conditions that arise at the edges of the two.
Looking at the example of excluding cars from congested areas I came up with the rational that the edge of this 'de-congested' zone would see an increase in materials intensity. As is would become difficult to transport goods and materials into the center of the area most of the material transactions would occur at this boundary. Things like; markets, consumer stores and others would gravitate to here as it is as close as they can get to the major populated center while still being accessible to high volume transport, as the graph below demonstrates.
In reality though this may not be the case, the fact that the goods and consumables are transported directly to the city center might be what makes it the city center. In this hypothetical I envisioned the city center being populated by high intensity activities rather than materials such as; arts or performance spaces, museums & galleries, offices and corporate work places and other activities that don't require a high material input to sustain them.
Essentially this model I expect would produce the above kind of patterns with high density low materiality areas being skirted by high materiality boundaries and a consolidation of major transport corridors. In essence it's almost what we have now with roads and city blocks but the distances have been increased to the point where it is uneconomical to further transport goods to the center of the areas.
Suburban
The idea of retail spaces in the future is an interesting one, I personally think that the consumer model they rely on is fundamentally flawed, here's the an overview of the discussion we had.
- Linear Shopping Model
By linear shopping model I mean something similar to Ikea, where you identify what you would like in a display setting and from there you collect the product from the warehouse or distribution centre. This type of approach, over say a supermarket model, would use less space particularly if the warehouses were amalgamated to a central location that serviced multiple retail outlets in a urban setting.
Of course this isn't a particularly revolutionary model, and it is probably widely used already today, but I think it is an important step towards a sustainable future. This is still, however, a consume and dispose model and slowly the worlds resources are being captured and locked in little packets then distributed across the globe making it very hard to reuse or recycle these resources.
- Cyclical Shopping Model
What we need is a more closed loop system, where items are broken down and reused in the manufacturing process, waste products being utilized in the production process - Advertising Space
This concept is fairly obvious, in fact many people already do it today, we go check out what we want in store and then find it for much cheaper on the internet at home. This utilizing of the retail store as a dedicated advertising space for products is a great idea, but the stores need to go one step further and provide a digital presence for people to purchase their products at a reduced price or they risk losing their customers to cheaper competitors. The next two points describe ways that the store could supply extra value for purchasing either in-store or from their digital representation.
- Space to Experience Products
The example we talked about here was a sports store that's connected to a sports centre providing a chance for would be purchasers to experience their products before purchase.
- Distribution Model Re-think
Didn't really get too far with this idea train in terms of an idea for a resolution, but we all seemed to agree that there is a lot of wasted energy in the transportation of goods and materials. Obviously its all but impossible to completely negate but it could be minimised but utilising local resources and local manufacturing, or at least have a system or network that sources things from the closest possible location.
- Distributed Manufacturing
We were talking(well I say we but the other guys I was talking to utterly dismissed the idea) about 3D printers and a distributed manufacturing model. By localising the manufacturing you have reduced transport and reduced excess, As products are manufactured on demand rather than a projected demand.
Regional
The discussion really slowed at this point however the idea of a self sufficient community excites me greatly, below are some of the points we discussed.
- Analysing Systems
We were talking about analysis existing systems to either enhance their productivity or utilise their
- Closing Resource Loops
X
- Adaptive/Modular Design
X
- Utilize Local Resources
X
Virtual
And lastly virtual, the discussion had all but stopped at this point so I've just made up a few ideas after the tutorial and discussed them a bit below.
- Immaterial - Non tangible
X
- 3D Printed Products
X
- Distance Becomes Less Important
X
- Virtual Space Nodes
X
Lots of Interesting things were discussed during the tutorial, obviously I've put my own spin on everything and left things off that didn't interest me, but i think this project shows a lot of promise to be intellectually engaging and socially challenging.
Sources: [Original Works]
Images: [Original Works, Futurama Television Series]
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