Waste management inspiration

As i develop my nano pits i have looked to the beating heart for inspiration, the wonders of the human heart and how each mechanism contracts to allow the flow of blood through the body supplying vital life to the extremities of the body is what i intend to develop my design upon. Bellow is a short film illustrating how the heart pumps old blood through the lungs, filtering it and supplying fresh clean blood to the rest of the body. 

I intend to transfer these biological systems into the design of my nano pit, i will be further exploring the waste management system which will collect, disassemble, sort and then distribute the broken down constituent parts of the waste to its storage facility until the constituent components are required for the use in 3D printing individual products.

Idea developement

In the Myer centre i plan on hanging my 'nano pits' from the current ceiling (to be the sub structure of the new apartment buildings of the future scenario) in the existing voids, this is for a number of reasons. The pits will hang here so that the waste from the new parasitic apartments can funnel down into the pits to be processed, disassembled and sorted into constituent components. Another reason for the placement of the pits is that they can act as a spectacle in the new retail interface of the Myer centre. Finally, they will hang in the void so that people can make the connection between the life cycle of the building. This is achieved as the residential component produces the waste to fuel the industrial component that sorts and stores material for the retail front. 

So tracks will run through the voids, this will have robots running on them capturing the disassembled materials and transporting them to their storage level to be kept there until required by the retail. The materials will be transported to the retail front as required to produce the 3D printed customised products for the public.   

Progress

So after last weeks tutorial there was a little bit of a light bulb moment. I had all these grand schemes in my mind and it was brought to my attention that there is no way i can get this all done by myself. So in a turn of events, it seems i will only be designing one section of my grand scheme. 
My big head has been forced to shrink a little and as such I'm left a little dis-allusioned. This does however allow me to take greater ownership of my design and the all important details that my design will consist of. 
The component of my design that I will be taking greatest ownership of will be my 'nano pits', this is the waste processing component of the grand scheme. It will be residing WITHIN the boundaries of the existing Myer centre. This is the fuel that propels the new retail landscape of the future, these pits will disassemble and sort the waste of the residential component of the design (which i will not be designing).

The idea i have in my head is that these nano pits will be suspended in the existing voids of the Myer centre, they will create a visual connection between the new found industrialisation of the city centre and the borne again retail outlets. The pits in isolation cannot be an appropriate solution to the design challenges of the future scenario, the space the pits they need to be a mechanism, controlling, storing and reusing these waste materials  for the purpose of manufacturing individuality of the new retail landscape.
I envision a transport system with fork lifts on tracks buzzing around the space through the void (visually connected to the retail interface) filling and carrying these 'filing' boxes of material through the space, to be stored on shelves through out, and obtained and used for the purpose of customised 3D printed products for the retail interface of the design.
The 'ground' plane, the voids that cut through the existing building, act as the public forum the stage where the future scenario plays out, encouraging voyeurism within the design.The exterior shell of the building is gone, a new skin envelopes the building facilitating the parasitic residential component of the design (which i will not be designing), the skin is 'alive' and responsive, reflecting the exterior inputs adjusting to suit the interior interventions. 

Finally the parasitic residential component will sit on top of the existing voids opf the building, this will become the 'lift' shafts, vertical movement through the new and old will be implemented and additionally the nano pits will cascade through these shafts collecting and sorting facilitating the new sustainability closed loop system within the building.  

Building technology

Investigation of nano technology and discussions in tutorials led to the idea of a 'nano-pit'. This would be an integrated component of the design for the building. The residential component of the design feeds the waste processing system. So the idea of the 'nano-pit' is that is will be the 'soul' of the building, it will sort the waste produced by residents and disassemble this waste into its base constituents so as to feed the manufacturing processes of the commercial side of the design. 

This system ties in with what Yasu spoke about in the lecture of what sustainability is... it is not mass greening of the city it is the in depth consideration of the design of a product or building in how it will be used, reused or have its life prolonged. The aim to create a permanent, spontaneous design is enabled through the use of nanites. My building has the possibility of being 'alive', being both permanent and spontaneous in the response to its surrounds. The building grows organically in a parasitic manner on the Myer centre. 

W8 Project developement

Product/ building lifecycle

Through consideration of my future scenario and my W7 project direction an interrelated life-cycle has been identified which will impact upon my design heavily. Driven by waste management and manufacturing, this cycle creates a future proposed closed loop system, it relies upon future peoples changed attitudes towards waste management and customisation. So the way i predict my future building to work is that people will consume, as they do today, they produce waste, as they do today, but here is where our future scenario kicks in, the people RECYCLE. So the people recycle, you might argue people have been recycling for a long time but this is different and this is where the new technologies kick in, nano-tech will sort and disassemble waste products into their constituent components to be recycled in the new manufacturing processes with all organic by-passes going into the vertical farming processes. All except the organic constituents feed the manufacturing processes, producing products which in turn feeds consumption, and so the cycle continues but in an economically and environmentally feesable manner. 

Building function/ stacking

I have come up with the basic functions of my building. The design is aiming to integrate the above product/ building lifecycle through direct integration of the functions of the above lifecycle. So if the building provides a residence, a waste processing space, manufacturing space and a commercial 'retail' front the building in theory should become a self contained closed loop system.  

3D printing and manufacturing

So what does 3D printing mean for manufacturing in the future? Well 3D printers can build almost any 3D structure from supplied material, they will have the ability to build more complicated structures year by year and all you will need is a material and a digital 3D model to manufacture something from a 3D printer.

In our future scenario we considered a number of factors and as a result it was concluded that the resource crisis and societal attitude changes left people more inclined to 'live locally'. On-line shopping left retail spaces void in the future but as the city is the hub for the society, manufacturing moved in and replaced the void, bringing new life to the city centre. 
Our proposed scenario is one were manufacturing of products is driven by intelligent design. Some one who manufactures products would be approached by a member of the public, commissioned to create a customised product which meets every requirement of the client. This ties in with the notion of extended product life cycle and peoples new found notion of waste management and conservation of resources.  

References: http://techains.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/manufacturing-paradigm-shifts.html
                   http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/14/desktop-factorys-cheapo-3d-printer-is-coming/

Nano technologies

In my research nano-technologies have become increasingly interesting to me. I have read about how a 'fog' of nano-bots could build any object or product for you, it could be used to create any 'reality' around you. This technology could also be used to reconfigure any structure and change the properties of different objects in an instant. 
The appearance of programmable nano-bots, capable of building any complex structure and change it at any time necessary, opens a world of possibility in a number of areas such as production (manufacturing) and architecture to name the two I am most interested in. 

When I apply this information to my investigation of our future scenario a lot of the ideas my group discussed can easily be intertwined and integrated with it. Nano-technologies could be applied to our idea of advanced waste management, we proposed that in our future scenario due to heightened resource scarcity there would be a societal attitude change towards waste management and consumption in general.
The technologies would allow for a sophisticated waste sorting system, nano-bots would sort our garbage, disassembling products into their base constituents which could then be utilised for the manufacturing of new products.

Another way this technology could be utilised is in the creation of my building design. Instead of the building being constructed in the traditional sense of today it could be constructed or rather organically grown with the building consisting of nano-bots in its entirety. The buildings would have the ability to morph and change in a response to the surrounding conditions of the site, if its too sunny then perhaps the windows change colour or become smaller according to the intensity.

Or alternatively the nano-bots could be an 'input force' in the building. For example the only thing the nano-bots may do to the building is act as the component that as discussed earlier in this post, disassembles and reassembles the materials in the building to suit its surroundings. This is not intended to be used as a 'this building can have any function' draw card, I intend it to allow the facilitation of change but only in so far as to respond strictly to the functions of the building.

reference: http://techains.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/manufacturing-paradigm-shifts.html
                 http://inhabitat.com/tomorrows-skyscrapers-today-daekwon-parks-symbiotic-superstructure/