The New Strategy and the Final Form of Mobile Architecture

We, as a group, felt our current strategy of mass housing wasn't a strong enough theme to build off, particularly in the field of mobile architecture. So we did some further research into the city of Canberra. We found that Canberra is undergoing a population increase, the second largest in the country for it's size according to the bureau of statistics. With the new plans for a high speed railway to connect it to the larger cities of Sydney and Melbourne and with more companies building facilities in the capital, this population boom will increase dramatically. This means the city will require more housing for the population was well as better transport options for the populace. However as a population grows, other problems with the city start to emerge. These could be a need for hospitals, general health care, entertainment spaces, service infrastructure, etc... These needs can be hard to predict and can take a long time to react to. Therefore we decided a solution to this up and coming problem would be a reactive, adaptable building.

Reactive architecture is the final type of mobile architecture. These building do not move location but there bounds and spaces do. Rooms can change shape and function easily and quickly to react to a need.

There a various methods to achieve this kind of flexibility, such as tensegrity, pneumatics, hydraulic to mention a few. I will go into more detail of these methods in later posts. What ever system is used to achieve it there must be certain criteria to follow:

• Morphing the spaces must be quick, easy, safe and as energy efficient as possible.
• Construction and de-construction must be possible with minimal fuss. This means changing the structure as the environment grows and shrinks will not be a problem.
• The materials that are moving should be lightweight but strong, to remove the need for large and energy intensive mechanisms.
• Fit with the architectural style of Canberra, and not be detrimental to the aesthetics of the building.

Forms of Mobility. Part 2: Travelling structures

This aspect covers the most literal interpretation of mobile architecture. The idea of moving buildings has been quite prominent in fiction, with images of flying buildings, walking castles and floating cities.

 

Picture above is the flying "utopian" city of Columbia from Bioshock: Infinite. Each group of building are supported by propellers or balloons, allowing the city to change shape and layout at a whim.

 The wandering structure featured in Howl's Moving Castle is an example (though not a particularly realistic one) of land based architectural mobility.

And these concepts can become fair more chaotic and cluster as more and more systems and buildings are added to the design.

 An example of a moving city by Josh Dykgraaf. More examples of these can be found at 

http://joshd.carbonmade.com/projects/3049920#1

This popularity for moving buildings is because a home that can move would allow the owner to explore new area's and move whenever they feel like, while still living in comfort and security. The most common form of this type of mobile architect is water based “buildings”. At the lower end of the scale is house boats but newer conceptual designs expand this concept to large residential complexes and all the way to small cities.

The mobile architectural solution could be made smaller by adding a “home base” for them to stock up on what they need for specific jobs instead of having to carry around everything just in case. The home base could also be mobile but it wouldn't require the same level of mobility as the smaller units as they could reach where it could not. This system could help multiple areas simultaneously increasing the efficiency of this problem solving device.

The three main forms of transport are by air, by water and by land. Travel by air is the least restricted out of the three but is conversely the most expensive in terms of cost, energy usage and upkeep. The best option for keeping the structure afloat would be a dirigible based system. However the load of the structure would have to be balanced with quite large lighter-than-air balloons. Gliding is a low energy cost method of air transport as they rely on natural thermal currents for lift but these units will have to be small and light. This method of travel could be used for the smaller structures in the home base system described above as they will not be required to travel very far by their own power.

Mobility by sea is obviously quite restricted in where it can go by the depth (and availability) of water. However, very little additional infrastructure would be required to service the available communities because if they live near a body of water that connects to the ocean then most likely have a dock in place. For the purpose of this assignment however, our architectural solution would be primarily operating around Canberra, which lacks access water based transport.

The last and most common form of mobility is transport by land. Because of the boom of automobile, roads and other land based transport infrastructure are prevalent. Most of the communities around Australia (including the far out rural zones) are connected to the road or rail network making most areas accessible. Land mobility technology includes wheels, treads, legs and rail.

Wheels would be the most reliable and would be able to use the existing infrastructure the best. However they rely on road quality and have troubles in rough terrain (such as in rural zones). Treads are slower but better on less even terrain as the distribution of weight to the ground is over a larger area. Legs are operate on most terrain and can negotiate very uneven ground but a legged structure would be extremely slow, which might not suit the spread out nature of Australian communities. Rail is extremely limited to where the tracks are but are the fastest option. Because our idea involves creating a new railway to connect the capital to Sydney and Melbourne this solution quite viable.

A another area of mobility exists between aquatic and land transport, the hovercraft.

The hovercraft can easily travel of most terrain providing it is mostly flat and the craft itself can get quite large, to carry a large amount of cargo. This versatility in movement doesn't sacrifice speed and at tops speeds, they can travel faster than a car or truck. It can also move between water and land without the need to stop or modify the structure. However it consumes a large amount of fuel to run.

These form of mobility can be combined with the previous form of moving designs to make a moving structure that can use local materials to fabricate non-permanent or low impact housing. 

It can use the dirt to make mud bricks, or sand to create sandstone, or even trees to create wooden structures (thought the environmental impact must be managed/offset). While it won't be as quick and basic as shown above, it is an idea that warrants further thought.

Forms of Mobility. Part 1: Moving Designs

This form of mobility is about stationary buildings that have mobile designs. The means the structure can be easily built anywhere the occupant decides to go. This form of architectural mobility has its roots in early nomadic tribes, who never stayed around in one place for long, therefore requiring non-permanent shelter. There are two ways this can be achieved with mobile design. The first is with a structure that is constructed and de-constructed at every new site the tribe stops at. 

Some of the materials for these structures is carried with the tribe to each new site (these all would be critical pieces such as structural poles or rare materials like fabric covers but they would all need to be light weight and easily carried), with the sites natural resources filling in for the rest of the required materials.

The other style of non-permanent shelter is a purely mobile design with no mobile structure. So each shelter would be created with material on the site and then dismantled and left, with the tribe carrying nothing of it with them. 

Though the structure doesn't move the design of it does making it “mobile”. These structures would included mud huts, igloos and so forth.

The most common form of these moving designs is the exhibition tent. This is a large structure that is easy to assemble and can be placed almost anywhere. 

They can hold large amounts of people comfortably and the simple structure can support equipment and multi levels in the structure. It is also easily dismantled and transported. The drawback of these structures is they need to be quite adaptable or else they are greatly limited by the choice of site. If they can build off and and integrate with the land, then this type of building can be very successful.

Week 4: Group Forming and Idea Discussing

Our new group narrowed down the options for our political opportunity/issue; national education or mass housing. The purpose behind national education was that because of the nature of Australia's spread out population, it is difficult to keep everyone on the same level of knowledge. This is combined with a lack of political education (and other area's of knowledge based on current events) that the younger/general populace is missing. If the public is more educated on critical topics, such as environmental science, illegal immigration, energy production and so on, then they will be able to make better choices.

The mass housing idea stemmed from a need to bring culture to our capital city. We discussed how Canberra lacked culture because of the lack of people. All of it's culture is “built” culture, structure that were made to mimic the culture of other areas but are themselves are empty. A place's culture is created by it's populace. So to improve the population of Canberra, we had to make it a viable place to live. A high speed rail line will connect Canberra to both Sydney and Melbourne so people who work in these cites who want to live in a less urbanised city can chose to live in the capital. This means the Canberra will require a mass housing solution. This railway might also cause smaller towns to emerge along it's length, with a slower train to serve them, requiring more houses.

We came to the conclusion that we preferred to work on the mass housing idea. This was based on the strength of the idea and the ability to add mobility to this idea.

The Centre and the Infrastructure Required.

As discussed before, our architectural solution would be a space that all members of the public would be able to access to share their ideas, thoughts and issues to those people in parliament that would be in a position best to deal with their concerns. While people can talk to their political representatives, there is an issue on whether they can listen to everyone (or even bother to listen to anyone at all) and even if they did, what then could they do. They would be required to bring up these innumerable amount of suggestions to each council, board, minister and other such groups, which prevent them from doing their original jobs. So our team researched and discussed what the current hierarchy of communication is, and what is needed to give the public direct access to the people or groups in parliament that they wanted to speak too.

Giving the public direct access to the ministers and their councils will stop the local representatives from being swamped with issues that they had no power or knowledge to deal with. This new centre would take and process all these claims to be given to the appropriate body. However they would also un-baisedly act as a stop-gap, trimming and removing the inappropriate, ignorant and other unnecessary opinions from the collection to prevent clogging the offices of the ministers.

The infrastructure required to prove every member of the public easy access to these centres would be massive to build from scratch so any and all pre-existing infrastructure must be utilised.

One centre will be given to each community. In high density areas, a stationary structure is the easiest form of the centre. It will be constructed in lots or empty buildings. This form will work until the community is too wide spread to easily access a single location on the larger land or a stationary structure isn't sustainable because of the cost compared to the lower population accessing it. In these rural areas a mobile solution is better. A travelling centre can access multiple locations and communities too equal the public exposure of a high density centre. There are two viable options to transport the centre, if the community is near a river or dock then boats can be used and for the other areas, roads are the only option. For the road accessed rural areas, the truck carrying the centre can visit the town at the same time as any needed resources are transported in, to use the same trucks and reduce fuel consumption. The truck could then take locally exported goods from these communities to trade with the next area the centre travels too, giving the centre multiple roles.

The four topics: Flexibility, Distribution, Mobility and Virtual.

We will be using these four topics to attempt to improve the current design and services of a new capital. But first was must define these words, and reveal their intentions. Flexibility shows the accessibility of the design, how easily it can work with other things and it's ability to change quickly. Distribution is the measure of how easily the services can be provided to others. The better the distribution is, the more people can be serviced and over longer distances. Virtual is how the services and design interact on a non tangible plane. This is interlinked with the other topics strongly as it is the easiest method to distribute services, accesses all areas and is extremely malleable.

In our group session we discussed that flexibility, in terms of a political design, would mean easy accessibility to politicians by all member of the public. There should be no person excluded from this service and as such it should be flexible enough to include all. We came to the conclusion that the system should be easily used by one as young as 12.

We discussed both mobility and distribution as one as we felt they served the same purpose in the political design. To achieve the flexibility service we wanted, everyone in the country would require access to the politicians and their views. A purely mobile approach would create to much of a limit on the system, moving the system as one object or moving the politicians themselves will prevent everyone accessing the service. And plucking politician from their desks to talk to the public all day will slow down the government. Adding distribution to this system sorts out these flaws. By creating spaces where people can interact with their politicians directly, then distributing them in areas where all members of the public can access them, the flexibility of the system will increase. The only places where this will not be efficient would be rural areas, which are often overlooked by government. They area between each settlement and even each property would be to large to place one of these spaces in and expect all to be able to easily access it. In these cases the spaces will have to be mobile, moving from place to place to insure all are given equal rights and access to the service.

The last method discussed was virtual. This can be used to complete and improve the system. The use of virtual information transfer will be invaluable to get the populace at the service stations discussed above direct and real-time accessibility to politicians. The other way virtual systems can help with the political system is to allow users to log on online and contact their politicians at any time. However this could clog the system and flood the politicians with requests and questions, which would ultimately ruin the service entirely. This must be given further thought it get the system working correctly.

Preliminary Research and Thoughts: What makes a capital city and how does Canberra stack up?

Canberra is a designed capital, instead of a city that inherited the capital title. This gave it the opportunity to begin designing it from scratch and with the idea of a capital in mind. There are significant disadvantages too. A city is formed from a small town, and it's success is based on it positioning and economic wealth. A designed from scratch city doesn't have these foundations and therefore has no history or prior population. And a city without people cannot rightly be called a city at all.

There are many ideas on what a capital city requires and I have complied the ones I feel are the most important (but not necessarily the be all and end all).

• Centre of politics
• Commanding position
• Seat of power
• Seat of learning
• Beautiful
• A reflection of the country's culture

And most importantly:

• A utopian (in all aspects; design, social, aesthetics ect...) example of a city, that all other cities show aspire to.

Canberra meets all but three of these criteria. The city is not the seat of power in Australia. It is not the largest economic city, nor does it have valuable resource or provides any utilitarian services for the country. It also is not the seat of learning for the country as the educational system is run by state government. But most importantly Canberra is in no way a utopian city. The main reason behind this is the lack of people and life in the city. Canberra was unable to draw in a significant population. The lack of a booming business sector and entertainment services prevented this from ever changing.