More Ideas concepts for IAAC, Meeting Notes

Here are the notes/general ideas from last night as well as my memory would allow.
feel free to add/delete....


I think we've all agreed that our version of self-sufficiency is more of a symbiotic type of relationship as opposed to an isolated one.

The building, rather then becoming the end point of another energy chain become the starting point of a cyclical loop of existing waste energy chains.

The most obvious and simple precedent is provided by nature.Oxygen breathing lifeforms and Carbon breathing plant-life live in a symbiotic harmony.

We've discussed that our design doesn't just piggyback buildings in a literal sense but also utilizes waste (radiated energy) from existing building typologies. For example our water supply may be a filtered stream from runoff from larger buildings air-conditioning units, etc.

Other precedents include the anglerfish and the bioluminecent bacteria that live on it. The bacteria provide light which acts as a lure for prey for the anglerfish, the bacteria survive in turn on the decaying skin of the anglerfish.



This means that instead of just building a new object, no mater how green, we've effected change not only upon the new system but we've improved the existing system as well. This allows us to retain historic and current architecture with out the environmental drag those buildings would provide, and also helps us avoid the destruction of those buildings and the economic, environmental, and historical/design impacts that come from that.

It should also noted that building an additional structure no mater how efficient, still incures at least some drain on existing infrastructure, the trick is to make our existing building more efficient by using their waste energy and resources to our own gain. In this case we've added a new building and made the old one more effcient as well, which improves the system not just individual items within that system.


There is a certain ego to the idea of the typical self-sufficient house located like an isolated pod in the wild, the assumption being that everyone should design that way. Much like the last few competitions we've found that the green movement readily ignores the established infrastructure in an effort to create new ones, that demolition in turn wreaks more environmental damage then the existing infrastructure itself. The environment is what we've made it, the sooner we realize that and attempt to learn to occupy that environment as opposed to some utopian "green" ideal the sooner we can achieve true "green" design.



So our next step is to explore what types of resources buildings typically expel and how then can be utilized as energy sources for our structure. I think we agreed that condenser units are probably one good starting point, I think glare may be another, and I think we should look into how are building might contribute to the relationship.