Towers research 2008
Throughout 2008, we’ve come back to rework and develop the ideas from the Arquine comp into a single tower. The images above are some of the images we submitted for the AA Unbuilt awards. We’ve been working principally from the inside out, looking at circulation, structure and some of the issues with zoning an essentially open tower structure. Issues like how to protect against wind, sun etc at height as well as a scaling from unit to neighbourhood to city which structures the social groupings that we started working with in the 80 -200 person scaled pods. The energy harvesting ideas also continue to develop, and we’ve linked the essential technology to work going on at MIT where researchers have developed a proof of concept around the breeze activated energy production, although with a standard coil and magnet filament, rather than the piezo electric hairs we first started with.
10th Arquine International Architecture Competition
Project team: Anthony Burke, Ben Hewett, Esan Ullah-Rahmani, Ashley Dennis, Joanne Kinniburgh
The two towers we have designed are permutations of the same parametric spatial system. At the core of our design is a desire to address new towers not through a formal system, but through the much more complex arrangements and possibilities for social spaces that tall buildings afford. Our departure point required we make two assumptions; the first, that the tower form is not required to have a homogenously conditioned interior, but rather that the tower would be open, and consist of multiple micro-climates. The second assumption is that floor space efficiencies will not be the dominant form of economic or spatial rationalization in the near future as other means of local energy production and distribution as well as programmatic requirements are made possible. That is to say, when the tower form can be considered as optimised today on a dollar per square meter cost logic, tomorrows energy producing facades will require a new series of logics such as more surface area resulting in more energy production. Forms in this sense are tied to larger agendas beyond the specific brief including environmental self sufficiency, resources contributions, new forms of social space and participation in the public urban context.
These towers represent the outcome of parametric modelling based on systems of structural clustering of small neighbourhood nodes of 80-200 people into larger assemblages of communities or commercial office workforces. The interconnections between these nodes allow for multiple means of entering and traversing the sections of the tower, either formally from the core or informally from the perimeter. In this sense both these towers sponsor novel programmatic arrangements based more on project based ad-hocracises rather than sectionally allocated typologically fixed percentages. An investment in a public infrastructure that these towers amounts too requires flexibility over a longer term to address new program pressures not encapsulated in the neat categories of typology.
Energy production and local distribution is a key element to the expression of these towers as they are calibrated to a form of ambient energy harvesting from small air movements over large façade areas. The heating of air during the day is captured in the glazed flutes that channel hot air to produce ever greater flows. These currents activate piezo crystal filaments (hairs) that produce energy which is consumed by the building, with excess flowing to the neighbouring areas.
