sustaining community

Sustaining CommunityLiam Turkle 2008 in Collaboration with Cassidy Fry

1968 1988 2008 2028 2048

Captcha

Knowledge/Time

Dynamic Scale

Space Exploration

Brain Space

Host System

SUSTAININGCOMMUNITY

├Return to NATURE├Embrace TECHNOLOGY

2

Rhode Island School of DesignThesis ProjectLiam Turkle 2008

SUSTAINING COMMUNITY To be sustainable today we must act within our local community and simultaneously acknowledge our relationship to a larger network. In these terms, a community sustains itself by living at multiple scales. A fisheye lens is an image of sustainability because it magnifies the local conditions and simultaneously represents an environmental worldview in its periphery. This representation is achieved through a simple geometric projection. Throughout this investigation the image of the fisheye-dome will be reused and recycled. It is a system of branding, a system of wayfinding, and most of all a default system to simply keep working. Reoccurring images cannot be ignored. An image can lead to a structural system, a programmatic use or a spatial experience. Sustainability can only be explored by physically inhabiting the images we already have.

DOME

Casting the dome in plaster

Casting the plaster in resinand fiberglass

Failed attempt and hand forming Plexiglas with heat

Dome as projection surface

Rhode Island School of Design Degree Project Liam Turkle in collaboration with Cassidy Fry May 2008 Primary Critic: Brian Goldberg Secondary Critic: Anastasia Congdon Degree Project Coordinator: Jonathan Knowles

3

ORDER of OPERATIONS

Definitions....................................4

Generation Gap:...............................................................................................................16 Things that keep me from paying too much attention to history.

Numbers:......................................................................................................................................22 Learn how to deal with statistics that don’t make sense.

Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple:.......................................................................................................28 The way I think sustainability works

Skyscraper and Groundscraper:..................................................................................................46 Mashup two different sized things.

Proposal:...........................................................................................................................56 Synthesize my findings: a proposal for Providence, RI

4

Definitions

The Definitions page is an online catalog of terms generated in January 2008 in collaboration with Cassidy Fry. They reflect a series of related conversations during this period of time. They provide a criteria for the work to come.

5Definitions page from GHOSTBOX (www.etaletc.com/GHOSTBOX), the online component of this book.

6

Definitions

7Definitions Page continued from (4)

8

Definitions

10

Definitions

13

Generation Gap

14

Sustainability

1) To bear a burden or a charge. 2) To keep up or keep going, as an action or process: to sustain a conversation. Sustainability is a process that relies on constant production in order to approach contemporary and personal values. When I name my values I am losing ground. There is a natural contradiction: 1) What are my architectural values? 2) How do I continue working when I don’t know the answer to (1)?

Generation Gap

15

Fish Kill

Two weeks ago, menhaden fish swarmed the Providence River. Swarming can lead to a naturally occurring fish kill; the river becomes so densely populated that the dissolved oxygen is completely used up. One at a time the fish are overcome by hypoxia, they convulse at the surface in a last attempt to dissolve oxygen into the water. In 2003 several million menhaden fish died in the Narragansett Bay area. Though not as pervasive, the most recent fish swarm suffered hundreds of losses. Ghost shrimp are appearing in large numbers to feed off the recent fish kill. In the unseasonable warmth the translucent shrimp can be spotted in the light as they jump out of the water.

Sustainability relies on the images of collapse, like millions of menhaden fish washed up on the shore. In the conflicting definition of the term, how do these images fuel work? And how does working with this imagery further my own discourse of sustainable values?What good comes out of collapse?

This Page: Initial investigation in sustainable research. My bedside table, lightbox, fishtank, ghost shrimp and water from the Providence River. Opposite: Detail of ghost shrimp.

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Allen Ginsberg, 1963

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

PARENTS

GENERATION GAP

PARENTS

GENERATION GAP

GENERATION GAP

Generation Gap

Generation Gap

So much has been done in the last forty years that it often seems too difficult to make any work at all. If my parents haven’t done it, my teachers probably have. How do we explore the same ideas without feeling like we are nostalgic. I don’t want to be nostalgic. What about the generations to come?

TLO Widder falls within the generation of my future students should I have them. We realized that we can escape the legacy of our upbringing by reaching into the future and discovering what we will teach TLO in the future, when we are ready to be teachers. But, as may be expected of a seven year old, TLO has a relatively small attention span for most of our thesis research. First of all, we need to find a simpler way to talk about our interests. We finally caught TLO’s attention by introducing him to the Ghosts and Rats that live in my kitchen.

The diagram on this page addresses the contemporary cycles and gaps in education.

My TeachersMy Parents

May 08

17

Mel Gibson as Road Warrior, 1981

1990 2000 2010 2020

GENERATION GAP

PARENTS

GENERATION GAP

GENERATION GAP

2030

Me:The Greatest Generation:The last generation to attend high school in the 20th century.

My TeachersTLO:My First Employee

May 08

Diagram: Generation Gap

18 Generation Gap

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<http://www.etaletc.com/ghostbox/ tlospecial.html>

TLO SPECIAL is a page dedicated to research into the interface between Special Worlds and their Host Space. The current project is dedicated to the relationship between Ghost Space and Rat Space. The relationship was first observed in my kitchen last year when two individuals were overcome by ghosts. A concurrent rat infestation has led TLO to believe that these rats are hosting the ghost entities. In the right circumstances it is shown that ghosts will give up the host in an attempt to violently communicate with the living.

The interface with a Special World is difficult for normal adults to perceive. We have employed seven-year-old TLO Widder as our medium in this field. The website shows the first two results. The first frame of drawings describe the qualities of Rat Space: “A dry, dark space, crumbs of everything, lots of holes, medium temperature.”The second drawing shows how these discrete qualities interface with the real house. Scalar smallness is immediately questioned, is it possible to zoom far enough into Rat Space that we arrive back in the real world at full scale (see diagram).

Opposite: TLO Homepage. Site designed sustain an ongoing correspondence with 7 year old TLO Widder.This Page: Drawings by TLO Widder. Constructed in response to the weekly prompts from TLO Special (see opposite).

20

Ghost Story

On two separate occasions (of which I was the only one present for both) two different people were attacked by ghosts in my apartment. Both incidents occurred at approximately 10:30pm while washing the dishes. Both individuals were instantaneously overtaken by an other presence in the room. Both hit their heads repeatedly against the dishes, as if by electric shock or seizure. They fell to the ground, and both times, as I prepared to call for an ambulance, they awoke. Both claimed to have fallen asleep at the sink, with no recollection of the events we witnessed. The story began to unfold when I heard the rats running back and forth in the mechanical chase above the sink. Clearly the rats had participated in the ghost events. TLO speculates that the rats are hosting the presence of the ghost. The relationship can be described in this way: Behind the wall of the sink exists a series of mechanical spaces that service the house. This is, for my purposes, Rat

Space. The actual navigability and spacial quality is difficult to imagine. Rats seem to move much more like plumbing and circuitry than like humans. The size and length of space is far less important than connectivity. The rats in Rat Space afford the ghost a host body. As evidence has shown, it is only at a particular time in a particular location that humans are susceptible to ghost interaction. Making the momentary contact with Rat Space (i.e. through the sink) is enough to raise the ghost.

Both victims hit their headsrepeatedly against the dishes, as if

by electric shock or seizure.

Generation Gap

Reenactment of paranormal activity within my apartment September through December 2007

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******GHOST SPACE*******HOST SPACE*************G

Ghost Detector

The Ghost Detector is built from a now standard schematic design in the paranormal community. It has been established within the community that small electromagnetic disturbances in a space can be attributed to ghost activity. Skeptics will point at the fact that most ghost hunting occurs in old haunted houses with ancient wiring in the walls. This, along with power lines, computers, most common appliances and even the ghost detector itself can contribute to electromagnetic disturbances. In light of avoiding discouragement, this ambiguity of signal may be the most important revelation in ghost hunting. An electromagnetic disturbance reading can be one of two things: a ghost or a dishwasher. Like a classic paradox in quantum mechanics, the ambiguity

is resolved by the observer. An appropriate narrative can force a signal into the paranormal realm. The prototype ghost detector pictured above gives out audible electromagnetic readings. The actual units are irrelevant once the user learns to qualify certain frequencies with certain haunts. When the user hears a paranormal frequency, a button is pressed to designate this frequency as Ghost Space. The next time this frequency is read, the machine will alert the user with the included LCD display.

An electromagnetic disturbance can be one of two things: a

ghost or a dishwasher

Photo of homemade ghost detector / electromagnetic detector. Speaker, LCD Display Arduino microcontroller and wiring

23

Numbers

24

Christmas 2004 Christmas 2005 Christmas 2006Christmas 2007

Numbers

NUMBERS: Interest in sustainability drops during the holidays!!!!!!!!

25

Figures, Capacities and Proportions Matter,Even for Ghosts

NumbersNumbers can be overwhelming, especially when dealing with design problems like sustainability. So much work has been done by statisticians that it is hard to imagine how I could contribute. But I need to embrace numbers in the design process. Although I may never be an expert in numbers, at least I have the advantage of dumb luck.

Google TrendsGoogle Trends graphically represents the search volume of user-defined key terms. The above graph depicts the search volume relationship between sustainability and sex drive. Sustainability shows a slow increase in news hits and more or less steady average in search hits. There is an annual dive in the curve that occurs during Christmas Break. Sex Drive, on the other hand, shows a minor increase in volume

MVRDV: MetaCity DataTownMVRDV uses figures and statistics to derive an architecture. Figures can seem benign, rational and scientific but they have more personality. There are so many figures in the world today, that it is possible to find the figures that tell your story best. In this sense, figures are generative. But it is easy to get carried away. Figures are convincing, they can easily deter you from what you want to believe.

Christmas 2007

NUMBERS: Interest in sustainability drops during the holidays!!!!!!!!

Screen capture from Google Trends. Inset This Page: Image from MVRDV MetaCity DataTown

26

Alan Boutwell/ Mike MitchellContinuous city for 1.000.000 human beings.

1969

Numbers

RATIONALIZING LIFE

27

Roland Emmerich/ Twentieth Century FoxThe Day After Tomorrow

2004

Dennis Quaid (Scientist): Evacuate...everyone south of that line.

Perry King (President):

What about the people in the North?

Quaid:

I’m afraid it’s too late for them. If they go outside...the storm will kill them.

28

Smallest occupiable volume for 6.6 billion people Dimensions: 2245’ x 2245’ x 2245’

Numbers

FLESHWORLD

29This Page: FLESHWORLD. Scale 3-D rendering set in Lower Manhattan

31

Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple

32

Normal energy is recycled

Surplus energy is captured

Closed Loop

The Closed Loop is a system that we are familiar with. What goes in must come out somewhere. Today it seems more important than ever, we must clean up what comes out. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.


33

Surplus energy is released

Normal energy is recycled

Open Loop

The Open Loop is a system we are familiar with, but it is far more suppressed in our society. The Open Loop system admits surplus energy to enter into the system, it also allows energy to escape. This is a system of pressure valves that offer feedback from the environment. When the environment is giving off energy and material, the system absorbs it. And when the system needs to, it can expel energy of its own. Though we know that the Closed Loop of curbside recycling is the safest form of sustainable practice, it can also be boring. By working in tandem, the open loop can keep the whole diagram from spinning in circles.

The Open Loop is made of two components:The Solar Temple (Intake)The Sweat Lodge (Exhaust)

Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple Diagram: How I think sustainability works

34

Solar Cells CHARGE the Capacitor

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PhotoCells SENSE where the Sun is

People ENTER through the Tube

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USE THE LAMP TO SIMULATE THE SUN: It does not work terriblely well because it is not the sun and I am not an electrical engineer

The Bot roves around the landscape, powered by the Sun.

Two sensors keep the Bot following the Sun.

The Capacitor beneath the Bot holds charge until the onboard Computer can turn the motor.

It works in bursts, saving up the energy it collects.

At the proper scale, a human can enter the Bot when it arrives in their backyard by entering the mesh tube and crawling into the inhabitable circuit.

The interior plan is yet to be solved, but it will allow the user to transfer the energy from the motor to entertain-ment devices.

When the users gets his or her fill, or when the Sun moves behind a cloud, the user should go home.

GUILT-FREE PLEASURE WITH SOLAR ROBOTS

InhabitableEntertainmentSpace



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Solar BOT, Utilizing Free Energy

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Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple Opposite: Working solar robot prototypeThis Page: Schematic of full-scale robot

36

Space extends from the hut by imagining a larger community.

Spaces that cannot be occupied nowcan be captured for later.

Castaway

The Castaway model offers a method of understanding personal sustainability. The cliche castaway novel is structured by the protagonist’s quest to mirror the real world in the special world of the deserted island. The Castaway simulates the real world he has left behind. And in the simulation the world is empty, for the first time he can hold the whole idea of the island in his head without feeling insignificant. In this doubling he is able to suspend the limitations of his means. The major operation of the Castaway is to capture space. Though there is always a core living unit, space extends from the hut by imagining a larger community. Spaces that cannot be occupied now can be captured for later. The capture space is similar to Ghost Space, it evokes a community that no longer exists in the real world. Though this fiction is often a mental crutch to maintain productivity, it can be instrumental to an escape strategy.


Castaway Model

37

Core Space:Bed, Bathing,

Eating

Capture Space:Courtyard

Ghost Space:Imagined Escape(Space Elevator)

Affordances:A path affords for certain

divergences, this is the first idea for a site

Contrasting a Core Space

against a Captured Space

reveals the Affordances and

Sacrifices the Castaway has

made

Escape roots and Contingency plans are helpful to think of a way out of the closed

community. Even if the closed community is

made up of all ghosts. Escape roots find a way

out of Escapism.

Path:Means of capturing space. The path is the practical and narrative connection

to resources


Waste:The degree of efficiency

codes the Castaway values

Opposite: 3-D model of a stranded castaway imagining a non-existent communityThis Page: Detail and brief description

38 Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple

Solar Temple

39Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple Screenshot from GHOSTBOX website. 3-D model of Solar Temple and description


Sweat Lodge

41Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple

Sweat Lodge

Screenshot of GHOSTBOX website. Rendering of Sweat Lodge and description.

42

STUDIOS

WOODSHOP

STAIRS TO FITNESS CENTER


HAY BALE / RAMMED EARTH FACADE

Sweat Lodge

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BATHHOUSE

SWEAT LODGE

JUNKYARD

DAYCARE

Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple Isometric rendering of Sweat Lodge (with and without facade). Plan shown at top right.


Sweat Lodge

45Sweat Lodge and Solar Temple Experiential Rendering of Sweat Lodge, photo collageRight Inset: Inspirational Spaces

46

Mudman c. 1970’s

The Mudman is the alter-ego of performance artist Kim Jones. The Mudman embodies carnal acts of performance that draw on imagery from the primitive and the uncivilized. He is a nomad and carries the structure of his being on his back. Once in a performance in the mid 1970’s Mudman lit three captive rats on fire. His current work (far right) relies on this early imagery to generate a series of drawings that imagine large city plans and war games that emanate from the Mudman figure. The structure on his back is an ideogram for the city.


A User: MUDMAN

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Kim Jones today, c. 2007


49

Skyscraper and Groundscraper

50 Skyscraper and Groundscraper

51Skyscraper and Groundscraper

Ghost M

ovies and Buildings

Screenshot from GHOSTBOX website. Photo collage with imagery from M. Night Shyamalan’s 6th Sense.

53Skyscraper and Groundscraper

Skyscraper Groundscraper C

omm

unity

Screenshot from GHOSTBOX website. Diagrammatic rendering of Skyscraper community.

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Tower + C

ohousing

Skyscraper and Groundscraper Isometric Rendering of Skyscraper community

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In the Landscape

Skyscraper and Groundscraper Isometric Rendering of Skyscraper community (continued)

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Proposal

60 Proposal

Ruins as an opportunity

Bounded between the Interstate and the Bay

61Proposal

BROWNFIELD SITE IN PROVIDENCE

Trash

CityInfrastructure

Bounded between the Interstate and the Bay

Choosing a Site. A forgotten brownfield behind the highway in Providence, Rhode Island.

62 Proposal

Ruins are opportunities

First attempt at ruin life With compact living units on top

RUINS

63Proposal

I am treating the site like ruins that I found. It helps to generate forms and programs that respond directly to the ground and the local community. By building ruins of my own I can begin to draw out the connection between the earth and the home. Because the site is in a flood plane, all occupiable dwelling must sit on top of these ruins. Because the site is polluted, the agriculture will need raised beds, it can start to fill in the ruins that I make.

Trying to create my own ruins is freeing because all the occupants are already gone.

Making the first move on the site. Starting with an imagined history.

64

DOME-STICK (n.)A Dictionary of the English Language:Samuel Johnson LL.D. and John Walker1828

DOME + STICK x ATE

Proposal

HOW TO LIVE IN A BROWNFIELD: ARBITRARY WAYS TO FIND FORM

Focusing on a site in Providence moves the project in two directions, I must derive

a method of generating forms and I must react to the opportunities of the site with the

systems that I am developing.

65Proposal

Permaculture structures exist beyond the realm of one organism and constantly reference the scale of other organisms and ecosystems, like the concentric worldviews of painted mandalas. “Permaculture could be described as a post-modern concept, in which all assumptions are open to question and elements from different systems and traditions are convened without regard for any fixed aesthetic or tradition.” (Permaculture, David Holmgren, 22) The structure that dominates contemporary thinking today is the Permaculture Guild. An example of a guild is the Native American system of the Three Sisters, a guild that consists of intercropping corn, beans and squash. The Corn provides structure for the beans to grow on and in turn protects the corn from insects and the squash provides the groundcover

HOW TO LIVE IN A BROWNFIELD: MISSED OPPORTUNITIESHOW TO LIVE IN A BROWNFIELD: ARBITRARY WAYS TO FIND FORM

to prevent weeds. Together the three organisms symbiotically replenish nutrients in the soil to prevent nutrient depletion common in mono-agricultures. Like the portmanteau, the original terms (beans, corn and squash) do not prefigure the end structure. Western logic and rationality cannot deduct a permacultural guild from its constituent parts. Rather, it takes an uncanny methodology to imagine the potential of relationships that we observe in nature. These seems to be the most advantageous methodology in a global society. The Three Sisters is a model for living and building as well, a community is not limited by the quality of the land but the richness of the interconnected systems.

Finding simple metaphors to construct forms and values within the site.

66 Proposal

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY

PERSPECTIVE

Cassidy Ace Fry: 26 Community Technology Portals throughout the city allowing for a localized government structure. One occurs on this site. The garden is the place where the large scale meets the local scale.

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RETURN TO NATURELiam Rich Turkle. Housing in a local community. 16 ground units are responsible for living off the land. 60 tower units have typical Providence lives with the opportunity of adjacency.

Proposal Final Rendering of the proposed brownfield community.

68 Proposal

Tower

Groundskeeper Units

Permaculture Land

Birdseye View

View of Groundskeeper

PERSPECTIVES

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View of housing and Community Portal

View of Junkyard Garden from beneath Community Portal

Proposal Additional Renderings.

70 ProposalMODELS N

∆

71Proposal

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Section Looking North 1/8” = 1’

Section Looking West 1/8” = 1’

Proposal

SECTIONS

75

First Floor Plan 1/8” = 1’

Ground Floor Plan 1/8” = 1’

Proposal

FIRST FLOOR N ∆ GROUND FLOOR N ∆

19681988200820282048

Captcha

Knowledge/Time

Dynamic Scale

Space Exploration

Brain Space

Host System

SUSTAININGCOMMUNITY

├Return to NATURE├Embrace TECHNOLOGY

Diagram of Thesis Presentation May 2008: Computer, Projector, Inflatable Bag, Fiberglass Dome

sustaining community

Documents

image of sustainability

6definitions7definitions

48definitions9definitions

structural system

local community

system of branding

system of wayfinding

default system