[Editors' Note]: For this week's Friday Feature (posted early for the holiday), The Functionality is proud to host "Microcosmic Aquaculture," a speculative project by new design office Bittertang (Michael Loverich + Antonio Torres).  The project recently won inclusion as part of [Bracket] magazine's feature on the future of farming, which explores "the modification of infrastructure, urbanisms, architectures, and landscapes toward a privileging of production."  We love "Microcosmic Aquaculture" because it is both completely whimsical and completely convincing as a concept that could help increase marine biodiversity and replenish the world's overfished waters.  Think of it as a biodegradable fish farm.  Or a synthetic reef.  Or an edible scuba museum.  Or a pile of goo.  Either way, it follows on the heels of an (unintentional) theme here at The Functionality over the past month:  self-sustaining pods.  From Mary Mattingly's water pods to Tomás Saraceno's floating blob, we're embracing the post-apocalyptic condition with gusto...

Gelatinous orb section and detail (courtesy bittertang)[Project statement]: We imagine a future where the vast and deep expanses of the ocean will teem with overabundant floating gelatinous reefs. Human's will be nourished physically and aesthetically by encouraging new floating worlds of reefs that sustain large quantities of harvestable wild and captive fish. Farming in this project is not viewed as a monoculture but the creation of a new ecology where wild and captive wildlife are 'raised' and their aesthetic potential is enjoyed by future divers and fishermen.

By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous Armada (courtesy bittertang)By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous orb lifecycle (courtesy bittertang)The advantage of this methodology is that farmed fish are grown within a larger reef system that manages and cleanses the waste and accumulation of typical farms. Large colonies of wild fish and shellfish will be attracted to the new substrate and can be harvested by a farm's owner of may be made available to the public.

These orbs will not only be productive and efficient farms, but the giant spherical reefs will become an aestheticized and living object to be explored by divers and recreational fisherman. Shape and gelatin mixture will produce different living conditions and various reef typologies, no two will be the same. Once set loose in the wild the orbs will literally take on a life of their own, following currents and attracting life wherever they go, possibly even mingling with other spheres of various ages, sharing their ecosystems and giving them away as they collapse and die. In the ocean this growth can happen very quickly within months of being born the orbs will be covered with living material becoming new edible living worlds.

From the fellows at bittertang.

(courtesy bittertang)

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of important posts, outlining innovative strategies for new infrastructure as part of Congress’ proposed stimulus plan. Please check back with us often in the coming week.

The House appropriations committee released a summary of its stimulus plan last week, including monies earmarked for infrastructural improvements (thanks to smogr for the report).  Gross amounts are as follows:

• $30 billion for highway construction;
• $31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;
• $19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
• $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.

We at The Functionality are very concerned with the huge discrepancy in proposed spending on highway construction ($30 billion) vs. mass transit and rail ($10 billion). This is a clear mis-prioritization of our interests in view of the harmful effects that our oil addiction has visited upon our urbanism, environment, economy, foreign policy and culture. The Functionality is first to concede that our highways and roads realistically require new investment and improvement, given that we are so tied to the automobile. However, we will be so tied for years into the future if we mimic the obsolescent infrastructures of the past.  For example, we know for a fact that thoughtlessly adding and widening highways only leads to more congestion and pollution.

We need a new approach. This does not mandate a clean break from the car, but rather, investment in innovative, hybrid infrastructure. This investment will be holistic: it will be accompanied by an ecological vision of a new American urbanism, culture and economy. It will accomodate the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, dumb technologies to smart technologies, sprawl to intelligent growth.

The stimulus may be be paid out as soon as 180 days from now. The window for this huge opportunity is NOW. Let’s get to it!

How many new wind farms could Tide cold water allow us to build?The Functionality recently learned that if America switched to Tide's cold water detergent and didn't use hot water for laundry, it would save $67/household and 3% of of total US energy consumption annually. Thats remarkable! (For context, power generated from wind in the US was an almost-insignicant .4%, as of 2006)

But so what? What about the other 97%? Thomas Friedman reports that we must conservatively be carbon-neutral by 2050 in order to avert environmental disaster. So, how can we reinvest these savings in order to leverage even more opportunities to be cleaner? Could utilities double or triple our wind power production from the money saved on coal? How will Proctor & Gamble reinvest its profits from Tide sales?

At The Functionality, we believe that savings is never the end of the energy equation. In fact, we are skeptical of alarmist "savings" ideologies: calls for self imposed energy-poverty or luddite retrogression into pre-industrial living condition. This is unsustainable sustainability! Although we may hate ourselves in the morning, we quote Dick Cheney here:

"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

In other words, it is unrealistic to imagine that everyone might someday grow their own food, generate their own energy, walk to work, etc., etc. To have a real effect, sustainable efforts must not impose, but propose. They must create fractal new opportunities, not limit opportunity. This is the only way for a sustainable economy to achieve scale--a critical mass which will propel it beyond the early-adopters into society at large. "What can sustainability do for me?"

The answer lies in complementary or symbiotic forms of consumption and production--creative consumption--that allows us to understand energy saved as energy created for something else, and vice-versa. This engages us actively in the game of optimization, like the power meter in your Toyota Prius. As we transition to a future energy equilibrium, there are many opportunities to generate new resources (energy, equity, culture) through our consumption!

Above is a power generation system for the city of Barcelona. It's a series of photovoltaic cells on a public promenade along the ocean. The video shows the ocean vista and the public sitting steps. The city is capitalizing on two of its geographical assets: its location in a temperate sunny climate and its long beautiful coast line. As a well planned city, planners are creating something out of nothing. Like the park running down Manhattan's west-side the Barcelona water front is simply a place to experience the city, buy from the local vendors or enjoy the ocean. American cities could learn a thing or two. 

Our tall compact cities, like New York, Boston's downtown, Philadelphia, even Chicago could be awash in wind power. Our sun drenched desert oasis' like Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego, even Fresno could rethink their public amenities in a similar fashion to Barcelona. Where we once talked about black tar roofs creating urban heat islands, we should be talking about photovoltaic cells creating urban energy power-plants. 

None of this will happen with out a new understanding of the energy market. Like all markets, and part of why we are in this general economic morass, there needs to be transparency and standards for carbon trading. Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and The Olive Tree is about how globalization is affecting our world. Friedman points out that:

today's era of globalization is not only different in degree; in some very important ways it is also different in kind. As The Economist once noted, the previous era of globalization was built around failing transportation costs. Thanks to the invention of the railroad, the steamship and the automobile, people could get to a lot more places faster and cheaper and they could trade with a lot more places faster and cheaper. Today's era of globalization is built around falling telecommunications costs – thanks to microchips, satellites, fiber optics and the Internet. These new technologies are able to weave the world together even tighter.

Potentially with the Carbon-Market we could close the loop. Our cities could be the public face for displaying our new carbon efficiency. Imagine a city where each bus stop shows you your carbon foot print reduction. Each BetterPlace battery exchange displays the amount of carbon we've taken out of the atmosphere. Where buildings are covered in tickers that tell us how much of our 2 trillion dollar loan to China we have paid off by reselling them Carbon Units. Where parks are designed to maximize their use as a carbon sink and city amenity. 

No system is perfect to be sure, but just as the microchip begat a smaller more connected, but still individual, world, the carbon market could bring us to see the world as a unified whole.

Currently at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. there is a new show called Green Communities. While the idea of the show is great, and one could argue that their focus on architecturally normative communities creates the kind of general acceptance for "greening" that this country might need for it to become wide spread; there seems to be a distinct lack of future planning. 

The Carbon-Market is one way we could begin to use our national infrastructure to pay down our debt! We could all be double dipping; creating jobs through building more and developing a market for our carbon units that would sustain global growth. 

We're ready!!

Installed Filterra Bioretention System: credit www.stormh2o.com

Well, it's both.  Filterra Stormwater Bioretention Systems use a combination of biological uptake and filter media to treat stormwater runoff before being discharged to the storm sewer.  They are particularly useful for ultra-urban environments where other methods of treatment have a prohibitively large footprint.  As more jurisdictions are adopting Low Impact Development (LID) guidelines, Filterra Systems are likely to be more widely used for both retrofits and new construction.

We also enjoy how the System objectifies landscape.  Here it is, one plant, centered in a concrete box, working for the surrounding environment.  One of these plants is not like the others....

In the new year we plan on taking a tour of LA through Esotouric. This company takes bus tours through LA based on Reyner Banham's love of Los Angeles.  Banham's reading of Los Angeles is of a city made of smaller cities. Banham seemed to think that the ecology of the whole is really the set of relationships between the ecologies of the smaller beach cities, inland cities, port/industrial cities, downtown and interstitial suburban tissue.

We've been living back in Los Angeles for the better part of a year. And it is a truism to say that the city is changing. Cities always change. With so much academic text about the networked city and the relationships between its multiple centers, what has been missed is that Los Angeles is beginning to be a unified city.

Sure the Valley is still confronting session, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood are their own cities. But today these cities are being meaningfully tied together through two major changes: zoning regulation and the development of the Los Angeles subway system.  The city is densifying. The density hawks at city hall are seeing the future of Los Angeles. It is a city that is more dense than ever before.

As residents, when gas went above $4, there was a distinct change. Less cars not more. More bikes. More people emerging from the few subway stops that we have in this city. Downtown things are buzzing during the day. People are out and walking. Grand Central Market is full of residents having their lunches. The first Thursday of every month is Art Walk. These are not new phenomena, but to me they are signifiers that the city might be ready for real change.

Looking at Banham's Map of LA's early railroads, the city hasn't changed much from its recent past. Part of what makes LA interesting is that now as the city is filling in, it might begin to be building up. Density, lets face it, is an exciting problem to have.