minphf's design site: May 2009

Excerpt from :
Isolated Building Studies: Revealing Meaning Through Recontextualization

The Isolated Building Studies are the visual confluence of my interests in urban dynamism, socioeconomic
inequality and photography. By using uniform composition in photographs of buildings with no neighboring structures, I hope to draw attention to new ways of seeing the common impact of divergent investment processes on urban communities.

I was looking at my contact's pictures when I saw this site on this visual research of isolated buildings. Very interesting. In a densely populated country like Singapore, this is almost be impossible though I do see a rare few (usually very bog houses/mansions) on isolated hill top/elevated land. Enjoy !

reference:

Flickr : http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/05/18/isolated-building-studies/

Would you choose to cut down carbon foot print by the process of elimination or by designing a another product ? I have always wondered about these 2 issues for various products. Every product has a different user culture and need. However, what intrigues me is the definition of 'need'. It determines whether we need to design another new product or a new policy that won't silently kill us all of our future.

A few issues to kill some brain cells:
If we cut down down gas emissions, but we end up having more flights, would that increase the net output of carbon gases into the atmosphere ?

This could be quite a debate.

Then here's another :
In the process of making the plane itself, we need to consume energy. Wouldn't that increase the carbon footprint as well ?

Now we are really thinking...

If we could make an optimal number of flights every year without increasing flights and even manage to reduce it; then the green technology on aircrafts would prove to be a positive output.

Would the above statement be true ?? I'll let you kill more brain cells to answer that...while I shall continue. For better or for worse, Airbus has conducted an international tertiary competition for designing the best 'green planes' of the future. 5 universities got into the finals :

The “Big Bang Team” from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain for its windowless cabin proposal for a new eco-efficient aircraft design.

“COz” from the University of Queensland, Australia (including an overseas student from the University of Stuttgart, Germany) for its proposal on the use of bio composite cabin materials made from castor plant natural fibres.

“Kometa Brno” from Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic whose team developed a project on aircraft taxiway movements using electro-motors.

“Solaire Voyager” from the National University of Singapore, selected for its solar cell technology project integrating photovoltaic cells aboard aircraft to generate electricity.

“Stanford ADG” from Stanford University in the USA for their proposal on inverted V formation flight, building on the model of migrating birds to reduce energy consumption.

Finally when you see a green plane up in your blue skies, do drop the minphf a note here at blogger. Cheers !

[1st image : Concepts from Boeing, http://www.yourcarbonprint.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=15]
[2nd image : Design from the CleanEra project, http://gizmodo.com]

Other references:

ethics : http://www.iisd.org/ic/info/ethics.htm
Poitics of green design: http://multispective.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/the-politics-of-sustainable-design/
technical comments from the TU Delft http://cleanera.weblog.tudelft.nl/

References:

http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=433
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_373775.html
http://www.yourcarbonprint.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=15