Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
Kai-Yu Yu
©2011 Kai-Yu Yu
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Science, School of Architecture at Pratt Institute
January 2011
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Table of Contents
1. Manifesto
• Population
• Energy Reserves
• Consumption
• Consequences
• Recreational expenses
• Green Technology
4. Design Approach
• Site
• Program
• Digital Technique
• Outcome
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
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1. Manifesto
Architects have to take into account the environment and context of the
neighborhood, community, city, even the world and take more responsibilities to design
more worthy existing structures that do not merely fulfill the need of inhabitants but also
Architects should take the responsibility to make the best out of our limited
mother earth, or say, energy. Places that support our lives are treated as dislikable
places and always are located in suburb or remote spots having no connection with the
world they support. Between the supporting facilities and the supported lives, the
relationship is one way. Maybe we can try to push the world to a status that architecture
can be consuming but also generating simultaneously and the relationship of the
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2. Contemporary One-Way Consumption
• Population
on the planet is so fast that the whole world is starting to worry about the consequence
this situation might result in. According to the report from U.S. Census Bureau, world
population has rapidly increased in the past two hundred years from one billion people
in nineteen century to seven billion in present and the interval of every other billion is
getting shorter and shorter (see Fig.1). Based on the estimation of United Nation, world
population is going to reach fourteen billion within 90 years. That is twice as many
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• Energy Reserves
The resources we use to sustain the need of the whole world are draining out
known as the Hubber Peak Theory, a diagram shows the petroleum production curve of
the cumulative productions, the reserves and the projected future discovery (see Fig.2).
This research done by M. King Hubbert in 1956 suggested that we have already
reached the summit of petroleum production, which is used as one of the main origin of
over eighty percent of modern energy along with coal and gas (22).
Another report from World Energy Council reveals more detailed amount of the
three main origins of our primary energy source. According to the report in 2010, there
are 1,239 billion barrels of oil, 860 billion tonnes of coal and 186 trillion cubic meters of
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natural gas (World Energy Council, 9, 49, 159). After converting these data into energy
an hour that the oil, coal and natural gas reserves we have right now can generate
respectively. Therefore we can get that the energy we can obtain from our remaining
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• Consumption
produce energy and other materials in order to sustain their modern lives. According to
U.S. Energy Information Administration, the total worldwide energy consumption is 495
quadrillion Btu in 2007 (see Fig.3). After turning this information into MW-h, our annual
after an quick calculation ─ we are going to use up all the energy reserves in sixty years.
That is only if we keep using the same amount of energy as we did in 2007.
of future energy consumption gives us a clear clue that we are going to face the
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• Consequences
Due to the fact that we are generally using combustion as the manner in the past
two hundred years to convert fossil fuels into energy, the amount of greenhouse gases
has already exceeded the threshold of being able to self-metabolize the greenhouse
30,000,000,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2007 (see Fig.4) and
the accumulation of un-neutralized greenhouse gases has started to harm the earth.
Greenhouse gases hold the heat within the atmosphere which results in
temperature rise. NASA indicates that the average of the planet will rise 1.4 to 5.8 °C by
2100. The rise temperature also leads to the melt of glacier and cause the sea level rise
(see Fig.5, 6). The Greenpeace Organization says that the sea level will rise up to 88
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cm within a hundred years. Nowadays, eleven out of the fifteen biggest cities locate in
the areas where rivers merge into ocean and over seventy percent of the population
resides in coastal area. The rise of the sea level might bring these populated places into
The redistribution of the mass on earth after the glaciers are melted in to the
ocean would even make the axis of earth shift significantly. This global mass
redistribution could move the axis up to 1.5 meters, a new study from the journal
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Fig.6: Sea Level Rise
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3. Future Reciprocal Consumption
• Recreational expenses
As the economic grows, people started to have a better financial condition and so
has their life style been changed. People started to pay more attention on their
recreational life besides earning their living. According to research, the percentage of
total personal consumption has increased from 5.6% to 8.7%. Total recreation
People do not only eat and drink just for basic physical needs. They start to intake
excessive amount of resources just for pleasure and then pay money for participating
activities where they can use up the extra calories they gain.
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• Green Technology
The world has already foreseen the energy crisis and harm we might cause by
keeping the way we consume energy. Therefore, a lot of efforts have been put into the
development of green technology that can help us to obtain energy in cleaner and
environment-friendly ways.
For instance, we have developed technologies that can acquire energy from the
tide, sun, wind and current. Some of them have already reached the efficiency threshold
and been widely used in order to reduce the damage we have put on the planet.
power from heat difference, pressure or even from ions transportation during chemical
reactions. These new devices provide us even more possibilities to obtain cleaner
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Fig.15: Pressure Technology 01 Fig.16: Pressure Technology 02
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• Reciprocal Energy Resource
Given the fact that we have all these green technologies that can be applied to
our daily lives, the energy of movement and the physical metabolic wastes can be now
considered a sort of energy resource. We are now capable of reclaiming those we didn’t
think of as power sources and generate power out of them. Especially those produced
during recreational activities. If we can manage to turn the way we consume while doing
consumptions.
For example, we can turn human urine generated by excessive drinking at a bar
or club and the water people use to wash their hands after using restroom into power.
We can also turn the pressure people stepping on the floor of a disco or jogging path
into power. We can even the turn body heat and rise of interior temperature into power
as well by bring those new technologies into the space we live in.
the efficiency of urine power technology is 1,000 watt out of 1 liter urine. The heat
technology efficiency is 100 microwatt out of 1-2 degree in Fahrenheit difference. The
efficiency of the pressure technology is 5.5 watt out of 1 step on a 1 square-foot power
panel.
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Although the efficiency of these newly invented technologies seem to be slightly
lower than the standard that present architectural world would consider ideally feasible,
a new version of recreational complex can still be foreseen based on the past
experience of relatively short intervals between the debut of a new technology and the
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4. Design Approach
• Site
method is used in the site locating process. Starting in Manhattan, New York, one of the
biggest tourist attractions famous of its diverse night lives consisting of bars and clubs,
map out the suitable site for a recreational power plant using the distribution of bars in
Fig.21: Mahattan, NY
The bar density is mapped in different scales to seek the most possible and
potentially efficient spot for the new version of recreational complex. The purpose of this
step is to trying to situate this recreational power plant in the area with a neighborhood
that would produce a lot of urine as the source for power generation so that the original
passive and wasting status of the potential energy source producing neighborhood can
be turned into an active power generating area that would benefit the immediate vicinity,
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the surrounding area or even to the standard of powering a few districts when the
First, the density of bars in each district among the twelve is mapped and the top
six districts with the highest density are district 2, 5, 3, 6, 4 and 1 in order (see Fig.22).
The bar density of the top ranking, District 2, is 0.294 per acre.
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Second, mapping out the bar density within District 2 around all the subway
stations to obtain the understanding of the accessibility and surrounding condition. Area
within a 10-minute-walk distance is used to calculate and compare the bar density of
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• Program
• Digital Technique
• Outcome
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List of illustration
Fig.2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Hubbert_peak_oil_plot.svg
Fig.3: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/images/figure_12-lg.jpg
Fig.4: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/images/fig-2.jpg
Fig.6: http://c1.planetsave.com/files/2007/12/two-meter-sea-level-rise.gif
Fig.7: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/153/367614554_e216e821a4.jpg?v=0
Fig.8: http://www.london-nitelife.co.uk/images/clubbing2.33362335_std.jpg
Fig.9: http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc1/hs090.snc1/4647_114106911275_550411275_3284065_6722170_n.jpg
Fig.10: http://www.altchinesischekampfkunst.de/Tai%20Bo%20Sidekick.jpg
Fig.11: http://blog.itechtalk.com/wp-content/2009/04/gym.jpg
Fig.12:
http://media.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/MIL_Solar_Farm_Nellis_AFB_lg.jpg
Fig.13: http://www.sharonpavey.org/http://www.sharonpavey.org/wp-
content/uploads//2010/02/wind-turbine-2.jpg
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Fig.14: http://solar.calfinder.com/assets/images/blog/tidal-farm.jpg
Fig.15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Tz9Wa798E
Fig.16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf5fihc2GOY
Fig.17: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Tz9Wa798E
Fig.18: http://news.mydrivers.com/img/20090719/S12140336.jpg
Fig.19: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt1BcxJRfmE&feature=fvw
Fig.20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImGaraPrEo8
Fig.21:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wKGNetZTKHo/TGqdZWR65EI/AAAAAAAAJyo/x59vFedwmE
E/s1600/Manhattan+Island.jpg
Fig.24:
Fig.25:
Fig.26:
Fig.27:
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6. Bibliography
U.S. Census Brueau. “Historical Estimates of World Population.” U.S. Census Brueau.
2010.
<http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf>
King, M. Hubbert. “NUCLEAR ENERGY AND THE FOSSIL FUELS.” The Coming
<http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf>
World Energy Council. “2010 Survey of Energy Resources.” World Energy Council.
<http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/ser_2010_report.pdf>
<http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html>
22
NASA. “Global Warming.” NASA. Web. 05 APR 2010.
<http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html>
<http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html>
<http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-
change/impacts/sea_level_rise/ >
Reilly, Michael. “Warming Oceans May Shift Earth's Pole.” Discovery Channel. 24 AUG
pole.html>
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AllCountries.org. “Personal Consumption Expenditures for Recreation.” AllCountries.org.
<http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/418_personal_consumption_expenditures_for_re
creation.html>
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