Archive for the 'Architecture/Engineering' Category

Don’t just cook your meals–manufacture them!

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on February 17, 2010
in Architecture/Engineering
. 1 Comment

MIT designer and researcher Marcelo Coelho, whose work focuses on “the intersection of human-computer interaction, materials science and design,” is working on something akin to RP for food. Behold his Digital Gastronomy Machines, which are like meal-manufacturing devices.

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

Then there’s his Robotic Chef, which would not look out of place in a machinist’s shop:

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GM researching driverless cars

Published
by
billycuts
on January 6, 2008
in Architecture/Engineering, Robots/A.I. and Technology
. 0 Comments

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Cars that drive themselves – even parking at their destination – could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.

GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.

Kansas City Star

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Shark Biomimicry Produces Renewable Energy

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on June 4, 2007
in Architecture/Engineering, Energy/Fuel and Green Meme / Sustainability
. 0 Comments

bioSTREAMAn Australian firm has developed a renewable tidal energy conversion system based on the highly efficient fin structure of shark, tuna, and mackerel.

BioPower Systems Pty Ltd., a renewable energy systems company based in Eveleigh, New South Wales, says that its bioSTREAM technology for converting tidal and marine current energy into electricity is modeled on biological species, such as shark and tuna, that use Thunniform-mode swimming propulsion.

“The motions, mechanisms, and caudal fin hydrofoil shapes of such species have been optimized by natural selection and are known to be up to 90% efficient at converting body energy into propulsive force,” said BioPower Systems in a media release. “The bioSTREAMâ„¢ mimics the shape and motion characteristics of these species but is a fixed device in a moving stream… By mimicking these creatures, the bioSTREAM benefits from 3.8 billion years of evolutionary hydrodynamic optimization. The inherited biological traits result in a cost effective and reliable renewable energy system.”

mongabay
Thanks to Michael Garfield

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Rotating Skyscraper Being Built In Dubai

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on May 18, 2007
in Architecture/Engineering, Environmental/Nature and Green Meme / Sustainability
. 0 Comments

ecogeek

The Pythagorean Device

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on April 23, 2007
in Architecture/Engineering, Art, Games and Organization/Systems/Chaos
. 0 Comments

The Japanese TV show PythagoraSwitch makes strange devices to aid learning. <3Yen provides a translation of the shows mission statement:

Within our daily lives, which we go about without thinking much about the many mysteries, archetypes, themes and more varied ways of thought. For example, have you ever thought why waffles are always the same shape? Behind it all is concept of “having a shape.” There all sorts of these archetypes/shapes: in print, in mass-produced goods and whatnot. Understanding these these “shapes” let’s you grasp how these things work.

“Pythagoras Switch” wants to help kids have that moment of A-HA! We want to raise thinking about thinking, to flip that epiphany switch in every child.

damndata

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Zero Energy Home Enters Affordable Range

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on June 7, 2006
in Architecture/Engineering and Energy/Fuel
. 0 Comments

A for-profit home builder has constructed a house priced under $200,000 that, in an average year, costs nothing to power or heat.

The so-called zero-energy home, built by Norman, Oklahoma-based Ideal Homes, is priced affordably even though it incorporates some of the latest technology and energy-efficient construction available today.

“I think Americans have this concept in their head that a zero-energy house costs a million dollars,” said Vernon McKown, co-founder of Ideal Homes, who partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building America program for the project.

discovery

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Advances in 3-D Printing Bring Manufacturing Home

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on December 27, 2005
in Architecture/Engineering, Freedom of Information and Technology
. 1 Comment

Imagine that your coffee maker breaks just before you’re about to host a brunch. You go online and click on the model you want to buy. But you don’t have to wait for it to be shipped; instead, a machine on your desk kicks into operation. Inside a glass chamber, a nozzle spits out the electronics, chassis, motor and other components, layer by layer. An hour later, you snap together a few parts and the brewing begins.

That machine would be the “Star Trek” replicator realized. Well, a beta version anyway. Already, several engineering threads are converging that may pull the replicator out of the far future and put it in our homes, or at least at Kinko’s, in the next few decades. MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms, dubs the vision “personal fabrication.” John Canny, a professor at UC-Berkeley’s College of Engineering, where I’m a writer in residence, refers to the research field as “flexonics.” Whatever the buzzword, it’s not unlike desktop publishing, but for products instead of paper. Call it desktop manufacturing.

It starts with the physical object itself, the plastic chassis for the remote control that you stepped on, the body of the coffee maker. Product designers have literally been printing out objects for more than a decade. A digital design is loaded into a machine that drips out thin beads of plastic and glue, building up hair-thin layers until the whole form is complete. These kinds of three-dimensional printers are perhaps the coolest tool in the realm of rapid prototyping, technology that allows designers to quickly mock up models of new products. A designer can feel how the next-generation phone she’s working on will fit in a shirt pocket.

Salon

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Grass field on wheels

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on August 31, 2005
in Architecture/Engineering
. 0 Comments

New York architect Peter Eisenman has planned to fit the Arizona Cardinals new stadium (Glendale, Ariz.) with a retractable turf.

The retractable field is a gigantic rectangular planter 18 inches deep with dirt and grass, and mounted on rails. Even during football season, the field will be able to roll outside next to the parking lot during the week so it can soak up the warm Arizona sun while conferences and meetings take place indoors.

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Only a handful of stadiums in Japan and Europe (like the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, near Munich) have experimented with retractable fields. “We’ve got marching bands marching, and big gorillas tackling each other—we’ve got to make sure the floor doesn’t move beneath them,” says Larry Griffis, from Walter P. Moore, a leading stadium engineering firms.

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Sustainable House of the Future Runs on Spinach

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on August 31, 2005
in Architecture/Engineering
. 0 Comments

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The winning entry to the Cradle to Cradle C2C Home Competition is an incredible single family dwelling by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum that goes right to the core fundamentals of the Cradle to Cradle principles. Not only does the building run a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein, but it also produces more energy than a single family?s needs, allowing the excess to be distributed to neighbors. This radical shift, from centralized energy systems today, fosters community interdependence as neighbors benefit from the resources of others.

Cradle2Cradle

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