Hydro-Fracking Update: NYS Imposing Stricter Regulations

According to today's New York Times, New York State in imposing stricter regulations on hydro-fracking in our watershed. This is good news as far as New York City's water supply is concerned, but does not by any means close the door on the environmental problems of natural gas mining, which is still in the works. The National Resources Defense Council does not consider greater regulation a victory, claiming that nothing short of a ban will protect our water source. The Independent oil and Gas Association of new York says the regulations are excessive, but claims that the watershed is not really the spot they care about right now anyway compared to prospects in surrounding areas.

Natural gas is considered "clean" energy because using it releases fewer C02 emissions. But natural gas is itself a greenhouse gas, and extraction can be brutal on the environment. Needless to say, our relationship to energy and the environment is frustrating. Constant nay-saying without alternative solutions does not get us very far. Energy on earth comes from the sun, but in order to concentrate that energy into electricity and fuel, material from the earth is required--whether that's natural gas, petroleum, and coal or the silicone and other minerals needed to make photovoltaic panels. Identifying and extracting resources is one problem. Cultural norms, the calcification of urban forms, and systematic reliance on energy-intensive systems of distribution for food and water are another.

An alternative energy future is going to have to focus on a diversity of means to productively recoup waste rather than resigning ourselves to an unworkable duality of ecological mess on one side and a return to primitivism on the other. It will mean changes to lifestyle, but that's a bigger cultural question about maturing as human society and not one to beat ourselves up about as individuals--though we should always remain conscientious of our decisions. As far as today is concerned, I'm glad our government is prioritizing the watershed and hope that policies affecting the sustenance of vast numbers of people will continue to be ecologically sound and scientifically considered.

Hydro-Fracking: Sounds Gross Because it Is

Dr. Theo Colborn presenting Hydro-Fracking for Natural Gas at the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design, 4/15/10. Photo of pollution-filled evaporation ponds in Colorado. In New York it is too humid for evaporation to be effective, so polluted water will be reinjected into the ground or tranported somewhere else.

Hopefully you've heard of hydro-fracking by now. This is a process of natural gas extraction that involves drilling down into shale and shaking things up to release gas. They are planning on doing this to the Marcellus Shale, creating the nation's largest gas field across four states, including the Catskill/Delaware Watershed where New York City gets its fresh drinking water from.

My original reaction without knowing too much about it was that futzing with our water supply is probably a bad idea. Last night I went to a very detailed lecture on the subject which enumerated many reasons why this is an environmentally disastrous procedure. This includes the numerous dangerous chemicals that get pumped into the ground in the process, the huge quantities of water required to run the operation, and the serious air pollution that forms when diesel fumes from the trucks and machines at the surface interact with volatile organic compounds released from underground, forming ground-level ozone. 

Drinking water is fundamental, more important to sustaining life then concentrated energy. Let's keep our eyes on this issue. For information see:

TEDX: The Endocrine Disruption Exchange

NoFracking.com

NY H20

Sliding Assumptions

Photo: Aroid

My colleagues and I have been giving a lot of presentations this semester. New developments in our visual languages meant to manifest complex data comparisons in an easily digestible format is required on a weekly basis, as is the compilation, generation, and interpretation of that data. Often presentation happens via projection from a laptop, usually of digitally created graphics. Lately however we have been drawing with Sharpies and grease pencils on 11 x 17 pieces of printer paper.

The result of this has been a large pixelated array of doodles on our studio wall that is eventually a step back to either a more polished projected presentation or some kind of book. It's been a little tough, the digital has infected us enormously. So much so, in fact, that those pieces of paper are repeatedly referred to by many of us as "slides".

It is hilarious to refer to a piece of paper as a slide. This word transformation comes from PowerPoint (aka PDF in our case) via the ubiquitous mid-century slide projector, which is a technological extension of the earlier magic lantern that Wikipedia pegs to the 17th century. So an outmoded technology of sliding a physical transparency in front of a light source gives us terminology that fits gracefully into the newest digital tools that become so habituated as to stand in now even for the ancient technology of paper.

It's worth noting these linguistic transformations as we chart the field of architecture into new territory. The most exciting digital technology will still be pegged to less complex precursors. This becomes very important to remember when using things like CAD drawings and energy modeling software to propose architectural systems which produce and run on non-concentrated energy most beautifully typified by Nature. One goal of our work this semester is to consider how high technology can concentrate passive energy flows to sustain our cultural speed without polluting the ecosystem. Assumptions are important. So when paper becomes a slide we know we're forging ahead with gusto.

The Shape of Sunlight's Heavy Lifting

I had the pleasure last week of helping my CASE colleagues prepare and transfer a prototype of the Integrated Concentrated (IC) Solar Facade system to the Syracuse Center of Excellence which officially opened on Friday. The machine is aesthetically and scientifically striking. Solar radiation is focused through a tracking Fresnel lens onto a PV cell, combined with a water flow heat sink. The energy effect is the generation of accessible electricity and hot water; the visual effect is both a focusing and a diffusing of sunlight combined with a pattern of dissolved inverted imagery through the lensed pyramids alternating with a simple view through the window. 

IC Solar is envisioned as an integrated building component. As such the value judgements about energy use are worn boldly in view. Cultural statements about our relationship with fuel combined with workable approaches will be part of our generation's architectural heritage. As we use technology in attempts to deal with environmental problems created by technology, the visual element will be a constructive tool in stoking the polemic.

Sunlight feels so clean but concentrating it is still a grimy business. For me, the heavy lifting was a welcome change from sitting in front of a computer every day, and the afternoons spent wielding solder guns and screw drivers were satisfying. It was amusing after my recent amateur electronics kick to be handed an LED display to put together, and driving a 20 foot Ryder truck through winding mountain roads in the middle of the night with precious cargo is a thrill despite the exhaustion and discomfort. This project has been many years in the making and I can only claim three days of wrapping up loose ends on the current version, but it's inspiring to see something so complex take real shape.

Roy G. Biv

The new Center for Excellence in Syracuse spares no opportunity to express that it is "green". It officially opens this afternoon. During prototype set up phase--I was there on installation duty for something I'm not allowed to write about before its officially unveiled at 2pm but will tell you about later--that greenness felt freshest before all the partnership logos went up. Features like lights in the bathroom that turn on when you enter the stall were not activated yet in the morning, but were in the afternoon. Likewise for the automatic flush. Interior finishes, bare concrete floor aside, are all either white, which is gorgeous except for the tops of the exposed ductwork will always be dusty; and green, which is gorgeous except when it is reflecting in perfect daylighting off human flesh tones.

It turns out that scientifically, green is the wavelength that looks brightest on the Commission Internationale de l'Eclarirage (CIE)'s famous chart of visual perception. Thus the brightest walks softest on the earth. Green is smack dab in the center of the visible spectrum. It's a word that can sound trite with repetition in popular design culture that nonetheless has a phenomenological spine.

Terms & Conditions: Greenhouse

1. [f. GREENn. 10.] A glass-house in which delicate and tender plants are reared and preserved.*

It would be amazing to be somewhere warm and humid watching the snow fall outside. I've been reading about atmospheric optics lately and came across a passage taking the term "greenhouse gas" to task for not being specific. It's a good excuse to take the word greenhouse back for a moment as something more life affirming then perilous. After all, without any warmth in the atmosphere there would be no life.

Of course the second definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is meteorological, dated to a 1937 citation of G. T. Trewartha Introd. Weather & Climate. It's a convenient metaphor that has taken pride of place in the lexicon of environmentalism. The greenhouse today evokes the brutal effects on nature hit by rapidly shifting temperatures. It becomes a prison of our own making. We are walled in by particles that do not radiate accommodatingly out to space in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is heat. Alas. But at least some atmospheric scientists still have a sense of humor. If you've read this far, go just a little further to the part about farty housecats.

"The motions of a molecule can be expressed as a sum of normal modes each with a characteristic frequency. These frequencies lie in the infrared and a radiating mode is called infrared active. A mode that does not radiate is called infrared inactive. The terms infrared active and inactive, which are familiar to infrared spectroscopists, are preferable to the popular but misleading term 'greenhouse gas'. Water vapor is infrared active; nitrogen and oxygen, for the most part, are infrared inactive. Greenhouse gasses are produced by resident cats with digestive problems."**

*Oxford English Dictionary, online edition, 2009. 
** Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation, Craig F. Bohren, Eugene Clothiaux, Wiley, 2006 p. 81.

Amateur Electronics

 

Photo: Daniela Morell

"A good lighting design must address not only... requirements for visual performance, but also the biological needs shared by all human beings, independent of culture and style. These needs relate to the biological requirements of orientation, stimulation, sustenance, defense, and survival." -Norbert Lechner* 

Costuming is inspirational and the recent Disorient Bioluminscent boat party hit the right spot. My graduate work lately has been focused on a highly technological approach to daylighting but personally I love to shine in the dark.

Daylighting is a no-brainer for sustainable design but night lighting is a little trickier. When the sun is luminescent let's use it (lux saves bucks). When it's not the electrical world is a cultural judgment call on how we choose to use resources. I can't pretend that this jewelry serves anything more than an emotional need for folly, attention, and figuring out how to make things, but it's worth questioning how and why we use electricity at night. Indoors night lighting feels indispensable. Camping aside, I can't think of a single day of my life I haven't come home after school or work and turned on a light, or a computer, or a television. Yet none of that is inevitable.

Outdoors is another story. There are places in this world (Black Rock City) with tons of people and no electric grid. If you are not personally illuminated in the dark you might get run over. It's interesting to think about the potential of space dominated by personal instead of urban lighting. Would we become more like targets for preditors or like fireflies attracting lovers?

These are dangling questions for me that will be explored further. In the meantime I'm brimming with ideas for more light art. The array pictured above has several innovative features from previous attempts including a means to switch off the LED corsages and the use of machined plexi as an electroluminscent wire substrate. Next I'm hoping to figure out how to make a more streamlined inverter and maybe learn how to program some blinky.

[Just a quick addendum... energy savings from daylighting of course need to be balanced with the potential for increased heat gain.] 

*Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Sustainable Design Methods for Architects, 3rd edition, Norbert Lechner, (c) John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2009, p370.