Networking Nature

 

 

 

 

Year: 2012
Location: Palazzo Bembo, Venice
Typology: Installation for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012
Strategy: Creating a self sufficient ecosystem where it is impossible to see the dividing line between living machines and artificial organisms
Design and making: Studiomobile
Water network automation: Angelo Semeraro

" For the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, Studiomobile explores a future scenario where men are forced to live in an unusual landscape shaped by environmental changes. At present, more than half the world's population lives and works in a coastal strip 200 kilometres wide, and in the near future sea is expected to characterize even more urban settlements. But not only adaptation is required. Next strategy will be assimilation, an approach characterized by embracing the changing conditions and taking advantage of the resulting opportunities. Frequently, changes perceived as negative open up new possibilities and innovative opportunities. We imagine new communities based on movement, living in flexible, self-sufficient, and nomadic structures. We believe that seawater is poised to become soon a key resource for urban environment

The ecosystem Networking Nature lives off seawater. Within a glass tank filled with salt water, some solar stills extract fresh water by exploiting the heat produced by small lamps. Seawater evaporates and the steam condenses into fresh water, which is collected in tanks and then supplied. 

However, water is not produced in isolated systems under central control. The new model provides for a large ecological infrastructure as well as small local production units connected to a network able to integrate the production of fresh water and to supply it where needed. It's a Smart Water Network controlled by sensors that read the local lack of water and, through an Arduino board, activate the pumps providing the water where there is a peak of demand. The Smart Water Network will be a layer of the ecological network as well as the Smart Power Grid and the communications network. This strategy not only gives response to the preservation of the environment, but it is also a radically new model that ensures free and democratic access to the resources to everybody.

Studiomobile's installations are working living machineswhere nature and built landscape live in symbiosis. They suggest a future immaginary where it is impossible to see the dividing line between naturalized architecture and plugged nature and between living machines and artificial organisms."

msunduza dry toilet

The project area:
Swaziland is a small kingdom with a population of 1.2 million people located in southern Africa by the Mozambiqian and South-African border. Swaziland is experiencing a rapid urbanisation as people are fleeing the rural poverty and end up living in the informal areas around the cities.

Diarrheal diseases and insecurity:
In Msunduza, which is the oldest and the largest community of 16 000 inhabitants in the capital, Mbabane, sanitation solutions are diverse. The majority use a traditional pit latrine, but also a bucket or a “flying toilet”, where faeces are thrown into the environment. With children playing in the polluted streets, diarrhoeal diseases and cholera prevail. Additionally, insufficient sanitation causes social problems and security issues, especially to women and girls.

The project objectives are: :
• Improved sanitation hygiene and knowledge on sanitation
• Increased and more efficient composting and home gardening
• Improved livelihood and participation in the project area
• Sustainable and healthy sanitation culture

Dry toilets and environmental education:
Project activities include building dry toilets to households and to public places, improving hand washing possibilities, giving sanitation and hygiene education and encouraging home gardening and composting.
Thus far, the Msunduza Dry Sanitation Project has funded the construction of 33 toilets, and the environmental and sanitation education provided by the project has reached the inhabitants of Msunduza. The Project has also acted as a supporter for a youth group of one of the communities. In 2013 the project funding will reach its end. Focus of the last phase is to sustain the attainments of the project and to create a responsible exit strategy. This is mainly done through capacity building and by bringing together participants from different levels and sectors of the society.

Working experience from practicals:
Students from the Department of Sustainable Development in the Turku University of Applied Sciences have contributed to the project as part of their obligatory practical training. Students also receive valuable international working experience from working in a development cooperation project. Apart from practical training, Msunduza Dry Sanitation Project has been a topic for several Bachelor Theses and offered possibilities to work as a student assistant.

 

 

Benefits of dry sanitation:
Dry sanitation offers a sustainable solution for the improvement of sanitation for the disadvantaged. Dry toilets function without water, which has become scarcity in the regions battling with sanitation problems. Additionally, dry toilets provide a lucrative fertiliser turning waste into a resource.

Project implementation:
The Department of Sustainable Development in the Turku University of Applied Sciences has worked in Msunduza since the year 2004.
The Project is being implemented in cooperation with the Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland, Turku University of Applied Sciences and the Salvation Army in Swaziland as a local partner. The Project was initiated in 2007 and it is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

The Msunduza Dry Sanitation Project 2007-2013

Msunduza is the oldest and partially informal township in Mbabane. The township of about 16 000 people is located close to the city centre on steep hills. The main features of the area are very steep topography, inadequate infrastructure and petty road network. The project is focusing on the poorest communities of Msunduza, where sanitation facilities are scarce and often in poor condition. The project implementation in Msunduza is done in collaboration with the Salvation Army of Swaziland and the Sanitation Experts, who are local volunteers trained to educate the communities of Msunduza. During the project, cooperation with the City Council of Mbabane, the local leaders of Msunduza and the University of Swaziland has been emphasized as well. In the unofficial areas of Msunduza, water and sewage systems are lacking and the waste management services are largely inadequate. Hence, the sanitation solutions are diverse as people use pit latrines, buckets or even plastic bags. In some areas wastewater from the water closets is piped into septic tanks, which flood in to the yards and streets, when emptying the tanks fails. With children playing in the polluted streets and due to the lacking awareness on environmental health, cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases prevail.

The aim of the project is to improve the poor sanitation and sanitation hygiene of the area. The project activities include e.g. building of dry toilets, disseminating information on safe sanitation and increasing awareness on the linkage between hygiene and health. In the long run, the aim is to increase composting, home gardening and, furthermore, to improve the food security of households through provision of composted material from the dry toilets as a fertilizer in home gardens. Improvement of hygiene and food security is essential in Swaziland, where 26 % of the people are HIV infected. The Swazi culture is also very traditional and male-dominated, thus the project also aims to improve the position of women and children in the community through environmental and hygiene education.

More Information:


MSUNDUZA DRY SANITATION PROJECT EVALUATION REPORT (2011)
Jonna Heikkilä
Turku University of Applied Sciences
jonna.heikkila@turkuamk.fi

Eathouse (www.ateliergras.nl)

vertical aquaponic veggie & fish farm

AQUAPONICS:

Aquaponics is an integrated form of a re-circulating aquaculture system (usually, freshwater fish farming) and hydroponics. In these systems, plants within hydroponic components utilize nutrient rich fish waste as fertilizer. In doing so the plant grow area filters the wastewater — allowing for its reuse in the fish-rearing component.

 

This low-cost vertical aquaponic system can grow leafy greens, herbs and raise fish for a small family year round, and it fits in a 5' by 3' space. Sean Brady, the aquaponics projects coordinator at the Center for Sustainable Aquaponics and Nourish the Planet in Loveland, Colo., showed us how to build a system from scrap he found around the greenhouse. We published a version of this how-to guide at engineeringforchange.org, and it's one of the good ones, so we'd like to share it with Instructables, too.

What it is
A vertical aquaponic system grows vegetables without soil in columns above a fish tank. By growing vertically, you can produce about twice the amount of plants as you can with a hydroponic system of the same area. One five-foot tower can produce more than 200 heads of lettuce per year. And it uses a small fraction of the water needed to grow crops in soil.

The system puts fish waste to work as fertilizer for crops. A small pump draws nutrient-rich water from the fish tank to the tops of the vertical columns. The water trickles down through the roots of the plants, gathering oxygen from the air as it falls back into the tank. It releases almost no waste and, because it's soil free, there's no need for fertilizer or most pesticides.

You do have to replace lost water as needed, power the pump and feed the fish. Try raising crickets for fish food, or buy them flakes. It might not be too hard to power one of these pumps with a small solar panel or some other renewable energy. If anyone has an idea, please share.
 

For more information on aquaponics, please see CSA's and NTP's sites. 

food for the future

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Indian Man Single-Handedly Plants a Forest

Way back in 1953, French author Jean Giono wrote the epic tale The Man Who Planted Trees. It seemed so real that readers thought the central character, Elzeard Bouffier , was a living individual until the author clarified he had created the person only to make his readers fall in love with trees. 

Assam's Jadav Payeng has never heard of Giono's book. But he could be Bouffier. He has single-handedly grown a sprawling forest on a 550-hectare sandbar in the middle of the Brahmaputra. It now has many endangered animals, including at least five tigers, one of which bore two cubs recently.

The place lies in Jorhat, some 350 km from Guwahati by roadt. At one point on the stretch, a smaller road has to be taken for some 30 km to reach the riverbank. There, if one is lucky, boatmen will ferry you across to the north bank. A trek of another 7 km will then land you near Payeng's door. Locals call the place 'Molai Kathoni' (Molai's woods) after Payeng's pet name, Molai.

A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.

The Times of India recently caught up with Payeng in his remote forest lodge to learn more about how he came to leave such an indelible mark on the landscape:

It all started way back in 1979 when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng , only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life.

"The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage . I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was interested," says Payeng, now 47.

He watered the plants morning and evening and pruned them. After a few years, the sandbar was transformed into a bamboo thicket. "I then decided to grow proper trees. I collected and planted them. I also transported red ants from my village, and was stung many times. Red ants change the soil's properties . That was an experience," Payeng says, laughing.

Soon, there were a variety of flora and fauna which burst in the sandbar, including endangered animals like the one-horned rhino and Royal Bengal tiger. "After 12 years, we've seen vultures. Migratory birds, too, have started flocking here. Deer and cattle have attracted predators," claims Payeng . He says locals recently killed a rhino which was seen in his forest at another forest in Sibsagar district.

Payeng talks like a trained conservationist. "Nature has made a food chain; why can't we stick to it? Who would protect these animals if we, as superior beings, start hunting them?"

The Assam state forest department learnt about Payeng's forest only in 2008 when a herd of some 100 wild elephants strayed into it after a marauding spree in villages nearby. They also destroyed Payeng's hutment . It was then that assistant conservator of forests Gunin Saikia met Payeng for the first time.

"We were surprised to find such a dense forest on the sandbar. Locals, whose homes had been destroyed by the pachyderms, wanted to cut down the forest, but Payeng dared them to kill him instead. He treats the trees and animals like his own children. Seeing this, we, too, decided to pitch in," says Saikia. "We're amazed at Payeng. He has been at it for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have been made a hero."

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mobile: Prinzessinnengarten

Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green) launched Prinzessinnengärten (Princess gardens) as a pilot project in the summer of 2009 at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland for over half a century. Along with friends, fans, activists and neighbours, the group cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots and reaped the first fruits of their labour.

Imagine a future where every available space in big cities is used to let new green spaces bloom. Green spaces that local residents create themselves and use to produce fresh and healthy food. The result would be increased biological diversity, less CO₂ and a better microclimate. The spaces would promote a sense of community and the exchange of a wide variety of competencies and forms of knowledge, and would help people lead more sustainable lives. They would be a kind of miniature utopia, a place where a new style of urban living can emerge, where people can work together, relax, communicate and enjoy locally produced vegetables.

In future ever more people will be living in cities rather than in rural areas. The city will therefore become the decisive place for the development of more sustainable ways of eating, living and moving. The city of the future should be a climate-friendly, pleasant place to live, where every care is taken to conserve our natural resources. 

Prinzessinnengärten is a new urban place of learning. It is where locals can come together to experiment and discover more about organic food production, biodiversity and climate protection. The space will help them adapt to climate change and learn about healthy eating, sustainable living and a future-oriented urban lifestyle.

With this project Nomadisch Grün intends to increase biological, social and cultural diversity in the neighbourhood and pioneer a new way of living together in the city.

Urban agriculture on Moritzplatz

 

- The story so far -

For half a century Moritzplatz hid in the shadows of the Berlin Wall. This almost forgotten corner, once zoned as a motorway junction, is now experiencing a new lease of life.
First it was just a vision: Sitting in the middle of our field at sunset, the wind rustling through the poplars, the air scented by ripe tomatoes and fresh herbs, chatting with our friends and neighbours, having a good time – right in the middle of the city !

This was the picture Robert brought home to Berlin after a trip to Cuba. In Havana and other cities, agricultura urbana is not just about producing one’s own vegetables but more about creating an urban living-, working- and meetingplace. This is where neighbours would gather and adults would pass on their knowledge to children
as they relax over a cup of coffee.
“Let’s do it in Berlin!”, with this rallying call and the help of children, youth, neighbours and friends we are transforming Moritzplatz into an urban garden, café and place of working, learning and relaxing.

Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green)
Starting in the summer of 2009, the non-profit company „Nomadisch Grün“ has leased a site in Berlin/Kreuzberg in order to create a mobile urban farm:

The Prinzessinnengarten.

Locally grown organic vegetables
Our fresh, organic, locally produced herbs and vegetables are grown in raised compost beds without using any pesticides or artificial fertilisers.

Mobile Gardening
Nomadisch Grün stands for mobile gardening. We temporarily
transform unused spaces such as buildingsites, car parks and roofs into urban farmland and green meeting places.

Sustainable Living
The Prinzessinnengarten is a place of discovery where children, neighbours, experts and those curious about sustainable living can come together to about and explore alternative visions for our city.

Hedonism as we understand it
Our garden is a place of pleasure and rejuvenation. Relax and enjoy watching the vegetables being harvested and freshly prepared in our small garden restaurant.

Help grow a new city: Join in.
We couldn’t wait, so we’ve already started.
Come along and find your role – together we are building the future of our city.

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