Since October 2011, we’ve focused on air quality issues in Madrid running conferences, presentations and hands-on workshops at Medialab-Prado. We’ve engaged other citizen groups in London, Amsterdam and New York to develop a custom low cost air quality sensor to map pollutants at controversial areas.

Our goals are to promote knowledge transfer regardless of previous expertise and to open a forum where all stakeholders can raise their concerns and solutions. Furthermore, we’re creating a prototype library of devices, to break the digital breach and enable anyone to contribute with their own data, while gaining insight into urban issues.

Both topics are involved in a common ground, the common experience of the city, but they also split up into two different researchs that meet up again and again on their own way.

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. (…) We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.

Deleuze y Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus.

Ecometro is expected to be the equivalent of Linux among certifications. It works on parameters of transparency and collective intelligence and develops design methodologies combined with environmental assessment systems. This does not exist in the market. It is necessary to be able to introduce, in an easy and economic way, environmental aspects in industrial development. That is the way to be able to take direct and reasonable decisions in the process of designing a building.

There are many aspects that make ecometro a very different tool from others:
Ecometro is a design tool, not just a final evaluation tool, thus implying a methodology and the development of an own design.

Ecometro is an Open Source work procedure through a software based on a transparent database that will help designers to make a more ecological architecture.

The tool is going to be developed by the community and is contextualized in present-day structures called “bottom-up” or “down-up”, work systems by consensus of the community within the parameters of a well educated and restless collective intelligence for a greener world.

It works with indicators at all scales and with various impact categories. It is the most complete and comprehensive of all existing tools, and the one that works on most parameters.

1.- The first part is theory based on research related to utopias with architecture and films, as how to develop new urban models, or how the authors imagined the future of megalopolis. Reviewing the past to make suggestions for the future is an essential part to position itself in a utopian way. This part is summarized on a map that organizes these utopias as an underground-subway stations, distributing them in several categories and arranged them in a time line of 99 elements, where this project would be placed at the position nº100. This digital platform, which simulates a subway map, is called Metropia and the idea is for it to continue growing and to become a database of urban utopias, or a digital utopic model: UTOPEDIA.

2.- The second practical part is to explain and to design strategies based on the “current” situation of the moment: economy, society, political and technological climate, turning it into an “ad hoc “ architecture. 4 strategies along the time are defined : 2000-2025, 2025-2050, 2050-2075 and 2075-2100 will be the hypothesis explained starting on 4 texts where this hypothesis will be discussed as well as their time evolution. The following urban designs will appear from 2000 to 2100 “Metrostation” – a building that distributes elevated subway traffic at several areas of the city. “Blue Parks” – floating structures with 2 levels. One on the water with green areas and swimming facilities, and a second level underwater with bow windows to view the deep Thames River. “Floating Markets” – platforms where people can enjoy from fresh fish & chips,to concerts, sports and shopping. Designed as a public floating square. “Heritage Island” – megastructures to preserve some neighborhoods and architectural heritage, against the flood. “Sweet Home Tower” – an intelligent structure with a plug-in system for prefabricated intelligent housing, based on a text by Salvador Perez Arroyo “Vivienda y Tecnología” “Hidroponic Farms” – areas of the city to cultive a kind of algae: “Chlaymidomonas Reindhartii”, that transforms CO2 into O2 very quickly. “Filter Skylon” – an element to minimize the CO2 through a SMOG filtering system turning it into clean O2. “Performative Housing” – a structure that colonizes and parasites the typical housing of London to protect it from the flooding by developing a new external structure. “Floating Taxis & Buses” – means of transportation of the past, with its typical touristic look and colours , but taken into the future.

3.- The third part is the video that summarizes all the work and tries to show how the future in London would be.

The proposal turns this spaces into emergent businesses and office spaces that redefines and transforms the urban context based on daily and hourly specific data. Follow the link for full project details.

Project by: Hulda Jonsdottir, Vicente Gasco & Jesus Sapien in IaaC

Tutors: Areti Markopoulou & Tomas Diez

total budget: 1500€
15 Wisa Birch standard boards sliced into 5 cm planks
280 repeated pieces and 30 different pieces (aggregated in 3 sizes)
260 kilos and 90 m2 covered
No screws, no waste

Photo credit: Andres Flajszer

Sponsors:
Plywood UPM Wisa
Timber Logistics Gabarró
Software La Tienda del Cad
Academic support UPC ETSAV

+AIMS
+Socializing and spreading sustainable ways of life based on the activity of some professionals and communities by the use of information and media technologies.
+Developing different innovative projects, designs and built architectures that minimize expenses in terms of energy and resources, promote new habits and relationships with nature in everyday life and can be easily reproduced by citizens.

+TOOLS
o[EXPLORATION]
Minimizing human impact on the environment is studied through the perspective of some particular initiatives of some communities and professionals that have already developed sustainable ideas and ways of life. This projects are documented, located and analyzed through an exploration process.

o[AUDIOVISUAL DISCOURSE]
Interviews with different agents are articulated through audiovisual documentaries that make them comprehensible and spreadable for all type of publics. Around 40 communities and professionals have already been interviewed.

o[ECOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURES]
“Ecological infrastructures” can be defined as objects, buildings or devices that minimize energy and resources consumption. They are made of natural and minimum impact materials and able to generate more sustainable activities and ways of life.
Ecological infrastructures are open-source design, they are developed in a collective way and as do-it-yourself products.
Agrokitchen is an ecological, open-source, outdoors kitchen prototype that is specially designed to be used by groups of people in community gardens.
Other prototypes developed are the “Equipped bike trailers” that incorporate minimum energy infrastructures (solar cooker, water treatment) and make possible some activities that improve the relationship between people and natural environment, as seeds meetings or vegetables interchange.

o[COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOPS]
Ecological infrastructures are built and designed with the collaboration of communities of future users that serve as experts and develop their skills with the aid of other experienced builders. Therefore, constructions are adapted to special needs.

o[EVALUATION]
Prototypes are tested by the community of users that has been generated during the building process. Some electronic devices are created in order to monitor how infrastructures work, measuring energy and resources consumption and transforming data into graphical information that can be observed on Agronautas website.

o[SHARING INFORMATION]
All the technical information about the prototypes and how they are build is shared on the Agronautas website so that prototypes can be collectively developed. A network of online self-builders will be created.

o[SELF-MANAGING]
Users of ecological infrastructures are helped to improve their devices by the self-builders online community. They can also improve their designs through monitoring data.

[PEZ[estudio] has collaborated of Juan Dopico Massobrio, Raumlabor Berlin, Re:farm the city, Mazetas, Tuni Panea, El Súper, Taer Solar, Arteklab, Manolo Vilchez, Lutxana Ecocommunitary Orchard, Ur-Chi-Tao Communitary Orchard, Barcelona Orchards Network, ZAWP Bilbao and all participants during the workshops. The project has been supported by The Basque Government and EME3]

Its mission is to eliminate habitat destruction and killing in the world’s oceans in order to protect and conserve the ecosystem and species for the future to fight for its preservation and against those who assaulted with impunity.

The potential of experimental aquatic structures tested since the beginning of science fiction and built by the metabolists from the 60s, will be used to serve the protectors of the seas and provide a network of mobile marine infrastructures required to make more effective operations, protect the environment and improve trainings for future requirements.

The stations are located in high ecological value areas in risk that enable them legal and political independence, facilitate and enhance the operational logistics of their campaigns and provide housing, shelter, legal, own production of energy resources and supplies to its fleet. This may deal more effectively with both the current problems of the ocean as others unknown to those who have not yet been faced.

The stations would be composed of three specialized units, and their different modes of tactical aggregations at sea, would protect marine reserves, running blockades and sieges of enemy structures, control spills, block roads or regenerate damaged seagrass beds to recover biological capacity.

Ocean Warrior will enable a new pirate utopia serving the struggle for balance between humans and the oceans, through integration into an emerging system that hybridize crew units and blocking tactics of sabotage, location strategies, green technologies and intelligent devices.

Inteligencias Colectivas draws its inspiration in part from this very ethos. Rooted in real-life examples of intelligent construction, this online platform and free database brings together knowledge considered to be on the fringe of traditional construction practice. This methodology is used in order to promote a type of technical know-how that is at once inclusive and public. A horizontal learning system—through tinkering with material prototypes—helps to weave together a tight network of people and collectives.

+ Few locations around the world still champion native construction techniques. While communal social structures have been lauded for their resourcefulness, low energy inputs and versatility, their assembling patterns are considered outside of the mainstream. As a result, the lived experience of makeshift culture has proved to be quite elusive.

+ This project is centered on architectural, planning and design techniques that combine conventional know-how with present-day needs. Many materials—re-usable, semi-industrialized, craft and manufactured—are incorporated into this study. While this initiative is geared mainly toward amateur builders, it aspires to something greater: to encourage and cultivate citizen science.

+ Even in developed countries, different levels of industrial and economic development have facilitated the merger of old craft techniques with semi-industrial products. The results can be seen in squatter settlements, for example, but these methods are often reviled and disappear once larger building “improvements” take place.

+ In “Northern” countries, the limited amount of opportunities for modifying the built environmment is especially prescient. Professional urban development fields are characterized by simplification and the loss of cultural relevance caused by a suite of factors: excesses of government control; the monopoly of trademarks and patents; the homogenization of neighborhoods; the deterioration of historic identity; and the strong division between architecture and the needs of its inhabitants.

+ In this globalized era, custom construction solutions need to be incorporated into the building proccess as a way to make longstanding social traditions and our ever-changing built environment commensurable.

+The Inteligencias Colectivas platform is developing this project in several ways:

Open online platform:
www.inteligenciascolectivas.org is an open-source database that contains construction techniques that blend craftsmanship and semiindustrialized products that happen to be from different regions of the world. Adaptive and iterative, this venture—by giving access to all citizens around the world—seeks to promote innovation and assemble the necessary tools to forge links among networks and between countries.
The platform includes different sections: “catalog”, where we can find basic documentation of existing intelligent solutions from different locations; “Upgrades” that includes graphical manuals where “intelligences” are analyzed and mapped, and “Prototyping”, that shows new constructions made by the platform that incorporate some of the previously found intelligences.

Prototyping:
Inteligencia Colectiva develops prototypes through workshops in collaboration with various organizations and agents in different locations. They serve as a tool that legitimizes this type of construction as it sets into different economic environments. The programmes they serve are discussed with future users (communities, institutions …): they go from solving basic needs in difficult life contexts to other requirements in public spaces and institutions.
Prototypes are designed and built involving “intelligent” authors that have been previously detected in each place: they serve as experts. Different intelligent solutions are incorporated into each design, from materials to construction methods or technology.

Methodology:
An active network of people is built by Inteligencia Colectiva. This network gets stronger through the design and construction of prototypes: working groups integrate neighboring institutions, professionals, artisans, builders, workshop participants and anonymous citizens.
In addition, many of the prototypes are the result of open educational workshops in collaboration with research institutes, universities or local entities. A horizontal methodology is developed in order to make all agents work coordinated but in absence of hierarchies. This allows every one (artisans, informal builders, teachers and students) to apprehend the capabilities of the others easily. We believe in horizontal hierarchy as an indispensable basis for the enhancement and learning of this type of technologies.

Urban approach
Inteligencia Colectiva works as a tool for developing a critical analysis of reality. These complex construction situations are usually surrounded by larger scale facts. Intelligences help us detect problems and opportunities that go from constructive details to urban strategies.
Regarding prototypes from an urban point of view, we find that even small size interventions refer to higher magnitudes, generating different typologies designed to suit each situation. It is a “street level” urbanism that works with inhabitants in a close relationship.
At a constructive level, as intelligences are incorporated into the prototypes, they refer to urban conditions: existing materials, techniques, resources and human capital are contextualized. We call it the “urbanism of collective intelligence.”

In order to develop the reconstruction proposal, we worked with the specific situation of the disaster happened, by understanding the proposal as a chance to solve preexistent problems, and reflecting about possible ways of action: urban resilience, identity, solidarity, autonomy, confidence, economy reactivation, plug-in’s… that eventually were established as urban acupuncture strategies in a processus that proposed communication between the different agents.

In fifteen days – the time that last the processus for the competition first phase- a total of 67 people collaborated from all around the world, with different levels of implication, to contribute with ideas for Lorca.

We can assure now that we are capable of working with collective intelligence by using the capacity of relating global ideas with local context.

The initiative highlights a very important thing: due to social networks we are capable to share and be connected in a very fast way, opening a possibility field to deal with new ways of work in urban environments.

“Temps de Flors” is a special moment, not only for the blooming of flowers all over the old town, but also because it offers the visitant a complete experience of the explosion of spring as well as it celebates the architectural and monumental legacy of the city.

The intention of our proposal is to create a shadow landscape, that is projected on the floors and façades, and wraps the visitant.