Learning About Dirt

What have you been listening to lately? A question that was posed quite frequently amongst my circle of friends when I used to have a life. Seeing as I am rarely ever doing anything aside from studio and studio related work, I figure I will answer said question via my studio blog. So, here is a list of music that has gotten a lot of play on my ipod as of late while I daydream about sleep, among other things……

Panda Bear’s latest, Person Pitch http://www.myspace.com/rippityrippity -Dreamtime is extended and highly recommended….I know it is a year old but Damn! What a fantastic album.

Explosion in the Sky: Anything by this Austin Band is phenomenal. Dreamscapes created by geniuses. http://www.myspace.com/explosionsinthesky

Battles get you through that all-nighter, especially at around 4am….especially “Atlas” http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=39551579

The Big Sleep are Brooklynites and good friends. Their latest just came out recently and they rocked SXSW this year: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=32463592

Calla – Televise is amazing…still. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=21973534&blogID=268562883

DeerHunter and Atlas Sound have been influential when designing. Colleen calls it Tinkle music. She is weird. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=8942689

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=77465267

Godspeed! You Black Emporer….Sheer brilliance. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=186549728

And of course, there are the standards that are always on constant rotation:

My Bloody Valentine, Interpol, Sonic Youth, Sigur Ros (amazing for drawing/computer rendering), Silversun Pickups, The Raveonettes, The Raconteurs (who are coming to Jazz Fest!), Yo La Tengo, YeahYeahYeahs, New Radiant Storm King – the finest indie rock of the 90’s that exists (Sorry, Malkmus, it’s true), Wolf Parade, Wilderness (beyond Brilliant!), Unwound for those moments, TV on the Radio (rarely topped), The Thermals (for pushing through those late nights/early mornings), Spiritualized, Slint (I MISS YOU!!!), Radiohead (duh), Lupe Fiasco (thx, Adam), Hum (really), Her Space Holiday, The Fiery Furnaces, Earlimart and finally…Boris.

Please, take a look/listen and let me know if this list helped.  I will post again with any updates before this madness of a semester is over.  Due to being locked away from society in this studio, I have fallen pathetically behind the times and have no idea what has been released as of late so if I am missing out on anything essential, please fill me in!

I researched renewable energy for the studio.  Below you will find posts regarding Solar energy and Wind Turbines that harness energy from the wind.  The focus is upon systems that can harvest energy from the highway system (I-10) tht runs through Baton Rouge and if utilized properly, can power whatever design we each decide to implement to create an area below I-10 at the Perkins Road Underpass that will attract people the area for reasons other than going to the bars and restaurants that already exist there.   Not to abuse  Wikipedia but I found an interesting summation of renewable energy  that is a great intro for the following three posts about Solar and Wind energy.  It goes a little something like this:

Renewable energy effectively uses natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. Renewable energy technologies range from solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity/micro hydro, biomass and biofuels for transportation.

In 2006, about 18 percent of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, like wood-burning. Hydropower was the next largest renewable source, providing 3%, followed by hot water/heating which contributed 1.3%. Modern technologies, such as geothermal, wind, solar, and ocean energy together provided some 0.8% of final energy consumption.^[2] The technical potential for their use is very large, exceeding all other readily available sources.^[3][4]

Renewable energy technologies are sometimes criticised for being unreliable or unsightly, yet the market is growing for many forms of renewable energy. Wind power has a worldwide installed capacity of 74,223 MW and is widely used in several European countries and the USA.^[5] The manufacturing output of the photovoltaics industry reached more than 2,000 MW per year in 2006,^[6] and PV power plants are particularly popular in Germany.^[7] Solar thermal power stations operate in the USA and Spain, and the largest of these is the 354 MW SEGS power plant in the Mojave Desert.^[8] The world’s largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW.^[9] Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18 percent of the country’s automotive fuel.^[10] Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the USA.

While there are many large-scale renewable energy projects, renewable technologies are also suited to small off-grid applications, sometimes in rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development.^[11] Kenya has the world’s highest household solar ownership rate with roughly 30,000 small (20–100 watt) solar power systems sold per year.^[12]

Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, peak oil and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. European Union leaders reached an agreement in principle in March 2007 that 20 percent of their nations’ energy should be produced from renewable fuels by 2020, as part of its drive to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, blamed in part for global warming.^[13] Investment capital flowing into renewable energy climbed from $80 billion in 2005 to a record $100 billion in 2006.^[14] This level of investment combined with continuing double digit percentage increases each year has moved what once was considered alternative energy to mainstream. Wind was the first to provide 1% of electricity, but solar is not far behind.^[15] Some very large corporations such as BP, General Electric, Sharp, and Royal Dutch Shell are investing in the renewable energy sector.

There is also this graph which sums it up for those too lazy to read the above information…

Solar Power. Everyone is familiar with this as it is one of the most commonly mentioned alternative energy sources. Solar panels are popping up all over the US. Solar panels can be found anywhere from on top of private homes to the roofs of huge corporations. Towns such as Austin, Texas are already incorporating solar panels into their search for energy that is not derived from oil. A bold move for a state so married to the oil industry. If only La. would follow their lead. There is certainly enough sun here to allow solar energy to provide for a great deal of energy.

This is what I learned about solar energy and how it works:

Solar cells convert one form of energy (sunlight) into another form of energy (electricity). When the sunlight is reduced or stopped, for example, when a cloud passes in front of the sun or when the sun goes down in the evening, the conversion process slows down or stops completely. When the sunlight returns, the conversion process resumes. Solar cells do not store electricity. At night, a solar electric system needs some form of energy storage, usually batteries, to draw upon instead of the solar cells.

Most solar cells are made from silicon, the 14th element. Other materials are used as well, but the fundamental process of how those cells work is the same as for silicon cells. Silicon has properties of both a metal and an insulator. Atoms in a metal have loosely bound electrons that flow easily when a voltage, or electrical pressure, is applied. Atoms in an insulator have tightly bound electrons that cannot flow even when a strong electric voltage is applied.

Atoms in a semiconductor bind their electrons somewhat more tightly than metals, but more loosely than insulators. Their electrical conductivity can be varied by a factor of thousands by introducing small amounts of impurities, or “dopants,” into the semiconductor structure. The two elements typically used to dope silicon are phosphorous and boron.

At the atomic level, light is composed of energy particles called photons that flow from the sun and strike the solar cell. As each photon strikes a silicon atom, it ionizes the atom by transferring its energy to an outer electron, allowing it to break free of the atom. The energy of the photon is converted into electron movement energy called electric current.

Another reason to use silicon in solar cells is because the energy needed to ionize a silicon electron matches the typical energy of photons coming from our sun. If the photons had less energy (if our solar spectrum were more red or infrared), they would not have enough energy to free the electrons, and if the photons had more energy (if our solar spectrum were more blue or ultraviolet), the energy beyond that necessary to free the electron would be lost as heat and wasted.

Here is a diagram that sums it all up quite concisely:

This was a very interesting paragraph to read about Solar panels also:

• Passive solar house design is an excellent way to heat a home. Generally it’s designed into the home from the ground up, with south-facing windows, thermal mass to store heat, lots of insulation, and thermal blankets for the windows at night. DanF’s home was designed this way. Until we do get a page up here about passive solar heating, you can search the internet for the term and get a wide variety of books and articles on the topic.
• Solar hot water heating panels became very popular in the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s for preheating a homes hot water. Government tax credits were offered by the Carter administration, and many companies sprang up designing and installing systems. When the Reagan administration cancelled the tax credits, many of these companies went out of business, and there were very few people left to maintain and repair these systems. Many of them are still sitting on roofs today, broken. HOWEVER, it became obvious very quickly that some of these companies were ‘fly-by-night’ and their products were poorly designed in the first place:
  • In general, we advise against purchasing these old systems used. It’s actually easy to find one for free, which might be OK if you are experimentor and enthusiast. But these older systems used numerous active controls, sensors and pumps, and were very unreliable compared to the excellent, low-maintainance and reliable systems available today.
  • Solar water heating panels are NOT a new idea! This article about the history of solar water heating is an excellent read. Thousands of systems were installed and were very effective in sunny parts of the USA around 1900.
  • On the other hand, modern solar water heating panels are an excellent investment in most parts of the county! The technology has changed so much that these systems are now completely different in design than those from the Carter area that caused so many problems. Some industry analysts say that the loss of the tax credits, while it had a large negative impact on the industry at the time, ended up being the best thing that ever happened to the industry in the long run.
  • These systems are now often incorporated along with radiant floor heating pipes. The sun heats the fluid, which circulates inside the high thermal mass floor of the home. This is a VERY efficient way to heat a home!
• Solar air heating panels are another new technology that’s catching on quickly. It allows the homeowner to retrofit a house that was not originally designed for efficient passive solar heating, and reap the benefits and energy savings of heating with the sun.

Below are a series of images of solar energy panels ranging from the large scale projects to personal homes:

Below is a common sight on the highways of the US as of late:

More and more we are seeing solar power being used by the government which is a good thing, especially with the cost of oil skyrocketing. If done properly, I believe we could power whatever idea/design we each have for the Perkins Underpass via renewable sources of energy.

Today we divvied up a list of topics for further research and I chose Alternative Forms of Energy and how said forms are harnessed. I was so fascinated with the info I posted about earlier this morning that I opted to continue on that path. So, I am delving into Wind power first. Wind power has been harnessed for quite some time now…think of the Windmills in Holland.

There are actually “wind farms” all over the US, one of the largest is located in upstate NY. How do I know this, you ask? Well, I worked at the country’s first Brewery that operates on electricity from a Wind Farm, the Brooklyn Brewery. http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=59

I have discovered some interesting facts from researching this on the web. Wikipedia, Andrew’s favorite site, had quite a bit of info to share: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

To sum it up quickly, a few of the more interesting facts were the following:

Although wind currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use,^[2] it accounts for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland (2007 data). Globally, wind power generation increased more than fivefold between 2000 and 2007.

Wind power is produced in large scale wind farms connected to electrical grids, as well as in individual turbines for providing electricity to isolated locations.

Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions when it displaces fossil-fuel-derived electricity. The intermittency of wind seldom creates insurmountable problems when using wind power to supply a low proportion of total demand, but it presents extra costs when wind is to be used for a large fraction of demand.

Wind farms are located in places that tend to be windy (duh) on a constant basis. Unfortunately, La. is not one of those places and ranks very low in regards to how windy it is overall as a state. Personally, I find La. to be somewhat windy because there is nothing to prevent the wind such as mountains and buildings but it ranks as one of the least windy states. Go figure. It does, however, have plenty of highway as well as ocean to utilize for harnessing wind. Wind farms are often out at sea, this is a popular place to start Wind Farms, especially in Europe. Seems to me like a perfect thing to do as the state has no issue with having Oil Rigs everywhere you look out along the coast. I wish the Oil companies were not so dominant and that could become a reality but something tells me they will not even consider such a move until every last drop of oil has been pulled from the earth.

The highways seem to be a perfect alternative to this though. The idea of the New Jersey barrier with wind turbines built into them as seen in the post below is, as stated, an amazing one. Imagine if they were to build the proposed light rail system from Baton Rouge to New Orleans along the highway and powered it with the wind created by traffic? That would be a huge step in the right direction for this state to enter the 21st century regarding the “Green” revolution currently taking place.

Other forms of turbines look like this:

This is a wind turbine called the “Quiet Revolution” which is popular in the UK. The only objection I have about this format is that it must really shred birds on a regular basis. The best part about this turbine is that the wind can come from any direction as opposed to the turbine that we are familiar with which needs to rotate towards the direction of the wind for optimal harvest:

There is also the Vertical Axis wind turbine (the one Brad mentioned) which looks like this:

Above is a horizontal Wind turbine which, I am assuming, could be placed alongside highways to capture wind.

Finally, I had to post this picture as well. This baddy can power 5,000 homes. It is rather large:

Frickin’ huge, even.

I was googling for more information regarding precedents and at one point googled “Perkins Underpass” to see what would come about and found a post by none other than Brad leading to this:

It is a Jersey Barrier with Wind Turbines in it to harness the wind created by the flow of traffic. I remember reading about these last year I think and being absolutely stunned by them. Especially because they can be used for such things as:

Pretty unreal, huh?  Imagine if the proposed Light rail system between New Orleans and Baton Rouge was powered by this?  I have been doing a small amount of research into different ways that alternative sources of energy and harnessing said energy could happen at the site in an attempt to bring Baton Rouge into the 19th century in regards to becoming a “green”, or at the very least, “greener” city than it is. I think most of us would agree that we are living in a pretty archaic town when it comes to conserving energy and putting green practices into place. Styrofoam anyone? Or perhaps a drainage system that did not drain directly to the River? Anyone…Anyone? Is this thing on?

This is the first movie attempt I created for our new studio assignment. It is an exploration of texture and how it changes due to ephemeral changes in the environment.

Above is a thumbnail if the collage I made this week. It contains three categories of elements found on the site, all dealing with texture. On the left one will find the natural textures, on the right – the man-made textures and the images in the middle are a combination of the two. I wil post the site analysis part after I edit it some more.

Northern View of the park.

Northwestern view of the park and the pavilion.

Northeastern view of the pavilion area.

The following are the Plan, Sections and Diagrams I was able to complete in time for the review. Unfortunately I did not complete and perspectives on time for the review but am working on completeing them at this point..hopefully they will be posted soon.

The concept for the plan was based on patterns and activity, especially movement. I pulled the design and geometry from a concept model I made earlier in the project: concept-model-copy-for-blog.jpg

The concept model reminded me of two different actions, first the idea of a zipper combining two sides together as well as plate tectonics pulling something that was once solid, apart. The beige area is to be hardscape (sorry, Elizabeth) and the green areas are raised mounds that rise approximately 4′ into the air. As there is such a lack of topographical change in New Orleans, I thought the features would be regarded as something new as well as something that attracted people to the park. They are meant to serve multiple purposes…those near the pavilion are for spill-over from the pavilion and have picnic tables upon them. The area to the Northwest is meant as a play area featuring both a swing-set and a playground. The mounds in the middle on the left are for the park visitor to determine the purpose of. They are left as more ambiguous usage, most likely for those who do not want to be a part of the activities that occur in the park. The mound at the southwest corner is for watching the activities on the multiple sport-court area as well as more passive activities such as reading and conversation. The sport area contains a few different courts placed on top of one another. They include a basketball court, a kick/soft/baseball “field”, a volleyball court and a tennis court. In addition to the activities, I suggested that Live Oaks be planted along the streets on both side of the park creating an allee. The other side of the canal features an allee that survived Katrina and although the two neighborhoods are somewhat similar in a socio-economic manner, the side with the allee looks far more re-established than the side we worked on. It has a “homier” feel to it and even though there are approximately the same amount of people living there as on the other side, it looks as if more people actually do live there. The oaks would, hopefully, tie the community together and create a phenomena (like how I worked that one in there?) that the entire neighborhood and it’s coming generations could watch grow and flourish.

Sections of the Gentilly Park Proposal.

Diagrams of the Gentilly Park Proposal.

If you click onto the thumbnail above, you can get a better idea of the tree planting proposal I made for the neighborhood. The other two diagrams highlight the circulation as well as the high/low activity areas.

Not quite as obnoxious as the last post…..