From the class Sustainable Systems · Learning Portfolio post, February 7, 2020
02/07/2020
The Compost King of New York
Cradle to Cradle Chapter 4
I really resonated with Cradle to Cradle Chapter 4. This resonation came for 2 reasons in particular. The first being my interest in product design and the second being my recent undertaking of recording my waste for a week. While recording my waste it became evident that the majority of my waste came from packaging and single-use objects. This didn’t make me feel good and I immediately wanted to change my habits and in particular start with food packaging.
As an aspiring product designer, the chapter really intrigued me by posing several important questions. How can we design single-use products to be used continually and reused instead of disposed of? What materials can we use that would allow for safe prolonged use? Should we focus on prolonged use of a product or instead of its biodegradability and how safe it is to dispose of? What materials would allow for this safe disposal? Would these alternate materials compromise the main function of these products?
I did not resonate as much with the reading about the compost king of NY however that does not mean it is any less necessary to sort our food wastes and to take advantage of them properly. One common thread I found in that reading is the dependability of a city’s waste management trail. Where are our scraps going and can we be sure they are going there? Are people sorting their own waste and if not who is? Hopefully, Vigliotti continues on his current trajectory and keeps turning food scraps into energy for people to use.
02/14/2020
While reading the secret life of trees as soon as I read that trees have the ability to communicate my mind started to race with possibilities. Could we as people harness this ability of trees and form a better more symbiotic relationship. If we learned how to trigger and use the signals and gasses that the trees use we could essentially communicate with them ourselves. Could we use forests as a form of natural computer? Could we shift the computational field to a biological base? This idea, however, was challenged when. I read that tree electrical signals and reactions travel at a third of an inch per minute.
While reading ray of hope I have become increasingly concerned with the changes that climate change is unwantingly creating in our environment. The coral reef is only one example of this and it doesn’t seem to be changing for the better fast enough. I am very curious about what sort of incentives could be created to help restore natural sites such as coral reef barriers and such. I think making restoration and green practices economically beneficial they would get far more traction and make larger strides to help the ecosystem.
Reading urban trees I wanted to think about how integrating plants and trees into architecture and urban design. My favorite and first example that I think of is the green roof on the university center. This is obviously a challenge since natural elements grow and shift and do not stay constant as other elements might such as concrete. The real challenge would be to integrate the two elements without taking away from each other and instead enhancing each other.
2/13/2020
“As the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that once flowered for Dutch sailor’s eyes, a fresh green breast of the new world.” is the opening quote used in “New York – before the City”. My first thought before even continuing the TED talk was what would we do now as a society if we now encountered an undiscovered island such as manhattan that has been untouched by humans? How would we treat it? Would we use the new land to gather resources and build civilization or would we preserve its natural state?
The concept of Muir webs also is something in the TED talk that wildly interested me. I love data collection, sorting, and visualization. The fact that we can quantify all of the different species and habitat conditions that need to be present for them to co-exist in equilibrium and the represent that visually is a technological marvel. This data was also applied to practical purposes because it was used to create several probability maps visualizing where certain species would have been found hundreds of years ago.
I’m curious if this sort of Muir Web could be applied to an urban human environment and in particular to deal with the current East River Park reconstruction. Could data analysts collect data on what the residents would like to see added, what they do on a regular basis and what needs to be added to help prevent flooding in that area and then try and create a data visualized map that could help strategically place locations of interest for residents and structural elements to help prevent flooding?
4/3/2020
In “Lost Paradise: The Gardens of Roberto Burle Marx” I really learned that inhabited “natural” spaces could really be designed too and not only manmade materials could be manipulated in such a way. Marx is very clearly driven in what he likes to do and he is very good at what he does. The statement of his that most interested me was when he compared a garden to an art event. Marx also goes on to write many essays including “The Garden as a way of life” in which he argues gardens hold purpose and that purpose can serve a wide array of functions. These can range from private gardens to public ones, from gardens as galleries to gardens in the middle of the city. Marx’s common thread of gardening follows through to another essay called “Gardens & Ecology”. In “Gardens and Ecology” Marx discusses the biodiversity of plant life and how this biodiversity is the key to their survival. Marx also discusses it is just as important to have something in the plants’ surroundings as it is to have the plants in the first place.
Through SCAPE Kate Orff tries to create spaces that are engaging of the people within them and connecting with them. She and SCAPE also have a strong focus on the future. They try to design sustainably. Their projects often encompass urban design but also architectural design. Their designs and spaces are also often constructed with direct reference to the locations where they are built.
Similar to SCAPE and Kate Orff, BIG and James Corner Field Operations are designing with specific reference to their location. In specific they want to help preserve the shoreline of Williamsburg Brooklyn by building a beach constructed. They want this beach to become a social public space for people to use and it would help the shoreline bolster its resiliency.
Aero Farms claims to be a more sustainable alternative to traditional farming. They achieve this claim by moving their plants into vertical configurations similar to how cities moved people into vertical configurations as opposed to horizontal farming. This uses space more efficiently, harvested easier, and maintained more precisely.
Originally posted on my Parsons Learning Portfolio.