25th Annual NY CANstruction - The Time is NOW

CANSTRUCTION is an extraordinary annual design competition and the most unique food charity in the world. The competition challenges teams of architects, engineers, and contractors to build sculptures made entirely out of unopened cans of food. The large scale structures are placed on display and later donated to City Harvest for distribution to those in need. When the invite for the 25th annual CANSTRUCTION competition was sent to my firm, a group of us immediately jumped at the idea.

As designers, we anticipated that the hardest part of the competition would be the design of what we were going to build, we immediately set up weekly meetings and started brainstorming on what we need to build, an object that would leave a lasting impact on the people that came to see the exhibit. Little did we know, that the design was probably the easiest aspect of the puzzle.

When one of our colleagues, who had experience with CANSTRUCTION came in to listen to one of our meetings, she asked a simple question. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO BUILD THIS? Very naively, one of us responded “ With Cans! DUH!”. She then asked - “ ok, where are you going to these cans from? who is paying for it? and more importantly - once you get the cans, how do you suppose you’re actually going to construct this design of yours?” She reminded us that the rules of the competition were very strict, we could only use:

• Velcro, magnets, zip-ties, tape, silicone

• Rubber bands, nylon string, wire mesh or wire

• Wood or steel rods, PVC pipe, threaded metal rods

• Leveling materials (templates) not greater than 1/4″ thick (6mm)
  Examples of approved leveling materials are: cardboard, foam-core, masonite, MDF, plywood, plexiglass, fiberglass

And like we had initially planned, we cannot use

• Wood or metal beams, struts, steel tubes or bracing materials

• Leveling materials (templates) greater than 1/4” thick (6mm)

• Sheet metal, steel plates, Fiberock, or glass

• Permanent adhesives or bonding process (soldering, etc)

This changed our design process completely. We had to factor in how the exhibit would be constructed.

The next question was the size of the exhibit. We were allowed a maximum build area of 10’ x10’ x 10’. So we had to ensure that the exhibit fit within it. And we also had to ensure, that the exhibit was not an arbitrary no, but something that was in the denomination of can sizes.

The above considerations narrowed down our design options. We finally arrived at a concept inspired by Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Each one of us represents the minute hand to get us one step closer to a time when everyone would have access to healthy food.

My friend and colleague represented this interpretation beautifully in the mission statement below:

“You wish you find some time
To do something good for this world around you,
You ponder with you passive thoughts
Sitting at your desk
You wish you could turn back time,
To follow you passions,
To give and to love,
You don’t have to sit and wait,
The ground is caving beneath our feet.

For the time is now,
Together our minds are an infinite core of energy,
We CAN build the world piece by piece,
For the TIME is NOW
We CAN leave a continual imprint
And hope against hope,
That there is time,
When there is food and nourishment for everyone on this planet we call home. ”

— Soumya Rao

As we worked towards recreating this concept image, we realized that the exhibit didn’t represent the idea of the “ melting clock” too well. And it definitely didn’t express the notion that time is running out. This changed the form of our exhibit. We took out a portion of the cube, cantilevered the clock from the cube to express the notion that time is running out.

The toughest part of this exhibit was the construction of the cantilever. But the weight of the cans, forming the clock and the weight of the cans forming the melted cube, were carefully balanced to allow the cantilever to be self supported.

We finally made it build night. Please click the link below to see the timelapse of our construction.

Corgan Associates' timelapse video during Canstruction 2017.

In conclusion, the event was a huge success and we learned so many things about design and construction in the process.

This however, would not have been possible without the contributions we received from our clients, sponsors, friends and family.

Buckminister Fuller Institute Competition - DHARAVI - 2050

In the 21 st century intensely violent storms, prolonged droughts, and surging seas are expected to present an existential threat to coastal cities. A greater matter of concern is the sudden explosion in urban population cities making them most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. And data suggests that these travesties are felt most acutely and suffered greatest by the marginalized and disempowered.

As a case study for the 21 st century urban condition, Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, India and one of the largest in the world, represents the challenges the city of the future will face. Dharavi is particularly at risk as the monsoon season yearly destroys the slum, resulting in deaths from drowning and disease. As climate change intensifies the rainy season and as the area becomes more densely populated, the already dire situation in Dharavi will worsen. It represents a dark nexus of social, spatial, economic, and environmental problems that requires, as Buckminster Fuller wrote, a “new model” that reorganizes the city in thought as well as in reality.

The 21 st century city is a problem of a space, of environmental adaptability, and of social justice, so a 21 st century solution must address a new way of creating space, of responding to a changing climate, and of affirming humanity. Too often, the “development” of slums is a governmental land-grab, clearing away tenements and creating thousands of homeless. It is more a gentrification scenario than a development scenario. The land may be cleared, but the humanitarian crisis persists and is intensified.

Rents in Dharavi commonly run at $4 US. per month, the land that Dharavi occupies (roughly 2 Km sq.) is worth an estimated $10 billion US. This is not sustainable, for as Mumbai grows and is pressed for space, Dharavi will loom in public opinion as a dangerous blight, an eyesore and a crime-ridden den of violence and disease in need of purging and reclamation. Unattractive, powerless, and unpopular, Dharavi will be raised.

Ours is a proactive vision, not a perfect solution but one that attempts to gain for the residents of Dharavi some small measure of justice. Reorienting Dharavi vertically will open up much of the land over which it currently sprawls, even if a fraction of the money the city gets from selling the land is routed into the construction of the towers, the project can pay for itself and mass displacement can be avoided.

Our plan for the radical reorganization of Dharavi is the development of vertical “skeletons” which provide basic amenities (clean water, sanitation, and energy) which should be the birthright of 21 st century man. This “skeleton” is not a housing project, with standardized in-built units awaiting family assignment, but rather a tabula rasa upon which the vitality and ingenuity of the slum can be applied. It is a framework for utilities, allowing slum dwellers the freedom to develop their own communities within the levels of its structure. It acts as an elevated shelter from storm and flood, with closed sanitation systems preventing disease and promoting unhindered community recovery.

A proposed section:

Ground Floor: A transportation shuttle/railway service will connect the tower to existing transit centers, allowing residents access to those areas of the city where jobs can be found.

Middle Floors: Spaced far enough apart to promote cross-ventilation and openness (30’), these levels will provide open space for development and regular access to water, toilets, and electricity. The laissez-faire development of slum is allowed to continue, allowing all to claim space as need dictates and preserving the vitality of neighborhoods.

Top Floor: Community greenspace, garden-plots, sports fields, wind turbines, and battery banks.

Credits : Ben Kruse, Yin Zhenuay, Heidi Reiburn, Shruti Venkat

Masterclass with Elia Zenghelis : PRINCIPLES OF THE MODERN : MANIFESTO RECAST

Elia Zenghelis is considered one of the most influential leaders in the transformation of architectural education in the last half-century. He came to Iowa State University’s College of Design to visit and teach a master class for 50 third- through fifth-year undergraduate as well as graduate students in spring-semester architecture studio classes.

Overview

The two-week, intensive workshop addressed the topic of “Principles of the Modern: Manifesto Recast, or The Invention of the Public Condenser.” The aim of this workshop was to articulate one’s position and response to a set of exemplary paradigms selected from the history of architecture since the so-called ‘revolution’ of the ‘Modern Movement’. The final deliverable of the workshop was to illustrate the paradigm in the form of an emblematic image that can act as a personal manifesto.

“In particular, the workshop will highlight the role that ‘domesticity’ has played in shaping the Modern Movement: if Modernism celebrates the rationalization of the city, what is often overlooked is how it ushered in radically new and expansive forms of domesticity, the effects of which helped transform the entire urban landscape. Domestic architecture can be seen as a microcosm of the city, in which formal, material and social experimentation can reach new heights, shaping relationships between life and form, bodies and space, sensuality and materiality: an experimentation that can inspire a social and political imaginary, from which to draw an ideological project, both allegorically and literally.”

— Elia Zenghelis

Workshop Review

A list of seminal architectural paradigms, emblematic of the Modern Movement’s evolution were given, for study, re-presentation, transformation and the production of an image-manifesto. The procedure and working method were divide into two parts- Part 1: extrapolation and Part 2: synthesis. My teammate and I chose Pierre Koenig, Stahl House 1960 - Richard Neutra, Kaufmann House, 1947 & Shulman photos as our paradigm.

Kaufmann House, 1947 Photographed by Julius Shulman

Stahl House, 1960, Photographed by Julius Shulman

PART 1 EXPLORATION

The extrapolation was to consist of a) abstracting a formal summary, an extract out of the paradigm studied b) isolating and capturing each extract for a composition transformation that would lead to an abstracted reconfiguration of the two paradigms into one;

For the part 1 extrapolation process: We tried to study the historical context during the construction of the two iconic houses. We also looked at the key figures, or the key people in the architectural arena at the time period and tried to form the connections. See below excepts from our presentation.

Timeline of the historical events during and around the time the two iconic houses were constructed.

Keyplayers and impacts on both Pierre Koenig and Richard Neutra

Apart from looking at the historical context and key figures that impacted the architects lives, we also looked means and methods of construction, the floor plans of the two houses, the similarities and the differences. This led us to the famous quote:

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

— Salvador Dali

PART 2 : SYNTHESIS

Out of the material developed in Part 1, each team was asked to produce one color image. This image should be simultaneously an emblematic representation of the composite transformation and, an abstract representation of an “interior” that the transformation bespoke; it should be envisaged as the representation of an “archetypal social condenser”: imagined as a space to accommodate an example of what is (often inaccurately) referred to as the “body politic”;

Our findings on the 1960s showed us the importance of the television at the advent of modernism. It even drove the way houses were designed with large living and shared spaces and smaller bedrooms. The images shown on the TV were an aspirational view of the high life, the perfect modern life. It was an escape from the mundane, the day to day.

This led to the first iteration of the image manifesto as you can see below.

Aspirational view of the high life represented in magazines and the television

Adding our interpretation of the quote by Dali into this process, we came to the conclusion that everything the television represented was in turn a perspective of the real. And as human beings, in the modern period, the domestic was an attempt at the imitating that perspective.

Image manifesto

Corenet Global New York Chapter - Design Symposium : GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

“Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day. ”

— Douglas Conant

Isn't this a fascinating idea? When this year’s Corenet Global’s annual competition was announced with the theme titled global connections – taking part in it was a no-brainer.
The goal of the competition was depicting this theme in the form of a 3- Dimensional object.

My colleagues and I brainstormed for weeks around the following themes:

1. Every connection leads to another connection leading to another connection -Till we are all connected.

2. Most connections are organic. Even with social media.

3. Every interaction we have leaves a mark on us.

 WHAT DRIVES THESE CONNECTIONS?

Humans are seldom solitary and static creatures. We have an innate desire to interact, a need to be heard, and a yearning to be acknowledged. We seek interaction through an endlessly growing web of connections, and through that journey we discover ourselves. We grow though sensory experience.
This drove us to our core ideas - You cannot connect ALONE. 

Connections are dynamic, they are always evolving, and our exhibit has to reflect that.

We also realized, that "global connections" cannot be a static exhibit. After multiple ideas were thrown away and design disputes were resolved we finally narrowed in on a concept that was really exciting, but quite hard to execute. Our exhibit would be a study on action and response. We began thinking about how to demonstrate the idea of organic connections as an immersive sensory experience. 

Slowly, our exhibit began to take shape and form. Since some connections are intuitive and some planned, the exhibit had to be a combination of two sensory organs. We found that touch and sight were the two that most appealed to us. 

We started with in-depth studies of magnetism. And as we progressed realized that while magnetism allowed us to showcase organic connections - the people engagement aspect was hard to achieve given the time we had. We then began playing around with Arduino boards and led lights and different ways to create a network. Finally, we decided to build a web of lights: people would engage with our exhibit, and the more they touched, the brighter their connection with the rest of the exhibit.

In this day and age, with the internet and social media serving so much of our need to connect, we had to make the internet a part of our exhibit. Our material studies eventually led us to optical fiber as the "string" we would use to depict connections. Our sensory choice of touch then led us to copper wires which would be powered by the touch of a hand by an Arduino board set up that we ourselves coded. Optical fiber and copper cables power the internet and touch our lives everyday, and that is what we would use to build our exhibit.

One night while working on this exhibit at work, conversations evolved around the idea of Six degrees of separation. It is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other. (Fun facts: The concept was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare.) We decided the best way to showcase this idea was by building the entire network using six transparent segments of glass.  

After weeks of working on all the components, the exhibit was finally finished. It was a transparent six-layered structure, with a web of optical fiber cables that lit up gradually as a person (or people) engaged with the copper mesh base.