eVolo 2013 // Skyscraper Competition
We were looking to redefine skyscraper as an icon, a sort of “machine célibataire”. Comes to mind Duchamp’s aphorism: architecture is a sculpture to which was added a hydraulic system.
This machine had to be able to create and transform and regenerate a site by itself.
The main question was the geographical context: where it was actually possible to measure and verify the beneficial effects of our choice.
Incipit came from the enormous documentation brought from studies and research of Climatic Engineering for to reverse global warming and in particular to cool the planet reflecting sunlight through the production of artificial clouds.
The Cloud Factory is a floating station, prototype of a wider concept for the (future) renewal of the entire planet. It’s located in Antarctica by the Ross Ice Shelf (81° 30' S, 175° W.) on the Southern Ocean but it might extend to other latitudes. On the South Pole the thinning of the ozone layer has now reached the area of 16 million square kilometers (source: NASA).
These 200 towers (300 mts high) look like giant chimneys in motion spraying tiny droplets of salt water with a framework of steel columns embedded in the plinths of the metal floating platform. Pillars enclose steam pipes with different sections (from 100 to 250 cm.) and are wrapped in a diaphanous heating membrane.
This skin is inhabited by mini flying spheres radio controlled releasing millions of particles which are seeding the clouds and speed up the condensation process.
The towers project embodies the principle of iteration where a single skyscraper is a prototype of serial kinetic object, technologically controlled, leaving great trails of white clouds in the Antarctic sky.
The floating platform (coated with honeycomb fiberglass) is a triangular shell 200 mts each side: a kind of iceberg sailing adrift along the currents and assisted by a system of submarine turbines allowing the transformation of water flows into mechanical and electrical power. A propeller system (14 revs per second) captures and processes the sea water, releasing steam in a continuous jet flowing into the tubes.
The level of entropy of this system increases with the progressive detachment of the islands in motion from the motherboard (artificial pack). Every platform becomes an autonomous geography, defined by its own location and, at the same time, creates multitudes of temporary assemblages.
