KINERGIC - Land Art Generator Initiative - 2014

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The proposal is conceived after an effort to understand the main natural forces that are present in the site; wind, water and people. It has everything to be with motion, an energy that is found everywhere in nature, even in our own bodies.

Inspiration came from the wind with its great strength and unpredictable temperament, water with its constant and tireless motion, and us humans, always prone to changing our surroundings and ourselves in other to achieve greater goals. The shape and scale of the KINERGIC structure, resembles of that of an industrial building, but taking a closer look you will see that is a structure like none you have ever seen before. Inviting people to interact with the KINERGIC structure, “playing” with the filaments, walking up and down, transforming motion into electricity the same way that wind and water do, is one of the most important missions of the project.

People mutates from mere consumers to the producers of the energy they will use latter. This action invites the user create a conscience that there is a better way to inhabit our environment and use the available resources in a more responsible way. With these, more and more people will be involved in generating energy contributing with their own kinetic force to creating a healthier earth. The filaments intersect with the circulation on the ramps making easy to people to play with them while walking or biking along the ramps.

This kinetic forces (wind, water and human motion), when channeled, are able to be transformed, like any kind of force, into another form of energy, in this case, one that is most useful to us people; electricity. We decided to use a technology that implies movement or kinetic force, but not the use of turbines and elements that, even though each one generates large amounts of electricity needs equally large amount of space and are dangerous for some species.

In this case, the electricity is generated on the nodes of a wooden structure, the nodes can be of two kinds; wind and water nodes. Each node has eighteen 4.5m flexible high density EPE foam filaments with 2.5m of piezoelectric toroids stacked inside; these filaments are the ones that, with the input of the kinetic force of wind, water or people, transform movement directly into electricity. Piezoelectricity needs much less space and even if each individual piece generates less energy compared to those on a wind farm per example, the whole system can generate large amounts of power thanks to a great numbers of small generators in a smaller space. This technology also allows people to interact with the structure, and poses no threat to birds or local fauna. The filaments intersect with the circulation on the ramps making easy to people to play with them while walking or biking along the ramps.

The wind nodes are distributed all through the structure, while the water nodes are located just in the first two rows of the structure, touching the water with special floating devices transmitting the wave’s movement to the piezoelectric pieces of the filaments.

At the tip of each filament, there is a LED light that shines according to the amount of energy produced to create a land mark on the site due to the privileged location facing the canal.