Degree Project

launchAGRIculture

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Launch AGRIculture

Andrew Liebchen

A degree project presented in partial fulfi llment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in the Department of Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Rhode Island School DesignProvidence, Rhode Island2009

Approved by Committee:

Enrique Martinez, Degree Project AdvisorAssistant Professor of Architecture

Olga Mesa, Degree Project PanelistAdjunct Professor of Architecture

Jonathan Knowles, Degree Project CoordinatorAssistant Professor of Architecture

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Abstract

The degree project seeks to project a facility for the slow harvest of Hydrogen rocket fuel grown from algae. The facility’s slow harvest of Hydro-gen coincides with the periodic return of Halley’s Comet; culminating in the launch of a scientifi c probe to study the comet and the solar system. Implicit in the facility’s programming is a cycle of growth, launch, and obsolescence. Historical, environmental, and cultural inputs impacting the structure are mediated and processed by physical and graphic devices modeled on Space Race-era ephemera, including stamps, commemorative coins, wheel charts, and tourist photographs, to name a few.

Potential Keywords:Agriculture, Architecture, Algae, Apollo Ephem-era, Halley’s Comet, Launch, NASA, Rocket, Probe, Possibility, Space Race, Sustainabilty, Soyuz, Tourists

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Table of Contents

Title page......................................................page iAbstract......................................................page iii

1. Fall 2008..................................................page 5An essay completed at the conclusion of Degree Project Seminar.

2. The OBFUSKATOR...............................page 12An early probe designed to discover questions.BEB Gallery, October 2008.

3. A Chapter of Concerns...........................page 18Selected blog entries, completed during primar-ily during Wintersession 2009.

4. Performative Ephemera........................page 38Project introduction for the fi nal review, May 2009.

5. List of plates..........................................page 40

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1. Fall 2008

Engineered Form and Alternate Universes

We read the engineered forms of space capsules, aircraft carriers, bridges as we read dutch archi-tecture: rational diagrams made physical. Engi-neered objects are no immune to the cultural his-tory of the engineers who designed them. These differences can be reconciled by examined pairs of engineered objects, entangled by similar dia-grams but divergent in their form. Additionally, how do these precise objects hold necessary pro-gram beyond their diagrams, or program that is un-diagrammable?

The restaurant of the sporting center in Belgrade, Serbia was featured on Dezeen, a trendy design blog the other day. Evidentially, the cantilevered structure was intended both as a landmark and a exclusive dining facility to the communist elite, and is known as the Danube Flower. Tito himself dined there on November 22, 1973, its opening night. Rechristened “Wellness Sky,” the trian-gular building is now a health club and spa, pre-sumably catering to the wealthy elite of Belgrade. There is scant information on the Danube Flower available to cursory searches of Google and Wiki-pedia. It seems that Dezeen is now the repository of all knowledge on the internet related to this cu-rious relic from a communist past.

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Rooms fl oating in the air are convenient building forms for the elite: access to them is limited to a single, well-protected point, not unlike a me-dieval castle. Unlike a castle, the elite should be confi dent that their cantilevered structure will not be siege by anyone with a catapult. In the democratic west, our shopping malls seem to be the opposite of the fl oating restaurant of the com-munist elite. But, I can draw a diagram to de-scribe each that would look remarkably similar: in the communist example the divisive fi eld is air and in the democratic example the divisive fi eld is parked cars.

The P&O building in London was demolished from the ground up. Backwards demolition is counter intuitive, but this particular offi ce building was built the fl oor plates were suspended from truss girders at roof which were in turn supported by the central core. In death, the true nature of the building’s structure was revealed. It was a com-munist fl oating restaurant in a capitalist’s generic offi ce clothing.

(Kundera: “They wanted to efface hundreds of thousands of lives from memory and leave noth-ing but an unstained age of unstained idyll. But Mirek is going to land his whole body on that idyll, like a stain. He’ll stay there just as Clem-entis’s hat stayed on Gottwald’s head.”)

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There is a critical moment in the launch of the rocket when success and failure, crash and burn, life and death hang in the balance. The count-down clock has reaches zero, the rocket engines are producing fi re and thrust, and the clamps that had delicately secured the missile to the tower are released. We are still holding our breath; this is the moment that doomed so many test rockets when Eisenhower was still President. Time slows here as thrust and gravity reach détente. Let’s stay in this moment, where rocket isn’t quite a spacecraft and the launch tower just stands there, useless.

The fate of Schrodinger’s cat in the box is limited to two possibilities, life of death, just like rocket on the launch pad. Of course the rocket lifts off and makes it to the moon, perhaps because we are aware only of the universe in which this happens. Is there another universe in which the Apollo 11 was reduced to a fl aming heap, and three astro-naut’s wives became widows? I think I saw this episode of Star Trek. Alternate universes are the fodder of science fi ction and comic books.

Van Braun’s V-2 rocket is the fi rst to achieve suborbital fl ight, while Kennedy was on his PT boat in the Pacifi c. Designed to destroy London from a launch site in Germany, the form of the

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rocket is similar to the science fi ction comic book rockets of the time. Is this a coincidental paral-lel development of form based on a rudimentary understanding of ballistic aerodynamics shared by artists and scientists, or did one inform the other? Van Braun is brought to America, Ken-nedy becomes President and launches our race to the moon. Our rockets and spaceships take on rational AMERICAN forms: the Saturn V’s set-backs are reminiscent of a skyscraper shaped by Manhattan zoning laws (it is even brought to the launch pad upright!), while the Apollo capsule is comprised of platonic forms designed for move-ment in Cartesian space. Meanwhile, the Soviets develop the strange insect-like Soyuz module and deliver their rockets to the launch pad horizon-tally. Engineers are not immune to forces that infl uence artists and architects; they bring social, cultural, and political preoccupations to the engi-neered forms of rockets and spaceships.

In 1975, the engineered forms of the US Apollo module and the USSR Soyuz joined in a symbolic end of the space race and intergalactic détente. Imagine the cultural, political, scientifi c, and his-torical forces wrapped up in the moment when the hatch opens, and three American astronauts join their two cosmonaut colleagues. It is a mo-ment of historical signifi cance, taking place in a physical space that has been engineered for a spe-

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cifi c purpose—safe and economical spacefl ight—and not diplomatic relations. In the tight tube of an air lock, representatives of two enemy people unite in a handshake, as their spacecraft have united in orbit. This occurrence is more frequent than not, the reuse of space beyond the intent of its design.

Paraphrasing Raimund Abraham’s Negation and Reconciliation, Modern Architecture presented a spur in the line of history, an alternate reality of towers in the park, etc. by offering only criticism of art but no new treatise or style to replace it. Science fi ction presents projected future with the present (or sometime in the past) as a point of de-parture. We can see, though that science fi ction has the ability to bend history in its direction in a way that Modern architecture cannot.

history

science fiction

projected future

history

Modern architecture

unfolding future

Wolf D. Prix, “…the Dutch people can recognize their uniqueness and they can translate their Calvinist thinking into diagrams and have made it their trademark.”

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Calvinism: Adam’s fall had doomed man to state of total depravity, or immersion in sin such that he cannot choose to follow God. God, therefore, must PREDETERMINE that an individual will accept salvation. Thus, the two states of man are intertwined: free will (Godless) and salvation. It is up to god to open the lid of the box. Is this a struggle between democracy (capitalism) and to-talitarianism? Or just the entanglement of ideas that a Koolhaasian diagram must rectify?

The Dutch hold back the ocean and drain the plodder to build upon the fresh muck. One won-ders if Almere will ever see the day when a struc-ture must be re-purposed from its original use. Is it possible for master plan for chance and ac-cident, strange juxtapositions in time and space, erasures and memory fragments that fi nd them-selves travelling through time? Like the whole of the Netherlands which exists as water and land, the dike has opened the lid of the box.

Rem: “If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk-space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The built prod-uct of modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace. Junkspace is what remains af-ter modernism has run its course or, more pre-cisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a

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rational program: to share the blessings of sci-ence, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown…Although its individual parts are the outcome of brilliant inventions, lucidly planned by human intelligence, boosted by infi nite com-putation, their sum spells the end of Enlighten-ment…”

Is Almere the opposite of Junkspace, or just better diagramed? If the Apollo and Soyuz modules are the best fl ying diagrams of the complex systems needed to support human life in space and bring it back to earth, how does the space enclosed by the module react when confronted by a mission beyond its design (diplomacy).

Early thought in quantum mechanics tried to rec-oncile classical physics with the counter intuitive or contradictory results of experiments in the fi eld. Consensus of the time, known as the Copenhagen interpretation, held in part that human observa-tion of microscopic or quantum phenomenon in some way changes the reality of the event. Er-win Schrodinger proposed a thought experiment in 1935 to challenge the Copenhagen interpreta-tion. He imagined a steel box, which contained a small amount of a radioactive material, a Geiger counter, a hammer, a container with an amount of cyanide, and a cat. If the Geiger counter de-tects a particle from the radioactive material, the

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hammer is dropped on the container of cyanide, killing the cat. In Copenhagen interpretation, the cat exists in superimposition of two states, alive and dead, until the lid is opened and the cat is observed, at which point the two possible states collapse into one. Poor cat.

The Apollo and Soyuz craft are the entangled pair of dead cat and alive cat in reverse. Each represents a culture’s physicalization of similar diagrams for spacefl ight. Different cultural and engineering histories, mission profi les, and even aesthetics infl uence these objects in ways their makers might not like to admit. Each developed in kind of alternate reality, entangling in orbit in 1975.

US Navy public relations offi cers love to tell us that the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is a “fl oating city,” or a “city at sea.” Hollein says, “Everything is architecture,” so the warship runs aground in the pastoral landscape. One is reminded of a re-cent project by NL Architects called “Cruise City, City Cruise” in which the deck of the aircraft car-rier becomes an amusement park. Would Le Cor-busier include the aircraft carrier in volume two of Towards a New Architecture? On the trans-At-lantic steamship, the pleasure forms of railings, portholes, etc derive from certain shipbuilding logic. On the other hand, the aircraft carrier is

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an orphaned section of LaGuardia’s runway lost in the middle of the ocean. The launching and retrieval of fi ghter jets drives it’s from above all else. Is this why the re-juxtaposition of the car-rier back on the landscape (or the landscape back onto the carrier) so appealing?

Back to the cat in the box: some would suppose that at the moment the lid is opened, instead of collapse, the superimposed states SPLIT into two universes, one in which the cat is alive and one in which the cat is dead. This idea is refi ned by the later “quantum suicide” though experiment. Sup-pose an experimenter sits in front of a gun which is triggered or not triggered in by the radioactive decay of some atoms. There is a 50-50 chance that the experimenter will live or die. At the moment when the gun does or doesn’t fi re, two universes are produced, one in which the experimenter lives and one in which he dies. You could imagine that eventually, and universe would emerge where the experimenter had NEVER died, and therefore imagined himself invincible.

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2. The OBFUSKATOR

It all began with a misunderstanding, a miscom-munication created by an imprecise translation from analog to digital. The degree project board presented a device on which a signaler would ap-parently draw a circuit diagram, causing corre-sponding LEDs to light for a view. By the cunning or laziness of the device’s creator, the signaler was unaware if there was a direct relationship to the diagram he was creating and which LEDs lit up for the viewer. Both signaler and viewer are hopelessly confused.

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The installation and user’s guide:

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December 28, 2008: Diverging opinion

Modularity vs. Parametrization or ballistic vs. blunt-body re-entry or Soviet vs. American:

I keep coming back to the American/Soviet space race-era capsule design. This work produced two separate morphological threads of space craft de-velopment, even though each family of vehicles represents a response to the same environmental and mission constraints (see plate 1).

Beginning in earnest at least in the 1950’s (if not earlier) American and Soviet scientists and en-gineers began to tackle the same basic problem: put a man into orbit and bring him safely back to earth. These groups were not only separated by language, culture, and geography, but also an intense veil of secrecy. To me, it is a perfect test case for how diagrams are developed into formal responses to a design problem. As presented here, the most obvious difference in morphology between the American Apollo Command Module and the Soviet Soyuz is that former is a cone and the latter is a series of spheres. It can be argued that this difference of opinion can be traced back to a single decision early in the history of each program concerning which re-entry (see plate 2).

3. A Chapter of Concerns

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The problem of re-entry troubled designers be-cause it was unknown if a capsule could with-stand the intense heat generated by the friction of atmospheric drag as it fell from orbit. Perhaps pragmatically, the Soviets chose to shape their capsule as a simple ballistic sphere, fully enclosed in a heat shield. The capsule’s center of mass was placed behind the cosmonaut so that the sphere would orient itself properly over the course of the re-entry. The ratio of solid to void within the spherical Vostok is acceptable for one or two cos-monauts, but a trip to the moon would require three or four.

Increasing the radius of a sphere dramatically increases the volume; so dramatically that the volume risks becoming TOO great. So, the So-viets leave the radius basically unchanged from the one-man Vostok to the three-man Soyuz, and choose instead to stack the spheres, and thus more precisely increasing the interior volume of the vehicle.

The Americans, on the other hand, settled upon the blunt-body as the best shape for a re-entering spacecraft. By fl attening the leading face of the capsule, a shock wave would form, slowing the craft and decreasing the size of the heavy, expen-sive, and fragile heat shield.

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The Mercury spacecraft then, is a truncated cone. While the Soviets have only one dimension to de-termine their craft’s size (radius), the Americans have two (radius and height). If the width of the rocket sets the radius of the cone, the height can be used to increase or decrease the internal vol-ume of the capsule until its JUST right. The cone has a secondary benefi t: one side responds to the need for a tapered, more aerodynamic shape at lift-off, while the other is fl attened for re-entry, eliminating an aerodynamic launch shroud em-ployed by Soyuz.

In spite of its apparent weaknesses, Soyuz today is the world’s most prolifi c launch system. In this case, parametrization is expensive and ill-suited to fl exible or changing mission profi les, while a collection of smaller specialized modules are cheap and versatile. This division between Amer-ican and Soviet, parametrization and modularity is easy to trace to a rational decision made by sci-entists, but what other INTANGIBLE factors con-tribute to the primordial decision?

Where Americans hopeless romantics, feeling it necessary to bring as much of the mighty ship home as possible, while the Soviets are a crass and godless people who have no qualms about leav-ing two-thirds of their space hardware to burn in the atmosphere? And what of the supremacy

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of the United States Navy and the vastness of the Russian tundra, what role did these factors play into capsule development? Maybe Soviet scien-tists never saw a Buck Rogers comic book during the development of Vostok. These questions are more elusive.

As we look to the diagram as driver in architec-ture, we must acknowledge how personalities, cultures, idiosyncrasies, and the accumulated weight of primal decisions subvert the rationality of the diagram into a form that fi ts life. Modern architecture is the concretization of a diagram, forcing life to bend to its will. The fundamental truth of the diagram should not be denied, but to make an architecture the diagram must bend to intangibles…

Look at the engineered forms of space capsules, aircraft carriers, bridges as you look at dutch ar-chitecture: rational physicalizations of a diagram. As the products of humanity, engineered form carries with it the cultural history of the engineers who created it. These differences can be recon-ciled by examined pairs of engineered objects, en-tangled by similar diagrams but divergent in their form. Additionally, how do these precise objects hold necessary program beyond their diagrams, or program that is un-diagrammable?

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December 20, 2008: Cantilevers in our midst

As we look to the diagram as driver in architec-ture, we must acknowledge how personalities, cultures, idiosyncrasies, and the accumulated weight of primal decisions subvert the rationality of the diagram into a form that fi ts life. Modern architecture is the concretization of a diagram, forcing life to bend to its will. The fundamental truth of the diagram should not be denied, but to make an architecture the diagram must bend to intangibles…

Look at the engineered forms of space capsules, aircraft carriers, bridges as you look at dutch ar-chitecture: rational physicalizations of a diagram. As the products of humanity, engineered form carries with it the cultural history of the engineers who created it. These differences can be recon-ciled by examined pairs of engineered objects, en-tangled by similar diagrams but divergent in their form. Additionally, how do these precise objects hold necessary program beyond their diagrams, or program that is un-diagrammable?

The restaurant of the May 25th sporting cen-ter in Belgrade, Serbia was featured on Dezeen, a trendy design blog the other day. Evidently, the cantilevered structure was intended both as a landmark and a exclusive dining facility to the

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communist elite, and is known as the Danube Flower. Tito himself dined there on November 22, 1973, its opening night. Rechristened “Well-ness Sky,” the triangular building is now a health club and spa, presumably catering to the wealthy elite of Belgrade. There is scant information on

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the Danube Flower available to cursory searches of Google and Wikipedia. It seems that Dezeen is now the repository of all knowledge on the inter-net related to this curious relic from a communist past.

Rooms fl oating in the air are convenient building forms for the elite: access to them is limited to a single, well-protected point, not unlike a me-dieval castle. Unlike a castle, the elite should be confi dent that their cantilevered structure will not be siege by anyone with a catapult. In the democratic west, our shopping malls seem to be the opposite of the fl oating restaurant of the com-munist elite. I can draw a diagram to describe each that would look remarkably similar: in the communist example the divisive fi eld is air and in the democratic example the divisive fi eld is parked cars.

The P&O building in London was demolished from the ground up. Backwards demolition is counter intuitive, but in this particular offi ce building the fl oor plates were suspended from roof truss girders which were in turn supported by the central core. In life, P&O is a bland of-fi ce block in a dour city. In death, the true nature of the building’s structure was revealed. It was a communist fl oating restaurant in a capitalist’s generic offi ce clothing.

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January 1, 2009: Performative nostalgia

Actual space capsules might not be as exciting as those in science fi ction, but they are rigorous nex-uses of Newtonian physics, human factors, and history. Some would argue that manned space exploration is an expensive distraction from the more effi cient work that robots and probes could be doing; that manned spacefl ight is the result of a showboating exercise between two former su-perpowers. Without the glitz and glam of sweep-ing visions of space exploration (Kennedy’s push to the moon, Reagan’s Star Wars) the public grows bored. With reusable space shuttle that makes spacefl ight seem routine and an expensive and sophisticated work of engineering parked in high earth orbit (the International Space Station), spacefl ight has lost its thrill. So, we remember our past achievements (and expenditures) with commemoratives: postage stamps, coins, plates (see plate 3).

Spacecraft are sophisticated marvels of engineer-ing, representing millions of man-hours, billions of dollars, not to mention the lives of the astro-nauts who took them to space. Once they land, and retrieved from the ocean, encased in Lexan, and hung from a museum’s rafters they are vis-ited, photographed, and dreamed about by an amazed public, most of whom unknowingly com-

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mitted a few pennies from their weekly paycheck to it. Technical object to collected object. Flying through space to fl ying through a ten-year-old’s dream. In addition to mediating the myriad fac-tors of spacefl ight, the spacecraft has to mediate our hopes, dreams, and ambitions.

Somehow the excitement of architecture is not the same of the excitement of tanks, space explo-ration, and warships. Is it that architecture is too tied to capital and power, or that it is perceived to be mundane, ordinary? That it does not move? That it does not kill people? Architecture is a slow force. Bullets from an attack helicopter are instantaneous.

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February 3, 2009: On space and sustainability

WHAT? Examining the emerging sustainability movement in architecture* through the lens of the so-called “space race.” **

HOW do spacecraft achieve their form? Mostly, they are little more than aggregations of related engineering choices and hierarchies. Sometimes, the decision of one becomes policy (political) and guides all subsequent choices.

Just as important, what is the life of the spacecraft once its mission is complete? In its obsolescence, its purpose expanded into symbology, dreams, and ephemerality. Can we anticipate this trans-formation so that our new infrastructure can live out its golden years with grace?

The discourse about NASA and spacecraft is not esoteric. As an analogy for architecture, it is worthwhile. Thirty years on, we can see how the space race panned out, we can visit its artifacts in museums. Will architecture reach détente with its environment? Its now state-of-the-art assem-blages visited by our grandchildren, obsolete rel-ics of a brave past.

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*SPACE RACE: a geo-political struggle disguised as a program of sci-

entifi c exploration which began in 1959 with the Soviet launch of Sput-

nik and climaxed with an American astronaut walking on the moon.

Arguably, the race ended in 1975 as the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft

rendezvous in orbit, forming a physical détente of the two nations.

**As characterized by the competing tactics of collectivized piecemeal

technological innovations or “green design,” or dangerous meta-narra-

tives, of the sort that culminated in the Pruitt-Igoes of the past.

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February 7, 2009: I dream of drawing machines

The drawing below was produced by a drawing machine (a historic RISD architecture genre) in construction for the past few days.

The drawing machine consists of four parts:

1.) The launch pad is a level surface fi ve inches above the fl oor. A 4 - 1/8 inch square is cut in the center, into which is seated the…

2.) The transport assembly consisting of a rub-ber stopper with a styrene tube piercing verti-cally through the center. The tube is attached to a length of vinyl tubing which leads to…

3.) A bicycle pump provides the pneumatic pres-sure required to launch the…

4.) Rocket which is loaded with an amount of charcoal powder.

The charcoal particulate spew from the launch of the pneumatic rocket is registered on the paper (see plates 5 & 6).

Throughout the historical the historical progres-sion of spacecraft and the related ground-sup-port infrastructure, it is striking that the devel-

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opmental decisions are made cumulatively with economy as a primary concern. The space cap-sules in are museums are rarely results of heroic individual design efforts, but a kind of agglom-eration—a metamorphosis like the formation of marble—of countless engineered decisions, re-visions, improvements, and leave-well-enough-alone, though it takes an act of policy to begin the processes.

I’ve made drawing machine (or some kind of overly complicated machine) at least once a year since I’ve been at RISD. This time, I’ve docu-mented the development of the device in a single

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isometric drawing from conception to current confi guration. Once this drawing is fi nished, it will describe a developmental history full of hy-potheses that become facts, false starts, idealism that metamorphoses into pragmatic conclusion, and so on. In short, the drawing is an archeologi-cal chart of the layered progression of the con-struct (see plate 4).

The drawings the machine produced at face value border on mere form-fi nding (which is danger-ous), and have less value right now than the pro-cess of making the drawing machine (which is not to say that the drawings will not prove useful in the future). The construction of the machine is so valuable, it is like a miniature history of the development of the space program, as manifest-ed in the active and ghost buildings on Merritt Island and the spacecraft launched there. The legacy of decisions, mistakes, and discoveries are pulled forward through time, institutionalized, corrected, and regularized by the small triumph of economy.

There is little doubt that my project should fo-cus on a launch complex in the spring. This ex-ploration therefore is the beginning of a diagram or thumbnail sketch. All the components for a launch system are here in micro: static platform, the rocket transporter, fuel production, recovery.

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February 13, 2009: Cat in the box

Erwin Schrodinger proposed a thought experi-ment in 1935. He imagined a steel box, which contained a small amount of a radioactive mate-rial, a Geiger counter, a hammer, a container with an amount of cyanide, and a cat. If the Geiger counter detects a particle from the radioactive material, the hammer is dropped on the contain-er of cyanide, killing the cat. Early consensus in the fi eld of quantum mechanics held that the cat exists in two superimposed states, dead and alive. Not until the lid is opened do the two states col-lapse into only one.

An orbital détente was staged on July 17, 1975 as two space capsules, Apollo and Soyuz, docked for the fi rst time. The American craft is a fat assem-bly of platonic solids: cone stacked on cylinder, gleaming silver in the pure sunlight. The Soviet craft is complicated, joined modules lacking re-ductive geometries. Given that each was built for a similar mission: taking a man to the moon and back, how is it that they came to look so differ-ent?

Schrodinger had a problem with the common interpretation of his thought experiment: what happened to the opposing state when the lid was open. His assertion is simple. At the moment the

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lid is opened, reality splits into two. In one real-ity, the cat is alive and in the other, it is dead. The Apollo and Soyuz craft are an entangled pair of dead cat and alive cat in reverse. Given different cultural and engineering histories, policies, and even aesthetics each craft developed simultane-ously, re-entangling in orbit in 1975.

As a culture, how do we remember these great achievements of spacefl ight? Primarily by the obsolete capsules we keep in museums and by cheap ephemera and commemoratives sold in nearby gift shops. Manned spacefl ight’s cultural legacy is not Velcro or tempurpedic mattresses, but junk kept under glass or left in orbit, even-tually becoming meteorites in the upper atmo-sphere. The legacy of manned spacefl ight has not be thoroughly appreciated by architects: we though Archigram got us off the hook.

It is worth another look now that our profession again looks to take up the cause of saving human-ity from itself. How to we remember technocrat-ic wonders of a past age? In their obsolescence, what are their capacity as symbols, as ephemeral collectors of dreams?

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March 12, 2009: Portable contextual frames

Wheel charts are useful ephemera. Unlike es-sentially value-less commemorative coins, col-lectable stamps, and the like, wheel charts are interactive and informative. There are two basic components: a disc with a polar table of data, and a second disc on top of the fi rst that is a frame with which the data can be interpreted. The circle at once suggests a dynamism, but the wheel chart is in a way static, the information enclosed in the circle cannot be expanded. The circle is the most symmetrical shape, yet the wheel chart requires a certain amount of asymmetry in order to func-tion. Of course, the original circles in nature are the celestial bodies, long revered for the predict-ability and perfection.

The wheel above (see plate 13) relies on juxtapo-sition and obfuscation to subvert romanticism and linear narrative. At once, humanity’s oldest organized pursuit (farming) is place atop its new-est (the crushing industry needed to fuel Ameri-ca’s consumer culture). The two are not mutually exclusive, but seem to be worlds apart. I would characterize both images as fairly romantic, in that they picturesque-ly gloss over the harsh re-alities of each. Cutting holes and fi lling them with miniature, changeable compositions in a way brings back the small moments of humanity

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and connection lost in overwhelming multiplicity of the bottom image.

Cartesian rationality still exists in global sense, fully intact below the rotating frame but is locally modifi ed by the rotating frame. Jessica Hefl and:

“Indeed if the astronomical volvelles [wheel charts] of the incunabula once sought to com-press three dimensions of data into two, it might be said that modern wheels…do precisely the op-posite, employing kinetic conceits to infer added depth and increased dimensionality, challenging the surface, and with it, our notions of where the surface actually is, if indeed it exists at all.”

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4. Performative Ephemera

May 18, 2009

An orbital détente was staged on July 17, 1975 when space craft from two nations rendezvous and docked for the fi rst time. The American Apollo is a fat conjunction: cone stacked on cyl-inder, gleaming silver in the pure sunlight. The Soviet Soyuz is a stack of discrete units, an orbit-ing Bolshevik bug. The craft kiss and trade saliva, teeming with astronauts.

Wheel charts are performative ephemera. Their stacked discs suggest dynamism, even when the chart’s information is fi xed and predictable. In spite of infi nite symmetry, the wheel chart re-quires a certain amount of asymmetry in order to function. The wheel chart’s information may be rigorous and expansive; the junction of kitsch and tactility make the information digestible and portable.

Spacecraft and wheel charts are mementos from collapse of uncertainty of the Cartesian world, be it the mastery of orbital fl ight or a heifer’s men-strual cycle. While the objects themselves may be immutable, the ephemeral life they lead is not.

-Introductory statement to the Degree Project jury.

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5. List of Plates

1. The form of Eastern and Western space-craftA sheet of commemorative stamps.

2. A divergence in opinion and policy yields... or Soviet modularity vs. American parametricizationThis early diagram sought to make an account of why the form of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft diverged. Hypothesis: spacecraft are not purely rational constructs. Because of their intense complexity, they are a collection of decisions lay-ered on top of the experience gained from previ-ous decisions.

3. Apollo and Soyuz 1:96 scale modelSytrene model parts, cardboard packaging, de-cals, and instruction manual. Acquired on eBay for $17.99.

4. Launch pad drawing machine, Con-struction documentationDesign and actual development is recorded in a series of axonometic drawings, completed daily.

5. Launch Pad Drawing #1Charcoal and fi xative on paper

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6. Launch Dad Drawing #2Charcoal and fi xative on paper.

7. Forgotten moments in space history, a commemorative coin setCoin 1 of 4: Ed White (fi rst American to walk in space) returns to the womb.

8. Forgotten moments in space history, a commemorative coin setCoin 2 of 4: The fi rst hand gun in space, and why.

9. Forgotten moments in space history, a commemorative coin setCoin 3 of 4: The relationship of locals to space-fl ight, the United States and Kazakhstan. Each coin (especially coin 3) functions as thumbnail diagram that is bound by the peculiarities of the commemorative coin in that the reverse provides context or commentary for the obverse.

10. Wheel chart #1: The Astronaut’s Guide

11. Wheel chart #2: The Farmer’s GuidePlates 11 and 12 are two sides of the same wheel chart object. Vintage wheel charts are taken as a departure point. On the front, “The Astronaut’s Guide” collects of rocket systems illustrations and

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specifi cation data on a circle. A rotatable frame mediates the mass of information into discrete chunks. “The Farmer’s Guide”, on the reverse, allows the user to calculate the amount of surface area required of an algae farm to produce a given quantity of hydrogen.

12. Wheel chart #3: Domestic bliss

13. Wheel chart #4: Pastoral

14. Wheel charts #3 and #4 revealedWheel charts #3 and 4 attempt to collapse two seemingly oppositional pictorial scenes by way of strategic openings in the top contextual frame that reveal the content below. Two related achieve-ments: a) each idealize scene (top and bottom) is related and subverted by the other; b) invent new, juxtapositional narrative possibilities.

15. Continuous Hydrogenase processingWhen the algae C. Reinhardtii, a single cell green algae, is deprived of oxygen and sulfur, it sponta-neously begins producing hydrogen gas for a pe-riod of four days. Then the algae must be recycled into a normal aerobic atmosphere. The process can be maintained continuously, as long as fresh algae is supplied to replenish exhausted stock.

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16. Algae cultivation area, a comparative study for a fi ve-week launch campaign1. Large; Rocket: Delta IV; Algae cultivation area: 85,524 square miles; 56 Rhode Islands2. Medium; Rocket: Falcon I; Algae cultivation area: 13,920 square miles; 9 Rhode Islands3. Small; Rocket: Spaceloft XL; Algae cultivation area: 139 square miles; .09 Rhode Islands

17. Payload and Launch Vehicle process-ing of a typical Soyuz launch1. Payload arrivals at Yubileiney Airport. Unload payload from transport airplane onto transfer railroad.2. Payload transferred to MIK 112 facility.3. Spacecraft autonomous preparations.4. Spacecraft fi lling and testing.5. Payload integration with upper composite stage. 6. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stage Launch Vehicle (LV) ar-rival and transfer to MIK 40.7. Launch vehicle preparation.8. Upper composite transfer to MIK 40.9. Upper composite integration with LV 3rd stage and LV fi nal integration.10. LV transfer to launch pad and LV stand-up on launch pad.11. Preparations, fueling, and launch.

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18. A typical Soyuz launch campaign described as a function of time and dis-tanceTime is measured in radians, with the arrival of the launch payload at Yubileiney Airport at the outer edge of the chart, and the moment of launch in the dead center. Each 4.8 degree equals one kilometer of distance; a straight line along a radi-us indicates that the payload or rocket is station-ary for an amount of time, while a curve describes movement. Note the construction/destruction line (an idea drawn from Paul Virilio). Inside this circle, the launch vehicle is fueled and destruc-tion of the rocket is assumed by the robustness of the infrastructure within it.

19. Measuring a farmer’s timeAs a proportion of the Earth’s annual orbit around the sun.

20. InsolationGiven a set area, insolation can be described as a slope used to determine the amount of time need to cultivate an amount of hydrogen.

21. Insolation analysis of platonic solidsThe cone presents the most surface to the sun, measured as a cumulative daily average at the solstices and equinoxes.

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22. The equationUsing the cone from plate 21 to increase the sur-face area of a hydrogen production array, this equation describes the relationship between vari-ables where:A = cultivation area (in square feet);

h = height of cones (in feet);

n = number of cones;

t = time (in days)

Two solutions are presented using the equation. Both set t equal to fi ve weeks. The fi rst requires a cone far dwarfi ng any man-made structure (in-deed, Mt. Everest would be able to fi t inside it), while the other presents a vast array of cones at a more modest height.

23. Expanding surfaces of a geodesic to cultivate hydrogen from algae: summer sun

24. Expanding surfaces of a geodesic to cultivate hydrogen from algae: winter sun

25. Expanding surfaces of a geodesic to cultivate hydrogen from algae: trimFaces of a geodesic positioned on a site are en-larged on the basis of maximum insolation for a specifi c time, others are enlarged for a different

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specifi c time. In this way, an emblematic form is created that is performative and iconic. Of course, the variantion between the surfaces is small, and the solar criterion is expansive. At a certain point, the decision of what surface to ex-pand and trim becomes a question of aesthetics. This choice is delightfully irrational, owing to the seemingly rigid but tranformative and variable nature of the invented program.

26. Kennedy Space Center, courtesy of Google Eartha. Space Shuttle landing stripb. Vehicle Assembly Buildingc. Launch Control Buildingd. Turning Basine. Crawlerwayf. Launch Complex 34 Ag. Launch Complex 34 Bh. Commercial / Military satellite launch padi. Banana Riverj. KSC Visitor’s Centerk. Security Postl. NASA Headquarters Building

27. Zones of exclusionThe industrial-scientifi c launch zones of Kennedy Space Center have never been freely accessible to tourist. Instead, an expansive Visitor Center hov-ers far outside the action, fi lled with artifacts of

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the United State’s space past and present. Tour-ists are loaded onto a bus (1) into the exclusion zone (2) and shuttled to-and-fro amid NASA’s working building (3).

28. Aerial view, including Hydrogen pro-duction array, gasometer, and Vertical Assembly FacilitySited within the zone of exclusion, the Hydrogen production array, gasometer, Vertical Assembly Array cultivate and store Hydrogen rocket fuel, grown sustainably from massive hydrogen arrays, forming a mega-pavillion. Hydrogen produc-tion is slow, and a rocket is launched once every 76 years, coinciding with the return of Halley’s Comet. A causeway brings tour buses from the Visitor’s center the facility, isolating visitors from the surrounding nature preserve.

29. Building life and launch cycleDuring most of the building’s life, the gasometer within the geodesic at the heart of the facility, slowly collects and stores Hydrogen harvested from the array. However, as the perigee of Hal-ley’s orbit brings it nearer to Earth, the gasometer is emptied and the rocket is fuelled. Visitors to the array are at an apogee and the now-irrelevant gasometer is converted to a planetarium.

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30. Exploded axonometric1. Mechanical room2. Opening in array and geodesic3. Hydrogen cultivation array4. Diagrid5. Geodesic, gasometer’s outer shell6. Elevator and fi re stair7. Spherical gasometer8. Tour bus9. Causeway to Vertical Assembly Facility

31. PlansAt +14’ and +160’

32. SectionsAs indicated on plate 31.

33. Hydrogen production array, skin as-semblyTypical construction of the Hydrogen cultivating skin. Two large corrugated clear PVC panels are fastened back to back, forming a series of tubes divided by a course of sealant. 1. Corrugated PVC assembly, outer panel2. Water and suspended algae3. Sealant4. Tertiary steel structure. 5. Access ladder6. Primary steel diagrid structure7. Hydrogen conduit

34. Model #1 Vehicle Assembly BuildingScale 1/64” = 1’ -0”

35. 36. Model #2 Hydrogen Production Array and GasometerScale 1/64” = 1’ -0”

37. 38. Model #3 Vertical Assembly and launch facilityScale 1/64” = 1’ -0”

39. VAB and gasometer viewed from a causeway crossing the Banana River

40. Approaching the gasometer, from in-side a tour bus

41. Between the outer and inner shells of the gasometer, facing northwest

42. Between the outer and inner shells of the gasometer, facing northeast

43. Underneath the Hydrogen array, viewing the launch of the rocket to Hal-ley’s Comet

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Degree Project

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