Yesterday was a huge stepping stone for the studio and the direction of this project. We had our first review that focused on our research of Don Zanfagna, his idea of the Pulse Dome, and some fun science fair type projects. The studio was fortunate enough to have a very special resource attend the review, Ms. Kirsten Moran the Associate Curator of the Pulse Dome Project at the Halsey Institute. She along with Ray Huff of the CAC.C gave Studio V some great information on where to take the design of this project. Our presentation covered some new alternative energy concepts along with general information about Zanfagna and some precedents that we felt were important in directing the path of this project. The information we presented about energy concepts was very strong and was made stronger by side “science fair” projects that Professor Pastre had us design for the review. These projects covered topics from aquaponics to ferrofluids all the way to algae and methane production. My project focused on the production of electricity and how we would store it once it had been produced. I created a simple electric motor that ran off a battery and a coiled copper wire.
- Simple electric motor design
These simple projects helped because it gave us all something tangible to work with instead of just the written research. After our presentation was finished and we received our critiques it sounds like our final project is headed towards a geodesic dome structure of some sort. With a radical design change from contemporary architecture rather than a more modest approach that could be implemented into the homes of today. The reason for this is Zanfagna did not believe that making existing buildings “green” was good enough. He believed that architecture should grow along with nature… not on top of it.