AZURE_2014_09.pdf

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building
Fungi-tecture?
The prospect of bricks that grow themselves, consuming
no energy and releasing no pollutants, was too tantalizing
to pass up for archi tect David Benjamin, principal of
New York’s the Living. Hy-Fi, his pavilion installed this past
summer at MoMA PS1 in Queens, is made entirely from organic
materials – most notably bricks grown from mycelium
mushroom roots in moulds filled with cornstalks (a worthless
by-product), then dried into blocks that resemble
Styrofoam. “Each brick grows in about five days, with no
energy or sunlight required,” says Benjamin, “so it generates
no waste and no carbon emissions.” Mycelium has been
used in product design and architectural concepts before
(project collaborator Ecovative produces an entire line of
packing materials made from the stuff), but it has never
been realized at this scale. “This is just the beginning,” says
Benjamin. “We should be able to generate biological materials
with a wide range of physical properties, including those
that self-heal and change in response to their environment.
The only limit is our imaginations.” – D.D.A.
top photo BY kris graves
product design
Adopting the James Dyson mantra
One of the biggest champions of taking product engineering
to the next level is the man who reinvented the vacuum
cleaner. James Dyson hands out annual awards to
ingenious student inventors who are making stuff that is
destined to impact the world. We spoke with Dyson about
his competition, and why we need more design engineering.
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The brief for the James Dyson Award is to “design
something that solves a problem.” What are the biggest
problems we face in the near future? Sustainability,
housing and an aging population come immediately to
mind. Many students entering the award competition are
already trying to tackle these issues. In Canada, we’ve seen
two inventive projects among this year’s submissions that
aim to solve such challenges. Stefan Djerkic, from Humber
College in Toronto, designed a beach cleaner called Shorvac
[shown]. It removes debris from beaches and coastlines,
to protect wildlife and the environment. A team from the
University of Calgary has developed a wheelchair that can
be propelled using a single hand. It gives greater mobile
independence for those who only have the use of one hand.
What are the biggest innovations you’ve seen from
the competition? Inventive ideas come out of the awards
each year. Last year’s winner was a team of mechanical
engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania;
they designed a battery-powered upper-body robotic arm
that increases human strength by almost 20 kilograms.
The project, Titan Arm, was designed for under $2,000, and
their use of modern, relatively inexpensive materials made
the project even more compelling. Are there some
problems design can’t solve? If it’s a practical problem,
there will always be a practical solution. It might just take
some time to frame the problem and come up with a viable
solution, and of course the technology required may not
have been invented yet. Great ideas meet great resistance,
but that’s the thing about perseverance: you don’t stop.
Getting something right takes time – weeks, months and
even years – but we all must persevere. – J.M.
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