Fourth Year - Advanced Studio - Adam Marcus
Re-Imagining the suburban landscape as a source of sustainable food and energy production.
Our housing machine centers around the inclusion of multiple species including the Pacific Tree Frog, Intelligent Robotics, Algae in many forms and the human being.
I propose a project that reinterprets the suburban landscape of Fremont, California as a place of food production and algae biofuel generation. Bridging the gap between food consumption and food production is one of my highest interests and as an architect I believe it is part of our job to theorize ways in which communities and the home itself could become fully self-sustaining. In this project I developed two connected closed loop facade panel systems. One used water captured from the atmospheric water generation systems (AWGs) to pump water into the bioreactors for algae generation; while the other used the same nitrate rich water from the bioreactors and repurposed it after the algae growth to produce vegetables and fruits in an aeroponic garden.
Asha uses Atmospheric Water Generation Systems, Building Integrated Agricultural systems and Algae photobioreactors to produce a sustainable source of water, food and fuel. The water generated from the AWG systems allows for a sustainable aeroponic planting system ( that surrounds the residential volumes) to thrive while conserving 98% more water than traditional agricultural methods. The water generated in this system also provides the base for the algae to grow into green bio fuel in the photobioreactor panels. These systems are reliant on one another through the dewatering process , a percentage of the water is transferred into the aeroponic system giving the food and veggies the nitrates they need to grow. The autonomous machines that operate within ASHA are proposed as a helping hand around the home doing daily tasks like cleaning, cooking and of course BIA system monitoring. With the inclusion of amphibians as a resident, the necessity for accessible water reserves under a protective nutritional environment became paramount to the raising of the project off of the ground plan. The controllability and modification of algae provides a benefit to not only the frog but also the human.
The by-product from the algae bioreactors acts as fuel for both the frogs and humans within the machine in addition to the machine itself.
