Water

Distinguish between Presence Design, Smart Gris and Bio-Mimicry

The first thing we learned about the Presence Design for Smart Grids using Bio-mimicry lecture, was to understand and point out the three different interacting topics. Smart Grid was the first subject we focused on, and we got to know how different things can network together and how you can make things more effective if you do so. If you want to realize a Smart Grid, you have to be aware of the fact, that your personal acting affects the system because you are part of a network. That´s why, in my opinion, it is very important that you interact as a community.
After we learned about the main idea of Smart Grids we got to know more about Presence Design and how are our topics such as Water, Waste, Shelter, Play, Transport and Food are related to trust.

Water as an essential component of human beings

My group choose the topic water and focused on the personal water supply of a Person (YOU) and the effect of its surrounding people (UNITY).
We made up different scenarios of the everyday life of someone who lost his access to water. This scenarios show a travel through the day and are related to TIME, PLACE and an ACTION a person wants to do. What we found out as a conclusion is that water is a essential component of daily routine of human beings. Water influences us every time, from flushing the toilet, having a shower or, the most essential thing, drinking. Time is a very important matter considering water, human beings die when they are not able to drink water for three days.
Our scenario pointed out that we as a group want to focus on water-timing, which means to be able to get access to water at anytime. What we found out at researching the use of water is that a enormous amount of purified water is only used for cleaning and flushed into the drains afterwards.
What we want to focus on now is the segregation of drinkable water and water which is only used for cleaning and flushed directly into the recycle system afterwards.

Life’s Principles

1) Evolve to survive
- Replicate Strategies that work
- Reshuffle Information
- Integrate the Unexpected

2) Be Resource (Material and Energy) Efficient
- Recycle all Materials
- Fit Form to Function
- Use Multi-functional Design
- Use low Energy Processes

3) Integrate Development with Growth
- Combine modular and nested Components
- Build from bottom up
- Self Organize

4) Adapt to changing Conditions
- Embody resilience through variation redundancy and decentralization
- Incorporate Diversity
- Use Feedback Loops
- Maintain Integrity through Self Renewal

5) Be locally Attuned and Responsive
- Use readily available energy and resources
- Cultivate cooperative relationships
- Leverage cyclic processes

6) Use life-friendly chemistry
- Do Chemistry in Water
- Build selectively with a small subset of Elements
- Break down Products into Benign Constituents

After all this time of technical and scientifical progress, we are becoming increasingly aware that a lot of "our" inventions are actually not to novel indeed.

There is a growing amount of evidence that a lot of our designs and inventions can be found back in nature. From the intricate workings of the central nervous system, to molds who can accurately model the most optimum way to interconnect for efficient transport of nutrients. It's amazing to realise over and over again that whilst we think we have the intellectual upper hand, nature already had solved some problems ages ago...

So why not turn it around and first look into nature, look for how nature solved the problem and then try to use this knowledge when designing new things. This way of thinking is exactly the core concept of Biomimicry. If one starts to look for how nature solved some fundamental problems, there is a wealth of information that can be found!

But as you dig deeper into the inner workings of nature, you start to realise that it's not just about copying or implenting the ideas from the R&D section of nature like a corporate spy, but that there is an inherent beauty in the concepts which nature uses in order to thrive and develop in something truly self-sustainable.

We will sooner or later face the fact that our resources are not some magical golden pot that replenishes itself at the end of the rainbow. We have to start realising that our actions always invoke counteractions, and that if we want us humans to be able to continue our growth, we should listen very carefully to what nature can teach us about sustainability.

The person who starts opening up for the teachings that "life" can bring us will see not only the clever solutions, but also the great elegance in these designs!

Skills for being in flow, irrespective of cultures, are learned from the moment you’re born through mother-baby coordination. The voice and the body of caretaker and child move together.

So the child begins to learn to coordinate sound and when their eyes become clearer after a few weeks, they will also be able to coordinate gesture and then coordinate gesture and sound. Human beings learn these skills through moving with others. Flow evolves from this capacity that we have as human beings, which we learn from the moment we’re born. They are survival skills, to be able to move with others. If we don’t have those survival skills, we become isolated. For example people who are autistic do not have this flow and they suffer. They have difficulties communicating and others don’t understand them. Parents are not conscious of flow. They just move with their child, as their parents did with them when they were born. And so it continues and it evolves and it changes, because culture changes and evolves, so the flow changes and evolves. Flow is perceived though nuances of vocal sound and gestural coordination. Flow is the pulsation of movement, voices and bodies. The fluidity of the possibility to understand with body and sound systems moves across boundaries and borders much more easily than the content of a speech utterance.

In our quest of designing a system to collect and distribute water, the most logical but also most interesting design can be found in nature: Roots!

Have you ever wondered how nature actually provides water and nutrients across several meters below the surface to several meters up the air? Well I haven't, and thus I just had to find out if we could maybe use the same system to collect and transport our water.

What is interesting to note, is that roots do not function alone: They depend on fungi and bacteriae to perform optimally and help them absorb and degrade organic material to use for nutrients.
They are even able to absorb water from the moist air; for example Orchidaceae don't need soil to grow: They try to harvest everything from their surroundings (like droplets of water that flow across other trees and absorp small amounts of nutrients)

It would be wonderful if we could tap into the knowledge of the nature's pipeline and find it out how we could design our water to be purified, transported and stored just like evolution has discovered a long time ago.

A very good example of how nature solves the problem of keeping it cool, can be found in termite hills in southern Africa.

The termite hills are designed in such a way that they maximize airflow in the blistering sun. This of course is not only a necessity for the insect world, but even more so for us warm blooded creature.

It's amazing if you think about how these tiny insects can create such a complex structure. The termites live off of a fungus that grows inside the mound. This fungus needs a temperature of exactly 30.5 degrees celsius. But outside temperature can very from 0 till 40 degrees celsius! So you can imagine that they are the masters of the aircondition designers.

The termites constantly build shafts and vents to suck up air cool air or vent hot air through convection. They can use mud in the base to cool the air, so they a remarkable species from which we can learn alot.

The idea already has been implemented in Zimbabwee (Eastgate Centre) and it seems to do it's job in a pretty cool fashion.
That's why the specific design of this builiding might be a good thing when we think about designs for our "water storing facility / shelter", if we want to also make it an habitable shelter or other kind of facility.

Presentation of Biomimicry and groupwork

On the second part of our day at we focused, as a group, again on our topic water. We decided to design a process to 1) collect 2) clean and 3) distribute water. The most important thing at this process is to synchronize these different steps, which means the matter of time is essential for our design.
Therefore, we had to define some parameters and we decided we want to reach the standard of drinking water which is available all time, self sustain and we only use life-friendly chemistry. As a non negotiable fact we want to realize our project in a city which is located in an area where there are infrequent rain conditions. As we learned in the lecture about Biomimicry we want our design to adapt to changing conditions. During our research we got to know the city of Lavasa which is located in the western part of India. In Lavasa there is constant rainfall for about two months and no rain for the next ten month anymore. Because of that we were looking for some creatures of nature which successfully adapt to these enormous changing weather conditions.
At our research we found a Namibian Lichen which captures fog with its wiry tangles and stores it inside itself. As an other example we found the Bromeliad plant which traps water with its hydrophilic hairs and stores them in its center using its hydrophobic leaves.
The Welwitscha plant occurs in the namib desert and has only one or two leaves which can grow up to six meters and roots with a radius of fifteen meters which store the water in the soil.
As a conclusion we found out that there are very adapted plants living in the changing weather conditions we choose for our project. All of them consider the matter of time and have a storage of water where they have access to every time during the day.

Bio-Mimicry Workshop in an innovative Company

Today we also had the possibility to visit the company InterfaceFLOR Entropy&Tactiles
This company producing carpets is already hard working on using principles and solutions found in nature to optimize their processes. Important things they found were that they had to change their design to deal with:
- cyclic processes
- dynamic, non equilibrium
3,8 billion years of evolution are to be used in Design! A lot of work has to be done in this field of research and I am sure lots of jobs can be created here.

Again we had to work in our project groups together to apply what we have learned on our chosen topic - WATER

First in the Scoping Phase we did a Brainstorming to figure out the real challenge:

We defined our Top function as:
- Store Water
- Purify Water
- Distribute Water
- Collect Water
- Synchronize Water intake

With help of Top functions you can “biologize” your problem and create the following question:

How does Nature COLLECT, STORE and CLEAN WATER synchronized in TIME and PLACE

To get this more specific to be used in Design, we also have to define some Non-Negotiables. Following were chosen:
- Drink-water Quality
- 24h Availability
- big city, to meet the needs of lots of people
- Area with infrequent, unpredictable rain

The Creating is basically searching for the best natural models

In the Literature (we used the Book “How Nature works” and the Internet) we found the following useful examples how nature deals with this problem:
- Wiry Tangels
They capture Water from fog. The fog condenses and is absorbed by fungi

- Welwitschia
Is a plant with large leaves guiding the water to the root of the plant, so the water is captured in the ground

- Bromeliad flower
uses hydrophobic leaves and hydrophilic hairs

- Camel
This animal does not need to drink for 5 days in the desert

Evaluating
To get some information about the Evaluating Phase have a look at Day 3

First we made up our personal demands on the water project, then we received some more challenging requirements from the other groups.

We as the water group extracted our three main challenges such as collecting, cleaning and distributing water. On the third day the other groups wanted us to fulfill their demands.
The Shelter Group asked us to built an emergency stock which distributes pure and fresh water.
The Food Group asked us to provide water for their animals and plants,
the Transport group wanted a supply of clean water as the Shelter Group and asked us to produce energy for them.
The Waste Group also wanted us to produce energy for them, whereas the Play Group asked us for building drinking fountains and a kind of ´aqua´playground for kids.
So we had some more tasks to work on such as generating energy and providing a playground for kids.

After we received some more task we have to fulfill for the other groups, we started to realize we have to offer a multifunctional building.

During our research about how and for what reasons people use water we found out that the biggest amount of water is used for cleaning. At the first day we were talking about classifying water into three levels: cleaning, drinking and flushing.
Thats why we decided not to purify all the water to a drinkable standard and we were thinking about an portable purifying device you can plug in your tap if you want to get drinkable water. This device, we call it a Blubb, is a solution everybody can use individually to save energy and to be responsible of the use of limited resources.
There are already a lot of portable water purifying systems available on our market, so we expect that in 2050 it should not be a problem to realize our idea of the Blubb. This will free us from the need of having to invest enormous amounts of energy in making drinkable water that only gets flushed down the drain.

Drowned land, its cold, very cold in Bangladesh, especially if you only wear a Sari. I am arriving with a small boat in the early morning, I feel lost in this world at the same time it reminds me so much of Holland; flat, everywhere water. I am climbing the embankment, it is very slippery with the wet riverclay. I don't have boots and almost lose my shoes.

Till two years ago this was all agricultural land, then cyclone Aila arrived, unannounced. There was hardly any wind, just a big wave. Cyclones are nothing new for bangladesh. What is new is that the water doesn't recede, the sea is rising, so are the rivers due to the fast melting of the glaciers in the Himalaya's.
Now mother and son live on a small island, surrounded by water. They are two of the millions of climate refugees in Bangladesh.
January 2011

Set-up on 22 February 2011: an empty jar, weighed without lid, filled with distilled water.

After one year I will empty and clean the jar and weigh it again, to find out if some of the solid glass mass has been dissolved.

Can glass be dissolved?
Some experts argue that glass is a mixture, or as they sometimes say, a solution. Glass does not have one definite chemical composition; all manufacturers use their own secret formula. The ingredients are melted and stirred until they are dissolved, and then cooled. Sand is the most important ingredient in glassmaking. To make clear, colourless glass the sand should not contain a lot of impurities like iron, which gives a distinct green tint to the finished products. To make glass for optical purposes pure silica is the main ingredient. Other ingredients can be calcium oxide, boron oxide, potassium oxide, sodium oxide, zinc oxide, manganese oxide, lead oxide, arsenic oxide, and many other components which when they melt together with silica form metallic silicates. Chemical stability is one of the most important qualities of glass, as air contains moisture and exhausts fumes. Moisture condenses on glass, absorbs carbon dioxide and form carbonic acid. In chemical laboratories pure distilled water is kept in bottles made from a special type of glass because distilled water will dissolve ordinary glass.

With the Blopp we decided that in our future we wouldn't want to purify all the available water to a drinking standard, but give individuals the a way to do it themselves. This gave us the ability to look at collecting and storing water in a new way; There was no need to store pure drinking water, seperated from life.

After looking at the questions from the other groups it all suddenly fell into place: Our design should be entangled with all other facets of life: From shelter to recreation, from drinking to storing. When the request came for us to build dams to harvest water energy, we thought, why not build dams out of shelters? And build an artificial dam that can harvest energy, but also provides a recreation ground as well as a place for an ecosystem to flourish. This ecosystem itself will act as a form of purification!

This shelter-dam will use our Blopp to purify the water for drinking, but use the natural water for cleaning and other uses were drinkable water is not required (eg. flushing the toilet).

The dirty water will then be purified, as biologically as possible, and the organic water-waste will then be used as nutrients for other other foodsources in the surroundings.

We also thought about how such a design would look like if we wouldn't have water freely available (ie. desert). There we would use more a tree-like structure which will capture moist from the air (like the namibian lichen), and from deep underground with a root netwerk. But the important thing, is that the water which is necessary for all other lifeforms, will not only be selfishly stored, but also redistributed to the surroundings, thus fueling the life-cycle and creating new ecosystems.

Important in our design is the use of a bidirectional rootsystem, which can distribute, collect and also purify water where ever it is located. Structures (like drinking fountains) could be made to interact with these roots and provide water hotspots.

Try to find more solutions we found with our design when looking at the pictures!

By rehearsing our final Presentation, we had to skip some parts to fulfill the time requirements

After we designed our slides for the final presentation, we decided to show some hand drawings during the presentation as well. So people can compare between the plants we want to biomimicry and the final designs we want to realize. But during the presentation we learned that it´s a better visualization for the audience the show everything on the screen, so people don´t get confused by switching from on center of attention to another one.
We found a lot of examples for Biomimicry of water storing, cleaning and distributing, so now it was time to make a selection for the best examples nature gives us. We decided only to take the Namibian Lichen, the Bromeliad and the namibian Welwetschia.
Unfortunately we had to discard the termite hills and the Eastgate Building in Namibia, although its a great natural cooling system and a guidepost in using less energy for air-conditioning.
Jaco suggested to point out more our Idea of the Blopp (the biological organic portable purifyer) and show an image that the audience can have a better imagination of our device. Instead of the termite hills in Africa we added a visualization of the Blopp.
The working process of our presentation, showed us to concentrate and focus on our main ideas and discard all unnecessary and confusing information.