AgH2O
2008–present
Today on the edge of the now treacherous once-lake moonscape, a ruin remains. This ruin has become the Metabolic Studio’s laboratory for the Optic and Sonic Division. The Optic Division has repurposed on of the silo’s there into a camera. And the buildings have been adapted by the Sonic Division so that they play a sound so sweet that it is capable of shift the sands of the Owens Dry Lake Bed.
Parsons product designers transform a campus gallery into a fine dining room where professors, alumni, and friends discuss global water issues and design solutions. The next day, the students repurpose the dining tables as work benches for a 24-hour design slam exploring water and infrastructure. Its another weekend at the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons, where building environments and building community go hand in hand.
School of Constructed Environments at Parsons | http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/sce
PRACTICE
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Till Design was founded while making a collaborative drawing in 2001 on an asphalt parking lot surface with two friends. Using paint on rollers and completed over a six month period this drawing was an experiment into a shared question about the shape our body makes in movement, the marks we can make in movement and our perception of those marks in time. The experience of doing this drawing was similar to the act of tilling, that is clearing a ground in which to work, reflect and make a difference.
Veden Taika (The Magic of Water) consists of three floating islands in Salo, Finland. The islands provide nesting habitat for birds and plant based filtration for improving water quality in the Salo Bird Pools, lagoons that were formerly used in the sewage treatment processes of the Salo Municipal Sewage Treatment Facility. Because an abundance of migrating and nesting birds now use the lagoons, the pools have been established as an EU-directive conservation site. The birds need nesting areas separated from surrounding land to protect the eggs and young birds from predators.
Salway Park is one of the pilot projects for the Mill Creek Greenway system in Cincinnati, Ohio. I worked with the Mill Creek Restoration Project and Human/Nature landscape architects in partnership with the Cincinnati Parks and Recreation Commissions and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center to create Laughing Brook. This park, a series of playing fields serving lower income communities, is situated next to Mill Creek, one of North America’s most endangered rivers.
Biosculptures™ are living sculptures that use the capacity of carefully chosen plants to clean and filter water. Made of mosses, ferns and other plants growing on stone and concrete structures, they provide ecological and aesthetic solutions to water quality and water quantity problems.
–Creative consulting, education, and construction services for water quality improvement, wetland restoration, and stormwater remediation–
Available fresh water supplies continue to dwindle as water demand rises from expanding world population, urbanization and industrial development. To meet global water needs, new membrane technologies are sought that allow for cost effective recycling of municipal, industrial, and commercial wastewaters. Membranes with molecular-scale fractionation capability are of further interest for low-cost separations in the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
MillionTreesNYC, one of the 132 PlaNYC initiatives, is a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs over the next decade.
By planting one million trees, New York City can increase its urban forest—our most valuable environmental asset made up of street trees, park trees, and trees on public, private and commercial land—by an astounding 20%, while achieving the many quality-of-life benefits that come with planting trees.
