OpenJapan
OpenSimSim
OpenSimSim
OpenJapan First published on December 1, 2011 Blurb.com Author: Publisher: Editting & Planning: Production: Book Design: Design: Print: 2011 by OpenSimSim
OpenSimSim is a community-driven platform that strives to enhance the architectural design and building process through Open-Source. Started in 2010, the design process is given a contemporary spin: an interested community offers their input and feedback on the design. It provides usergenerated content for projects, where users help with needs and requests, as well as take part in the implementation and revision, providing valuable knowledge along the way. Our goal is to define new objectives, develop strategies to initiate activities, meet people in the architecture field, make the design process more transparent, and create new visions through the sharing of knowledge. The process is open and available to anybody in the world who cares about design.
OpenJapan On March 11, 2011, a 8.9 magnitude earthquake, the largest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history, struck off the coast of the Miyagi Prefecture near Sendai. The resulting earthquake created a massive tsunami which flooded and destroyed many of the coastal cities in Japan’s Tohoku region. Inspired by the wish to help people in Japan, we at OpenSimSim decided to start an initiative called “OpenJapan”. We at OpenSimSim believe that monetary assistance helps, but is not to be the only solution. By launching the initiative “OpenJapan” we would like to offer the opportunity to give what can be also very valuable: time, knowledge, and experience.
Interviews
Interview Set
Interview Set
Best Interview
Best Interview
Projects Throughout the seventy-two hour worksprint, 106 unique and different ideas were imagined from the various participant cities. Using a drupalbased website, all ideas were able to be cataloged and further developed through on the open-source platform.
01 Tidal Generator Towers Energy is one of the greatest resources needed following a disaster. This idea looks at harvesting the energy from the natural disaster (i.e. Tsunami) and converting it into stored energy which can be tapped into by the survivors for communication, motors, heating, and cooling. The energy would be captured by having an array of servo motors that would feed into a battery storage unit that could be later used by survivors and temporary structures.
TEMPORARY STRUCTURE To use the wave energy
BATTERY STORAGE To store the wave energy
SERVO MOTORS
To collect the wave energy
02 Proyecta Memoria Proyecta Memoria is an innovative proposal that is aimed at safeguarding the architectural heritage of Chile, destroyed by the earthquake of February 27, 2010, through recovery and recycling of symbolic rubble in the public space.
As with Chile, many important shrines, buildings, and homes were destroyed by the resulting tsunami, leaving behind vast quanities of rubble and debris.
We intend is to conceive the rubble not as waste but as elements that have contain memory, remembrance, experiences that marked an identity as a country. Thus the proposal is to transform them into a tangible and living symbol.
Rubble can be reused for pedestrian furniture, paving, memorial art, or become artifical hills which slowly decompose the debris.
03 Shrinking Memorial The proposed intervention aims to transform the current contaminated area into an area of production and memorial, returning Fukushima to an important energy-producing region. Following the disasters at Fukushima, not only was a 20km diameter “no-go-zone� established, but Japan also lost 4,400 MW of valuable electricity-generating capability. Given that Japan’s previous energy policy foresaw 50% of all power coming from Atomic sources by 2030, clearly a new strategy is strongly required.
04 Aid Delivery Systems These proposals seek to utilize existing delivery methods to supply hard to reach areas, or areas that have become inaccessible. The first is a passive system utilizing wave action. Aid vessels drop biodegradable capsules along the coast which distribute along the coast for a broader distribution and recovery zone. This allows very large amounts of aid to be delivered to very large stretches of coastline.
Aid capsules would be of resinated cornstarch and therefore biodegradable. The shells would contain food or temporary shelters that dissolve over time or are otherwise biodegradable in the case that capsules are not recovered.
The second is an active system which essentially “weaponizes”aid by utilizing delivery systems typically reserved for munitions. By switching out warheads on missiles with aid capsules, preliminary aid can be delivered anywhere in the world within minutes.
By filling shells with aid capsules, these first response supply launches can be shortly followed by “aid bombardments” which would allow the delivery of extremely large quantities of aid to hard to reach or otherwise inaccessible areas.
05 Building Man Festival The reconstrucion of the devasted area requires a vast amount of man power, but often time and resources are often limited. We plan to gather groups of motivated people to join in a matsuri (festival)for a limited period of time to construction a building for the community. In the short span on an event, a building can be built very quickly and brings a sense of community.
The idea of making the act of building into a ritual is not a foreign idea to Japanese culture. The Ise Shrine is ceremonially rebuilt every twenty years for religious purposes that helps train new craftsman and pass on traditions.
06 Household Survival Towers The cites shall have special building codes, which would demand the inland settlements to provide a survival tower for each house and/or each public building. The tower should have a normal function - A wind turbine or solar tower for example, but in cases of the natural disaster they shall work as shelters.
In the event of another Tsunami flooding, the wind tower would be possible to climb, providing a safer location to withstand the disaster. In addition to providing useful decentralized energy during normal times, the towers could include GPS locating and/ or communication capabilities in times of emergency; helping to link diaster victims with governmental and volunteer efforts.
07 Okidashi Housing Local fisherman in the Tohoku region have a survival skill called “Okidashi” meaning “go out in the outer sea”. Fisherman would sail their boats into deeper water after a large earthquake to avoid the brunt of the tsunami and devastation. This old technique was recently highlighted in a CNN news article where the “Okidashi” skill saved the fisherman’s boat and allowed him to provide aid services to his fellow neighbors after the tsunami.
By applying this principle to housing, urban blocks on floating platforms and individual homes could be launched out into deeper waters during a tsunami to ride out its crest while it is at a manageable scale.
The housing blocks would be docked during calm times, giving prime access to the ocean for residents living in the area. The design can be applied to single-work homes or larger community blocks.
Once an earthquake is detected, the housing blocks will detach and head toward deeper water to ride out the wave. This function could also be useful for recreational and research purposes as well.
08 Contaminated to Productive Zone The proposed intervention aims to transform the current contaminated area into an area of production and memorial, returning Fukushima to an important energy-producing region. Following the disasters at Fukushima, not only was a 20km diameter “no-go-zone� established, but Japan also lost 4,400 MW of valuable electricity-generating capability. Given that Japan’s previous energy policy foresaw 50% of all power coming from Atomic sources by 2030, clearly a new strategy is strongly required.
The radioactive zone was originally caused by the wind-dispersed radioactive contamination, the hope is to now harness that same natural phenomenon to create power!
A ring of turbines would visibly demarcate the current boundaries of the contaminated-zone, while offsetting the generating capacity lost from the Fukushima Daichi Plant.
PHASE 1 The rings will then be planted with sunflowers and other species of plants to help remediate the radiation back to safe levels for people to live.
PHASE 2 This will lead to the rebirth of this area as a energy-producing resource that memorializes the tsunami and provides for a future plan of use and development.
PHASE 3
09 Web Database of Belongings This is recognizing the potential value of rediscovering even one small possession in a situation of total loss. By forming an online database of lost and found objects, people will then be able to search tagged images to both locate and retrieve their possessions.
10 Ark Tower The idea is to build an earthquake-resistant shelter that is able to balance nature and human use. Using a vertical tower will have a minimum footprint while giving a maximum of space. This tower could become a first aid shelter and community home for the people in the immediate post-disaster period. ENERGY BIOMASS WASTE
NATURE 100%
NATURE 0%
FO0D INHABITANTS
People will gradually spread out from the tower and recover the land around it. The tower itself will become less functional and start becoming more productive. It becomes part of nature until it is needed once again. In this way it can coexist in a anti-proportional cycle to the surrounding land. FOOD ENERGY
NATURE 0%
NATURE 100%
BIOMASS WASTE ANIMALS
11 Visual Signaling Distress After a disaster, normal systems tend to fail. We propose a fail safe signalling system that could work by simple mechanism of visual site. An emergency kit would include several different color balloons as well as helium canister and pump. The color of the balloon would signify a different need, either medical, shelter, food, or water. The balloons would hover above the city and provide a clear signal of aggregate need.
GPS locators requires both battery and antennae to relay a location. This means that each of these components would be very complex and expensive. Therefore, this proposal chooses a low-tech solution to meet the same goals.
12 Distributed Energy Grid The traditional method of energy distribution through a centralized system often fails when a natural disaster occurs leading to massive blackouts.
To help cities manage energy after a disaster and to prevent further blackouts, energy systems need to move towards a decentralized distributed grid. This grid allows for individuals to distribute renewable energy and decreases the risk of massive blackouts from natural disasters or peak energy usage.
13 Reclaiming Normalcy Reclaiming normalcy by retaining cultural values and initiating community involvement through the use of modular pods that house activities. These pods are a starting point and visual reminders of the current surrounding development. These pods can be constructed in a city minimally effected by the tsunami. Upon completion, each one can be sent individually to cities who are currently without these necessities and capabilities. Overtime, the missing pod types can be recreated in the cities trying to rebuild in a way that is representative of that particular city’s identity.
These pods can fill vital cultural functions that were lost. A few examples include an onsen, shrine, gardening center, emergency communciation, first aid centers, restaurants, and memory boxes.
14 Synthetic Mangrove After a disaster, normal systems tend to fail. We propose a fail safe signalling system that could work by simple mechanism of visual site. An emergency kit would include several different color balloons as well as helium canister and pump. The color of the balloon would signify a different need, either medical, shelter, food, or water. The balloons would hover above the city and provide a clear signal of aggregate need. This proposal is built off of the suggestion of using GPS locators to pinpoint needs. However, GPS requires both battery and antennae to relay location. This means that each of these components would be very complex and expensive. Therefore, this proposal chooses a low-tech solution to meet the same goals.
15 Emergency Survival THE COCOON LIVE POD Although sirens and the tsunami alarm worked quite well, many people were caught by the wave and debris because they miscalculate
16 Identifying Missing Persons There are many sites dedicated to finding missing persons from the tsunami in Japan. However, there is hardly a way to organize it all in one space. [Missing.net],(http://www.missing.net/disasters/) the YouTube Person Finder, and other open-source platforms. However, identifying the bodies of the missing are not always as easy, with the number there are today. A big struggle for families is having the resources - oil - to travel from site to site, searching for their loved ones. By use of technology, there can be a continual recognition method which allows for workers to help identify the bodies and notify the families. While the online sources are helpful, there is not a single platform that can house all the data. This proposal is to unify all those sources into one. By uploading an image to any of these site, or tweeting a picture of a missing loved one, all of the data can be extracted to specified locations - the burial sites. Here, there will be large panels, run using solar power, that will display images and key features from tweets/videos and any other sources. From here, workers can help identify the bodies, and in return post the location of the found victim online.
17 Mobile Unit & Garden This fleet of mobile centers can be mobilized to best serve what is needs of a community, and while rebuilding provides a network of temporal activities that communities can be built around.
18 Small Steps through Gardening We decided to design a simple toolkit to allow each person to create a urban garden in the empty spaces created by the earthquake.
19 Temporary Public Buildings Using the rubble and scrap from the destruction, materials can be forged and reused to make public buildings.
20 Deployable Towers A high rise system to support high density is proposed to counter the land scarcity, with a deployable system that can be easily transported to site and assembled.
21 Mobile Banking After a disaster, when normal banking infrastructure is down, people need access to liquid money. The ‘mobile ATM’ units connect to the bank’s server infrastructure via satellites.
22 Belongings We are proposing various collection pods within affected cities and towns that act as safeguards of found belongings of local inhabitants. Items could be collected, cataloged, and distributed back to its owner.
23 Burial Pyramid Inspired by the Dessau Pyramid, this pyramid would allow families to come visit the temporary graves of their loved ones.
24 Temporary Transit Network The individual deployed units can be assembled around public spaces and green courts to create distinct neighbourhoods and communities.
25 Building from Rice A vast amount of resources will be required to help rebuild many of Japan’s cities. Instead of using timber, a scarce resource that requries deforestation of tropical forests, Japan will instead use the cellouse from rice stalks to require cladding and structural materials. The rice fields can be planted on vacant land and can be used as a secondary stimulus to support Japanese farmers.
26 Rubble Reuse Network This network could, after the big crisis is solved, become an interesting lab for the problems of rubble reuse, coping with the different techniques and researches held in different fields around this topic.
27 Rubble Forms Wire mesh surrounds pulverized debris or rocks. Designers can easily create unique wire forms that allow for sculptural geometries.
28 Compacted Debris The debris created still has a certain amount of usable materials that can be reharvested. By sorting the debris during the clean-up process, compacted blocks of inorganic material can be formed to help rebuild community buildings or housing structures. This will minimize the need to use virgin materials and produces a useful product from the clean-up.
29 Emergency Onsen In response to the need of emergency shelters, plastic beers crates could be utilized as a structural component. The sturdy form and mass availability of the item allows it to be quickly used for construction. Temporary structures and community buildings, like onsens, can be constructed from this material to help bring normalcy back to those effected.
30 Fishing for Trash Fisherman have already start to clean the coastal waters from garbage and rubble. These materials can now be recycled and used to rebuild boats and ports.
31 Destruction / Protection What if all that was destroyed protects those to come? Could the rubble and the debris be re-used as barriers?
32 Open-Source Fishing Boat In order to keep the cycle of cleaning the ocean by local fishermen running, a design kit is to be developed that helps the fishermen build small boats out of floating garbage and rubble.
33 Levels of Permanence City planning will need to grow and adapt. Three levels are indicated as appropriate for both stability and continued growth: Permanent Structures, Semi-Permanent and Ephemeral structures.
34 Living with the Wave We suggest 3 ways of interaction of the city or buildings and tsunami (according to the location): Houses of the fishermen, “life-safe box�, Houses situated far from the shore
35 Coexist with the Tsunami In order to prepare for a future tsunami, urban planning and design must learn to adapt to these forces of nature. To help minimize the damage caused, long pockets would be constructed to allow for the tsunami hit land and be diverted away from the city. These constructed pockets would double as stormwater collection swales during times of normalcy.
36 Urban Rice Fields Working in conjunction with the concept Coexisting with the Tsunami, the large stormwater pockets could double for agricultural functions. One proposal is to bring rice fields within the city. This proposal would allow the younger generation of farmers to be apart of urban life, bring the general population closer to food production, and help manage the urban stormwater.
37 Defensive Quarter The defensive quarter is based on the principle of self-sustaining community, which is partly protected by the wave breaker structure.
38 Pneumatic Shelter The new structures build on the water are based on the pneumatic system, where the change of the waves and sea level is influencing their location in vertical dimension.
39 Commemorative Memorial Minimizing dangerous zone of radiation to the center and constructing a memorial at its center, development of park on the ‘cleaned’ area, from where people can behold the memorial.
40 Structurally Supported Village The frame provides structural bracing to the village while distributing energy, water, and other resources during daily life.
41 Wish Boards In thinking through how a bulletin board system would work, we imagine a system that could preserve privacy and work with preexisting relief efforts.
42 Online Volunteering Network With partnership of flight companies, armies... to dispatch volunteers to specific places with all informations they need to bring a fast and organized support.
43 Creating Community Space The Local Community Group will help organising shelter units according to relations between families, friends, relatives, in order to create micro-communities within the big shelter spaces.
44 Deployable Space for Children A simple fabric tent that can be put up effortlessly, it comes with the flexibility of different organisation systems.
45 Emergency Caravan for Kids This kit will contain: - health and radiation protection advices -creation tools -booklet of techniques like origami, metrobidule, recycling art ... -a pedagogic booklet
46 Emergency Shelter for Survivors do we not see here the very origins of architecture: the bare minimum shaping of places in which to commune. Is not an architect someone who can make such places for meager meals and shows a little more human, a little more beautiful, a little more comfortable?
47 Gap of Support Gaps of support and Developing new local support centers and movable connections between them. • We suggest creating temporary centers of support on the damaged territory.
48 Information Exchange Group of volunteers (maybe different specialists) from one region go out to neighboring region, also suffered, in order to inherit/ give experience from/to the neighbor -exchange period: 1-3 days approximately - this method helps to make people from suffered regions(victims) more active
49 Growing a Green Matrix Using the monumental task of clearing the debris from the tsunami as an opportunity to create new cultural/ecological hotspots.
50 Renewable Bamboo Housing This prototype has been developed by Maheshwari Krishnan (M.K) and team at IISC, Bangalore. For more details please feel to contact us. A quick-set-up, emergency shelter using Bamboo mats (fire-resistant) and Aluminium extrustionA. Project put up by M.K.
51 Leave-Your-Tent Festival A series of world-wide international benefit concerts/festivals is proposed in order to raise awareness,generate funds, build connections amongst interested parties, and ultimately act as a venue for collecting vitallyneeded shelter and other reconstruction related items.
52 New Industry / Lost Industry Over the natural disaster that hitted Japan on 0311, a raising consciousness developped worlwidely, where we may all feel victimized. Today, We are All Japanese, or we wish to be as the post crisis model to the world was astonishing.
53 Radical Repopulating This proposal draws a line across Japan and effectively forms a new northern region, which would enjoy eased immigration restrictions and other incentives to radically re-populate the area.
54 Smart Tech for Disaster Homes There are many smart technology that could aid in disaster recovery. These could be integrated in the typical smart home systems.
55 Solid Consolidation Our proposal looks at the emerging research field of synthetic biology (link) to find new techniques and new possibilities to cope with these problems. The creations of a new type of semi-living systems, called “protocell� (link), seems to offer new models of thinking the way of working on problems like this.
56 Work With Nature Urban Planning and Architecture need to start incorportating nature and natural systems back into their design. This proposal looks at some inital ideas such as rebuilding water wheels downstream of mountains and placing renewable energy resouces at their optimal location.
57 Low-Tech Communciation After a disaster, many means of electronic communciation can be disabled. By building an earthquake resistant tower, a low-tech communciation center can be established. Incorporated into the design is a public message board for missing people, energy generatiion, first aid centers, and a collection of bicycles to allow for transportation out of diasater areas.
58 Inflatable Relief Housing it is therefore proposed to create a decentralized, “bottom-up� response to disaster relief housing, which is easy to deploy and operates independently from the affected infrastructure.
59 Emergency Communication Incorporation of emergency communication equipment kits into the fabric of the city structure. Self contained Emergency Communication Kits to be disseminated throughout the city/town, not to individuals but to Architectural nodes or icons easily distinguished as focal points.
60 Visualizing Supply & Demand Interactive web platform could be definitely one of the effective ways of organizing the demand. The important thing here is that this tool should be accessible for every generation in the group.
61 Saferoom Tokonoma As part of disaster preparation, a solid steel saferoom could be designed hold a family’s valuables, records, and emergency supplies. This saferoom could be installed and incorparated into existing structures. The saferoom is placed on moveable pads to withstand earthquakes and can detach to float away with a tsunami’s current.
62 New Disaster Facility ......
63 Tracker Teddy GPS-locator Gadgett
64 Communication and Information A communication platform for sharing of information and database generation. For effective management of volunteer works and funds.
Participant Cities
Tokyo
Chennai
Moskow
Berlin
Torino
Paris
Lisbon
New York
Kansas City Location Kansas City Design Center Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Organizers
Participants