Projects

What are the health benefits to one/all of us if we reduce the particulate matter in urban air?

How can we measurably improve air quality inexpensively and immediately?

The Drawing in Air Clinical Trial responds to these questions by using the greenhouse effect to address the greenhouse effect; Sequestering where it counts while measuring what we can sequester as a visible participatory response to the failure of negotiations in a particular location. It is an inexpensive, scalable, participatory method to improve urban air quality: create a passive solar chimney to capture black carbon and create a captured-carbon-pencil, the length of the which corresponds to the amount of grime pulled out of the air.

An experience of the depth and complexity of our interconnections with nonhumans, exploring the web that traces our gastronomical, economic and material interdependency with butterflies, worms, geese, bats and other intelligent and delicious creatures, this supper club will present multiple courses of foods, delicious and nutritious to both humans and nonhumans, expertly paired with delectable cocktails.
This on-going lifestyle experiment is presented by Natalie Jeremijenko, Mihir Desai, Emilie Baltz and other intelligent creatures to redesign your relationship to other organisms.

Upcoming:
June 19, 2010 -…

NoPark returns “no parking zones” — mostly those associated fire hydrant placement — to low growth mosses and grasses. These micro engineered green spaces prevent storm water run off, use foliage to stabilize the soil, and to provide a durable low maintenance surface cover. These microparks continue to provide emergency parking space for fire trucks and exasperated Fresh-direct delivery persons. But the other 99.9% of the time they now do something more. For all the same rationales that apply to green roofs, greening the no-standing zones is a good thing. Practically, noPARKS capture more water than green roofs (not being limited to carrying capacity of the 2”, 4” or 6” of soil that roofs require). These no parking/standing zones are often situated where water collects, capturing the oily runoff from the road before it runs into the river. noPARKs recharge and replenish soil moisture on the block important to trees — even yards away — to help them dilute the gallons of uric acid poured on city trees plots each day by friendly neighborhood dogs. Less water puddling decreases pedestrian slipping hazards. Lastly, the noPark reduces the number of standing water pools …

The Fwish Interface is a grid of robotics buoys that monitor water quality, sense fish presence and visualize information through colored LED lights. Its purpose is to collect and communicate real time data to the public about the water quality and fish activity.

amphibiousarchitecture.net

Tadpole Bureaucracy…

The Urban Space Station is an open urban agriculture and parasite architecture project. Its objective is to enhance life quaility (air, water, temperature, food, waste, social cohesion…) in cities and in outer space mission by complementing human existence with fauna and flora.

This USS is the first prototype at ~40% of the “real one” designed by Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU) and Angel Borrego (OSS), performed by Cesar Harada (RCA).

You will find complete documentation about the open source project at urbanspacestation.org and at NYU’s xDesign project hub

Crowd of sperm at high magnification.

The 1/2 life Ratio compares the value human reproductive tissue, specifically the market value of sperm to the market value of Ova. While the market demand for each type of tissue remains largely equivalent–approximately 30% of infertility is attributable to men, 30% to women, and the rest is unknown–the current divergence is just under $40000 per viable reproductive cell. That is, it ‘costs’ ova donors about that much per viable ova, while sperm donors come out in front(by about 0.006 cents per viable cell). The ratio uses quantitative risk analysis to compare the short term, longterm and unknown health risks, in addition to the risk of future ligtigation.Cost benefit and fixed effects analysis are also applied to account for the differences in the tissue perishability; the mass in grams; the labor costs (time spent); the window of opportunity and opportunity costs; the presence, or absence, and results of psychological tests and interviews (used primarily with ova donors), in addition to other variables. This indicator shows that new ART (Assistive Reproductive Technology) technologies, can reproduce very familiar gender inequities. …

Model Urban Development(MUD), a permanent installation on the roof of Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea, provides infrastructure and facilities for high-density bird cohabitation in an environmental experiment in interaction with the New York City bird population.

OOZ, Inc. (…for the birds) is a 1,000 square-foot garden including architect-designed bird housing projects (multi-family dwellings), water systems, and other amenities to improve the quality of life for urban birds. The installation creates conditions to observe birds’ adaptation to human-engineered technologies, testing formal and ecological theorems for high-density lifestyles, sustainable resource sharing among urban organisms, and the play of public/private division in cross-species interaction.

Date: September 2006 – October 2006
Medium: installation, experiment
Dimensions: 10,000 square-feet
Location: Postmasters Gallery rooftop @ 459 West 19th Street (at 10th Avenue) NYC

Tree Balance compares two tree(s) clones, micro-propagated in culture. Because the trees are genetically identical, in the subsequent years the tree(s) slow and consistent growth will make visible individual variation within clones.