Plug-in City Research Articles

¿Por qué lo llaman vida cuando quieren decir arquitectura?...o viceversa

Artefactos, “cacharros”, dispositivos, ensamblajes y otras construcciones de estética aparentemente indeterminada o inacabada pueblan cada vez más la escena arquitectónica contemporánea. Éstos se alimentan, en muchas ocasiones, de un imaginario no propiamente arquitectónico mediante la reapropiación de objetos provenientes del mundo industrial, agrícola, etc. como medio para figurar una nueva vida más justa, inclusiva, concienciada políticamente, crítica y, sobre todo, a través de la cual humanos –y no humanos- puedan expresarse subjetivamente. Este artículo plantea, precisamente, una reflexión abierta sobre la relación entre esta “nueva” estética y esta nueva ética revisitando sus antecedentes ideológicos encarnados en el trabajo de Cedric Price y Peter Cook. Tanto el Fun Palacecomo la Plug-In Citypueden considerarse trabajos que se alejan de los estándares y convenciones arquitectónicas del momento para formalizar una nueva y necesaria aproximación al hecho arquitectónico, entendido éste como un posibilitador de situaciones inciertas e imprevisibles; esto es, la vida en sí misma. Ahora bien, ¿cuál es la arquitectura que está detrás de estas propuestas? ¿Sus dibujos presentan la descripción de un problema o el principio de su solución? ¿Esos objetos figurados simplemente restituyen algún aspecto de la realidad o verdaderamente proponen las pautas para su transformación? Todas estas son preguntas de extrema vigencia y, por tanto, pertinencia. El artículo, así, y a través del estudio de la peculiar relación entre Price y Cook, se plantea indagar en todas estas cuestiones pasadas con el objetivo claro de arrojar algo de luz crítica al momento presente.

Cushicle/Suitaloon

An invitation from the editors of the JAE to revisit a project executed over fifty years ago may reflect a nostalgia for an imagined golden age when architects, in truth just a handful, dedicated themselves to the wholesale rethinking of the built environment. For this happy few the prospect of servitude in an architect's office endlessly reworking the client-funded classic one-off building did not exactly inspire; so, armed with a conviction that change needed to happen on the scale of the city, they coalesced into groups like Archigram to produce the clientless Plug-in City, Walking City, Instant City, Living City, Dream City and Rok Plug/Log Plug. All of them unrealizable except perhaps for Instant City, which was a sort of modernized traveling circus. And in 1969 Instant City actually happened when a cow pasture in Bethel, NY turned into a city pop. 400,000 for four days at the end of which the cows got their pasture back.My solo offering was the 1966 Cushicle/Suitaloon, a project whose genesis was a photograph I found of a man wearing a warm suit (manufactured, apparently, by the Frankenstein company[!]). Add an air cushion vehicle (abbreviated to Cushicle) type hovercraft, a few inflatables and some items from NASA and you were on the way to making a living environment…….or so went the hype.The JAE-requested revisitation, as might be expected, changed the project1 not so much in terms of its appearance but in the way it gets explained. It allowed the project to develop into a less gee whiz and more thoughtful study, I would like to believe, of the concentric skins surrounding us that help compensate for the fact that rarely is the local meteorology what you might call Garden-of-Eden quality—i.e. blue sky, temps. 80°F, humidity 52%, no bugs.2

HUNIAN VERTIKAL DENGAN PENERAPAN PUG-IN CITY DI SEMARANG

<p><em>Semarang city is one of the largest cities in Indonesia that has many people lived. Just like any other major city, overpopulation resulting in overcrowding due to a growing population but the land remains. Flats used as a solution for housing in urban areas, due with an area is not too large but can accommodate a lot occupancy. Flats could be a solution to housing in urban areas but the house or dwelling unit on the flats is different to landed house. Landed house can develop, increase, decrease and change according to the needs and desires of its inhabitants, it is not found in the dwelling unit at flats. The problem is how to make multi-storey housing that each unit dwellings such as landed house, could evolve and change according to the needs and desires of its inhabitants, even a dwelling unit can move from one place to another. The method used to apply the plug-in city in vertical housing, because the concept of plug-in city has thought that the main structure is permanent and has a longer period of time while its units are not permanent, has a separate structure, can be joined and separated of the main structure. Hunian Vertikal dengan Penerapan Plug-In City is a multi-storey housing that each dwelling units can develop, change and move according to the needs and desires of its inhabitants.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em> : Plug-In City, Semarang, Vertical Housing, </em>

Brazilian hybrid electric-hydrogen fuel cell bus: Improved on-board energy management system

The present paper unveils the technology developed for a series hybrid battery-dominant electric-hydrogen fuel cell plug-in city bus. It possesses a homemade power train with three electric energy sources, which are the grid-charged energy, the one produced by the fuel cell that works at constant power and acts as a range extender and that resultant from the regeneration of kinetic energy. Emphasis was given to the design of the hybridization energy engineering that has predominance of power in batteries and predominance of energy with hydrogen. The remarkable amount of 46.6% of the total energy input reaches the motor axle for effective motion and a fuel economy of 6.7 kg H2/100 km was achieved. A total owner cost analysis has shown that computation of capital, operational and fueling costs makes the present bus 133% more expensive than a conventional diesel powered one. Commercialization prospects, and also social and environmental impacts are analyzed.