Carlos K. Quinones: Lost in Timeline

Thesis: The architecture that we use in our daily lives should change based on what we need from it.

Starting with the family unit, a young couple moves into a one bedroom house. If they have a baby, they need a room to function as a nursery, and the individual rooms to be just a bit bigger to accommodate the larger family. As the child grows, its individual room grows for it, as might the family spaces, and other spaces may follow (a bathroom, a study, etc). If the family grows further (the grandmother moves in, or the parents have more children), the house grows further, and as members leave, the house shrinks and changes to accommodate the smaller family. Additionally, should the family wish the house change in size or composition, then that too is doable. If the family would want the house to change as a result of their environment (such as those sunrises that the parents used to enjoy waking up to now annoy them as they want to get in more sleep on the weekends), then that is also possible.

Originally, I postulated about what I would want in a person residence for myself, and I thought that I may not want a lot of static furniture; a few pieces of furniture for things that would have permanence in my house would be there, such as bathroom and kitchen fixtures. However, main pieces of furniture in public spaces of the house, such as couches and tables, would rise out of the ground into the space, ready to use.

The first type of method I wanted to use to develop this dynamic furniture system was pneumatic pistons disguised as hexagonal tiles on the floor. As a need arose for furniture, preprogrammed arrays of pistons would come up slowly in the shape of digital furnishings. However, my inner germaphobe surfaced as I realized that I would be eating meals on tables that were once floor, and lounging in couches made of floor.

What made ferrofluids as the medium more feasible for this was the fact that as a liquid base, the surface would be able to absorb any dirt that it comes into contact with during transformations (the ferrofluid would remain hard and rigid whenever it is not in a transformative state), and metabolize it via a required filtration system. And working with a liquid medium also allowed for more ergonomic designs of furnishings to emerge from the base material well, rather than the Lego-like blockiness of the aforementioned floor-piston system.

My initial research in ferrofluids began as a research tangent while working on another project that I decided not to do for that week. As it was an extracurricular project, this was probably not entirely acceptable, but it wasn’t looked down upon because I was immediately able to relate it to the project that I was working on. We were working on furniture, starting with anthropomorphic connectivity studies, ultimately working towards the imposed structures of the furniture units being microcosms of structural systems for architectural constructs. I felt that ferrofluid described an ability to generate a structure from the natural phenomena of a magnetic field.

Soon after that, I was pontificating on moving on to magnetic liquid furniture within flexible membranes, as well as even entire structures held up by magnets and their fields. I theorized that it would be possible to hold entire buildings or portions of buildings up with magnetic fields, citing magnetic levitation trains as the existing precedent indicating that it was entirely possible to hold up tons of weight with magnetic fields.

March 12^th, 2010.

After speaking with another professor (Professor Hernandez, on the 5^th; I am recording this late), I was given another perspective on this project. Namely, I need to ask myself the question of how is this better than something else which may be far simpler? She conjectured that an inflatable structure (a la balloon structures) may be far more efficient and easier to build. My response to this criticism was that the space can change in shape and size as you needed it to; a balloon structure could not grow larger than a certain size, and it will require a minimum of inflation to even stay erect. My proposal involves developing a method in which a fluid medium can be inflated with air, formed and shaped by magnetic structures, and then hardened in some manner (which has yet to be determined).

During my talk with Professor Hernandez, she drew me to the obvious conclusion of how I may be able to accomplish the hardening. She made me recall a property of ferrofluids that I had previously thought solely a liability- the iron particulate, which would normally separate with the presence of a magnetic field or from Van der Waals forces, does not due to the inclusion of the surfactant in the solvent. If I can find a way to metabolize the surfactant, or remove it in some other manner, then the iron particulate would separate in the mixture. Then I might be able to affect the iron separately, perhaps creating a large iron or steel shell, much like was suggested to me by Professor Azaroff.

Project Map

1) Site research

a. Geography: where will this structure be placed? Land, sea, or air?

-At one point I thought it would be nice to place the structure underwater, actually. I haven’t started shopping around for land based locales, though.

2) Precedent identification and research

a. John Johansen liquid architecture series – he proposes that buildings grow like plants out of specially engineered seed units that know what they are going to form themselves into from specified materials commonly found in the ground, air, and water.

3) Directed studies and research

a. Frie Otto IL Series book 17: bubble structures

b. Ferrofluid synthesizing and experimentation. Working with the chemistry department with the permission and sagely guidance of Dr. Spellane, I most probably will be able to find a lab space and partner in order to synthesize the ferrofluid in a laboratory condition. Initially, the first type of ferrofluid I made last semester was from old VHS tapes; I stripped the tapes of their ferromagnetic coating, collected it, and combined it in a liquid solvent (corn oil or olive oil) and a mild surfactant (ascorbic acid, commonly known as vitamin c, in the form of sour salt).

i. Further research into how ferrofluids act based upon composition, as well as the presence of one or several magnetic fields, various types of directed magnetic fields, as well as within Hele-Shaw Cell, and postulation as to why the material acts the way it does.

4) Material research

a. Ferrofluids: the material research that started it all. A ferrofluid is a liquid (usually a natural one) acting as a solvent for fine iron particulate to be suspended in. A third compound (a surfactant) is usually added to prevent the separation of the iron particulate from the liquid solvent due to Van Der Waals or magnetic forces.

b. Hydrophobic materials like the lotus leaf: water beads on the surface of this leaf, and rolls right off. The water is forced into a minimum surface bead based on water surface tension, total mass, and gravity.

5) Application of program

6) Design

a. Utilize minimum surface modeling, surface tension, constant magnetic fields (not the kind that change rapidly, which are detrimental to living organisms if the organism is exposed to the field for a long period of time.

b. Delving into studies by Frei Otto and bubble structures, I would study how surface tension could create structure with wire constructs. From there, I would use the wire itself as a medium for a magnetic field, to create encapsulated spaces with the ferrofluids and magnetic fields.

7) Presentation

a. Video presentation of inspirational videos viewed during research phase.