Michael Pawlyn:利用自然的建筑天才

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http://dotsub.com/view/c97228f8-2ba0-46fa-9759-6da813c85ca5
Michael Pawlyn:利用自然的建筑天才
我想先讲几个简单的例子 这些是蜘蛛吐丝的腺体 位在蜘蛛的上腹部 他们可以分泌出六种不同的丝变成纤维 这比任何人类制作出的纤维还要强韧 最接近这种特性的要算是芳纶纤维 要作出这样的纤维需要极端的温度 极端的压力和大量的污染 然而蜘蛛却能在一般环境的温度和压力 运用死掉苍蝇和水当作原料做出来这种纤维 它说明了我们还有需要学习的东西 这种甲虫可以侦测到远在80公里森林火灾 这大约是 10,000倍 人造火灾探测器所能侦测的范围 更重要的是，这小昆虫不需要电线 连接燃烧燃料的发电站
这两个例子说明了生物模拟是值得学习的 如果我们能学会大自然的方式 我们可以达到10倍，100倍 甚至是1,000倍的 节约资源和能源 如果我们要有所进步达到永续发​​展 我认为有三个非常大的变化 是我们需要的 第一，提高基本资源使​​用效率 第二，把线性的，浪费的， 污染的资源使用方式 转变成一个封闭的循环模式 第三，从矿物燃料经济 转变成太阳能经济 而对于这三点，我认为 生物模拟提供很多的解决方法是我们需要的
你可以看一下大自然把它当作是样本 所有的东西都来自于 3.8亿年的研究和发展的累积 如果就投资来说，运用这样的概念是可行的 所以我要谈谈一些计画，也探讨这些想法 我们从第一点开始谈 提高基本资源使​​用效率 当我们开始执行伊甸园计划时 我们必须盖一座非常大的温室 在一个不仅不规则 而且不断变化的地方，因为这个地方仍在开采 这是一个地狱般的挑战 不过它实际上是运用生物学的例子 这提供了很多线索 例如 这参考肥皂泡泡的样子，规划出建筑物的外观 不管最后地面高度多高都能做到 研究花粉 和放射虫类和碳分子 帮助我们做出最有效的结构设计 运用六边形和五边形
下一步是我们想要 把六边形做到最大 要做到这点我们必须用可替代玻璃的材质 不过这材质能够用的单位面积也相当受限 在自然界中非常多的例子 都能有效用在结构设计上，像是加压膜技术 因此我们开始探索ETFE这种材料 这是一种高强度聚合物 而我们把它做成三层 把它周围边缘焊接起来，然后充气 这东西最了不起的地方是 它的每一个单位 可以大约是玻璃的七倍大 重量却只有双层玻璃的百分之一 所以这算是100倍的节约资源 我们也发现到这带动起良性循环 新发现又会带来另一个新发现 在这样大又轻的支撑下 我们也能减少钢材的使用 少一点钢材，阳光就能多一点进来 换句话说，在冬天我们不用储备太多的热能 加上在建筑上层的整体重量也减少 所以地基的建材也能节省许多 在这项计画完成的时候，我们发现 上层建筑的重量 实际上低于建筑物内空气的重量
我认为伊甸园计划是个相当好的例子 说明从生物学学到的想法 可以做到提高基本资源使​​用效率 在提供相同的功能 达到事半功倍的效果 实际上大自然中有非常多这样的例子 是我们可以找到类似的解决方法 例如我们能盖出高效能的屋顶结构 参考亚马逊巨头睡莲的样子 整个建筑灵感来自鲍鱼壳 超轻量桥梁设计灵感来自于植物细胞 这个既美丽又有效率的世界值得探索 运用大自然当作设计的工具
现在我要说明的如何从线性转变成封闭式循环 我们使用资源的方式 是我们开采资源 把资源做成生命周期短的产品，然后用完即丢 但大自然的法则不是这样的 在生态系统里每一种生物的废弃物 会转变成另一种生物的营养来源 还有其他例子 是刻意模仿生态系统 其中一项我最喜欢的是 "从纸板到鱼子酱"的计画 由Graham Wiles所做的 在他们那个地区有非常多商店和餐厅 造成许多食物、纸板和塑胶的废弃物 这些废弃物最终都会到垃圾掩埋场 但现在他们比较聪明会另外处理废纸板 我利用这个动画跟你们解释
他们负责从餐厅回收这些纸板 然后把纸板碾碎 卖给了马术中心用作马匹休息的垫草 等到这些垫草脏了，他们再负责去回收 接着把这些脏的垫草用来培育蠕虫 这样可以繁殖出许多的蠕虫，这些蠕虫就拿来喂食西伯利亚鲟鱼 鲟鱼生产出鱼子酱，鱼子酱再卖回去给餐厅 这样的过程就是从线性 转变成一个封闭式的循环 每一个过程都创造出更多的价值 Graham Wiles不断加入更多的元素到这个循环 让废弃物在这个计划中创造出价值 就像是自然生态一样 长期下来能增加多样性和适应性 这是计划真正的目的 也就是创造出更多的可能性 而且不断地增加价值 我知道这是一个奇特的例子 但我认为这是相当有效的影响 因为这实际上 可以让我们把大的问题变成大的机会
特别在某些城市 要处理垃圾问题 就能运用这样的概念 这也是我接下来要谈的另一个计画 莫比乌斯(Mobius)计画 也就是许多的活动 都能在同一栋建筑物里完成 所以每一种废弃物都能变成原料 我要讲的概念是 首先，我们在温室里有一间餐厅 这有点像在阿姆斯特丹的De Kas温室餐厅 然后我们在里面设了一座无氧消化器 能处理当地所有可生物分解的废弃物 再转变成温室的热能 和电力回馈到输电网 我们有污水处理系统 把废水变成干净的水 从固体产生能量 只利用一些植物和微生物 我们有一个养鱼池，用厨房的厨余当作饲料 还有堆肥里的蠕虫 拿这些拿来喂鱼，鱼再供应给餐厅 还会有一个咖啡厅，不要的咖啡渣 可以做成种植蘑菇的培养土
我们把这些想法结合在一起 成为一个食物、能源、水和废弃物的循环 这通通发生在同一栋建筑物里 这挺有趣的，我们也针对伦敦市中心一个圆环提出这项计画 因为这个圆环目前要算是政府的眼中钉 你们有些人可能认得这个地方 运用一点点的规划 我们可以把一个以交通为主的空间 转变成可以提供给民众的开放空间 让人与食物重新有交集 让废弃物可以在封闭式循环中得到不同的处置
我要谈的最后一项计画是 撒哈拉造林工程计画，这是我们现阶段正在努力做的 这可能对在座的某些人来说 听到这消息有点惊讶，因为这一大片地方目前是沙漠 但事实上这地方在不久之前其实有座森林 例如当凯撒抵达北非的时候 在北非有一大片区域 被雪松和柏树森林给覆盖 在地球开始繁衍出生命的时候 土地都被占据 被植物给占据 这有助于发展出适合居住的良好气候 反过来也是如此 我们失去越多土地上的植被 越可能加剧气候变迁 导致进一步的沙漠化 这个动画显示了 数年来的光合作用的活动 我们可以看到这些沙漠的范围 他们变化很大 这引发了一个问题 我们是否能干预沙漠的界线 去限制或是让沙漠化的土地回复原本的样子
你看一些生物 可以适应在沙漠生活 在适应缺水问题时也有一些令人惊讶的例子 这是纳米比亚的沐雾甲虫 它自己演化出可以在沙漠收集淡水的方法 它的方式是它在夜间出来活动 爬到沙丘上头 因为他的粗糙黑色外壳 能够在夜晚散发热能 又能比其周围环境低温 因此，当海上吹起了潮湿的微风 甲虫的壳就能让水滴凝结在上面 在日出前，它把身体抬高，水就能流进嘴里 喝一口水，然后躲起来好好休息的一天 如果要说，这是大自然的智慧 更进一步看 如果仔细观察甲虫的外壳 外壳上有许多小的突起物 而那些突起物具有亲水性，能吸引水 在每个突起物间有像腊一样的沟槽可以排水 这个作用是 水滴在这些突起物上形成时 水分会紧密而且呈现水珠状 所以更具流动性 比起甲虫壳上有一整片的水来的更容易移动 因此即使当空气中只有少量的水分 它仍然能够非常有效的获取水分让水流到口里 这是一个在适应上非常惊人的例子 一个资源相当有限的环境 这和我们是非常类似的 我们要面对的挑战 在未来几年，或几十年
我们正与一位发明了海水温室的人合作 这是一种在干旱沿海地区做的温室设计 这运作的方式是里头有整座蒸发器架 让海水滴流过这里 让风吹过收集很多的水分 然后在过程中冷却 所以里面是凉爽和潮湿的 适合不太需要水的植物生长 在温室后方 能凝结大量的湿气转变为淡水 这个过程实际上是和甲虫是相同的 而他们盖的第一座海水温室 能生产很多的淡水 而且多过里头植物所需要的 因此他们开始推广到附近的土地 结合这一点和湿度升高这两种条件 让这个地区有非常大的改变 这张照片是在完工日那天拍的 一年后看起来像这样 它就像一个绿色的墨渍从建筑物扩散出去 让贫瘠的土地回复到有生命的样子 也就是说这不仅维持了生态平衡 更达到恢复生机
因此我们希望可以扩大 应用生物模拟的想法把效益最大化 当我们想到的大自然 我们大部分想到的是竞争 但实际上在成熟的生态系统中 你能发现很多例子 都存在共生关系 所以重要的生物模拟的原则 是想办法把不同的技术结合 做到集体共生 我们看中的技术是 能和海水温室的概念合作的 太阳能源应用技术 它使用能追踪太阳能的镜子集中太阳的热能 变成电力 我想让你们对太阳能源应用技术多一点了解 想想看 如果我们每年使用的电有10,000倍来自太阳能 比较来自其他的发电方式 同样是10,000倍 如果这样我们的能源问题就不棘手 问题在我们的创造力 我现在要说的综效是 这两种技术在高温阳光充足的地方都能作用 太阳能源应用技术需要去除矿物质的水 而海水温室能生产这样的水 太阳能源应用技术则产生大量的热能 我们可以用来让大量的海水蒸发 提高恢复效益(restorative benefits) 然后在镜子下的阴暗处 可以增种各种作物 能避免直接的日照 这会是这个计划的样子 我们会在迎风处建造一大片的温室 还有太阳能发电厂 以固定的间距盖在这条路上
在座某些人可能想知道我们会如何处理那些盐分 在生物模拟的概念下，如果你有一项还未被使用的资源 你不会想"我该怎么把这东西丢掉？" 你反而会想"我该加什么东西进来创造出更多的价值？" 事实证明 不同的物质在不同的阶段会变成结晶 开始蒸馏海水的时候，第一样被结晶出来的 是碳酸钙 碳酸钙会凝聚在蒸发器上 就会像左边的图片那样 逐渐被碳酸钙给覆盖 经过一段时间，我们可以把这些取下来 做成轻量的砖块 如果你问那碳呢？ 那是从大气落到海里的 碳会凝结在这些建材里
其次是氯化钠。您还可以压缩成块，建筑物，因为他们没有在这里。这是玻利维亚的酒店。然后在这之后，都是化合物和元素，我们可以提取如磷酸盐，排序，我们需要进入沙漠土壤中的肥料他们。还有的几乎每一个周期表元素在海水中。所以应该可以提取如高性能电池，锂价元素。而在阿拉伯海湾，海水部分，盐度不断增加，由于废卤水海水淡化厂排出。它的推动濒临崩溃的生态系统。现在，我们将能够使所有的废弃物盐水的使用。我们可以蒸发它来提高效益的恢复和捕获的盐，转化成一个巨大的机会迫切的废物问题。真正的撒哈拉森林工程是我们如何能够创造零碳食物，在一些丰富的可再生能源的模型中最缺水的地区以及地球在某些地区的荒漠化逆转。
因此，回到那些大的挑战，我一开始就提到：激进提高资源效率，关闭循环经济和太阳能。他们不只是可能，他们是至关重要的。而且我坚信，学习解决问题的方式自然会提供很多的解决方案。但也许比任何事情，这是什么思想提供的是一个真正的可持续设计方案谈积极的方式更多。太对环境的交谈多用非常负面的语言。但这里的协同效益和丰富和优化。这一点很重要。
安东尼圣艾修伯里曾说过，“如果你想建立一个舰队的舰艇，你不坐下来谈论有关木工。不，你需要设置人的灵魂与梦想点燃探索遥远的海岸。”而这正是我们需要做的，所以让我们的是积极的，让我们用什么可以创新的最激动人心的时期，我们见过的进展。
谢谢。
（鼓掌）
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Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture
I'd like to start with a couple of quick examples. These are spinneret glands on the abdomen of a spider. They produce six different types of silk, which is spun together into a fiber, tougher than any fiber humans have ever made. The nearest we've come is with aramid fiber. And to make that, it involves extremes of temperature, extremes of pressure and loads of pollution. And yet the spider manages to do it at ambient temperature and pressure with raw materials of dead flies and water. It does suggest we've still got a bit to learn. This beetle can detect a forest fire at 80 km away. That's roughly 10,000 times the range of man-made fire detectors. And what's more, this guy doesn't need a wire connected all the way back to a power station burning fossil fuels.
So these two examples give a sense of what biomimicry can deliver. If we could learn to make things and do things the way nature does, we could achieve factor 10, factor 100, maybe even factor 1,000 savings in resource and energy use. And if we're to make progress with the sustainability revolution, I believe there are three really big changes we need to bring about. Firstly, radical increases in resource efficiency. Secondly, shifting from a linear, wasteful, polluting way of using resources to a closed loop model. And thirdly, changing from a fossil fuel economy to a solar economy. And for all three of these, I believe, biomimicry has a lot of the solutions that we're going to need.
You could look at nature as being like a catalogue of products, and all of those have benefitted from a 3.8 billion-year research and development period. And given that level of investment, it makes sense to use it. So I'm going to talk about some projects that have explored these ideas. And let's start with radical increases in resource efficiency. When we were working on the Eden Project we had to create a very large greenhouse in a site that was, not only irregular, but it was continually changing because it was still being quarried. It was a hell of a challenge, and it was actually examples from biology that provided a lot of the clues. So for instance, it was soap bubbles that helped us generate a building form that would work regardless of the final ground levels. Studying pollen grains and radiolaria and carbon molecules helped us devise the most efficient structural solution using hexagons and pentagons.
The next move was that we wanted to maximize to size of those hexagons. And to do that we had to find an alternative to glass, which is really very limited in terms of its unit sizes. And in nature there are lots of examples of very efficient structures based on pressurized membranes. So we started exploring this material called ETFE. It's a high-strength polymer. And what you do is you put it together in three layers, you weld it around the edge, and then you inflate it. And the great thing about this stuff is you can make it in units of roughly seven-times the size of glass. And it was only one percent of the weight of double-glazing. So that was a factor 100 saving. And what we found is that we got into a positive cycle in which one breakthrough facilitated another. So with such large, light-weight pillows, we had much less steel. With less steel we were getting more sunlight in, which meant we didn't have to put as much extra heat in winter. And with less overall weight in the superstructure, there were big savings in the foundations. And at the end of the project we worked out that the weight of that superstructure was actually less than the weight of the air inside the building.
So I think the Eden Project is a fairly good example of how ideas from biology can lead to radical increases in resource efficiency -- delivering the same function, but with a fraction of the resource input. And actually there are loads of examples in nature that you could turn to for similar solutions. So for instance, you could develop super-efficient roof structures based on giant Amazon water lilies, whole buildings inspired by abalone shells, super-light-weight bridges inspired by plant cells. There's a world of beauty and efficiency to explore here using nature as a design tool.
So now I want to go onto talking about the linear to closed loop idea. The way we tend to use resources is we extract them, we turn them into short-life products and then dispose of them. Nature works very differently. In ecosystems, the waste from one organism becomes the nutrient for something else in that system. And there are some examples of projects that have deliberately tried to mimic ecosystems. And one of my favorites is called the Cardboard to Caviar Project by Graham Wiles. And in their area they had a lot a shops and restaurants that were producing lots of food, cardboard and plastic waste. It was ending up in landfill. Now the really clever bit is what they did with the cardboard waste. And I'm just going to talk through this animation.
So they were paid to collect it from the restaurants. They then shredded the cardboard and sold it to equestrian centers as horse bedding. When that was soiled, they were paid again to collect it. They put it into worm recomposting systems, which produced a lot of worms, which they fed to Siberian sturgeon, which produced caviar, which they sold back to the restaurants. So it transformed a linear process into a closed loop model, and it created more value in the process. Graham Wiles has continued to add more and more elements to this, turning waste streams into schemes that create value. And just as natural systems tend to increase in diversity and resilience over time, there's a real sense with this project that the number of possibilities just continue increasing. And I know it's a quirky example, but I think the implications of this are quite radical, because it suggests that we could actually transform a big problem, waste, into a massive opportunity.
And particularly in cities -- we could look at the whole metabolism of cities, and look at those as opportunities. And that's what we're doing on the next project I'm going to talk about, the Mobius Project, where we're trying to bring together a number of activities, all within one building, so that the waste from one can be the nutrient for another. And the kind of elements I'm talking about are, firstly, we have a restaurant inside a productive greenhouse, a bit like this one in Amsterdam called De Kas. Then we would have a anaerobic digester, which could deal with all the biodegradable waste from the local area, turn that into heat for the greenhouse and electricity to feed back into the grid. We'd have a water treatment system treating waste water, turning that into fresh water and generating energy from the solids using just plants and micro-organisms. We'd have a fish farm fed with vegetable waste from the kitchen and worms from the compost and supplying fish back to the restaurant. And we'd also have a coffee shop, and the waste grains from that could be used as a substrate for growing mushrooms.
So you can see that we're bringing together cycles of food, energy and water and waste all within one building. And just for fun, we've proposed this for a roundabout in central London, which at the moment is a complete eyesore. Some of you may recognize this. And with just a little bit of planning, we could transform a space dominated by traffic into one that provides open space for people, reconnects people with food and transforms waste into closed loop opportunities.
So the final project I want to talk about is the Sahara Forest Project, which we're working on at the moment. It may come as a surprise to some of you to hear that quite large areas of what are currently desert, were actually forested a fairly short time ago. So for instance, when Julius Caesar arrived in North Africa, huge areas of North Africa were covered in cedar and cypress forests. And during the evolution of life on the Earth, it was the colonization of the land by plants that helped create the benign climate we currently enjoy. The converse is also true. The more vegetation we lose, the more that's likely to exacerbate climate change and lead to further desertification. And this animation, this shows photosynthetic activity over the course of a number of years. And what you can see is that the boundaries of those deserts, they shift quite a lot. And that raises the question of whether we can intervene at the boundary conditions to halt, or maybe even reverse, desertification.
And if you look at some of the organisms that have evolved to live in deserts, there are some amazing examples of adaptations to water scarcity. This is the Namibian fog-basking beetle, and it's evolved a way of harvesting its own freshwater in a desert. The way it does this is it comes out at night, crawls to the top of a sand dune, and because it's got a matt black shell, is able to radiate heat out to the night sky and become slightly cooler than its surroundings. So when the moist breeze blows in off the sea, you get these droplets of water forming on the beetle's shell. Just before sunrise, he tips his shell up, the water runs down into his mouth, has a good drink, goes off and hides for the rest of the day. And the ingenuity, if you could call it that, goes even further. Because if you look closely at the beetle's shell, there are lots of little bumps on that shell. And those bumps are hydrophilic: they attract water. Between them there's a waxy finish, which repels water. And the effect of this is, as the droplets start to form on the bumps, they stay in tight, spherical beads, which means they're much more mobile than they would be if it was just a film of water over the whole beetle's shell. So even when there's only a small amount of moisture in the air, it's still able to harvest that very effectively and channel it down to its mouth. So amazing example of an adaptation to a very resource-constrained environment -- and in that sense, very relevant to the kind of challenges we're going to be facing over the next few years, next few decades.
We're working with a guy that invented the Seawater Greenhouse. This is a greenhouse designed for arid coastal regions, and the way it works is that you have this whole wall of evaporator grills, and you trickle seawater over that so that wind blows through, it picks up a lot of moisture and is cooled in the process. So inside it's cool and humid, which means the plants need less water to grow. And then at that back of the greenhouse, it condenses a lot of that humidity as freshwater in a process that is effectively identical to the beetle. And what they found with the first Seawater Greenhouse that was built was it was producing slightly more freshwater than it needed for the plants inside. So they just started spreading this on the land around. And the combination of that and the elevated humidity had quite a dramatic effect on the local area. This photograph was taken on completion day, and just one year later, it looked like that. So it was like a green ink blot spreading out from the building turning barren land back into biologically productive land -- and in that sense, going beyond sustainable design to achieve restorative design.
So we were keen to scale this up and apply biomimicry ideas to maximize the benefits. And when you think about nature, often you think about it as being all about competition. But actually in mature ecosystems, you're just as likely to find examples of symbiotic relationships. So an important biomimicry principle is to find ways of bringing technologies together in symbiotic clusters. And the technology that we settled on as an ideal partner for the Seawater Greenhouse is concentrated solar power, which used solar-tracking mirrors to focus the sun's heat to create electricity. And just to give you some sense of the potential of CSP, consider that we receive 10,000 times as much energy from the sun every year as we use in energy from all forms -- 10,000 times. So our energy problems are not intractable. It's a challenge to our ingenuity. And the kind of synergies I'm talking about are, firstly, both these technologies work very well in hot, sunny deserts. CSP needs a supply of demineralized freshwater. That's exactly what the Seawater Greenhouse produces. CSP produces a lot of waste heat. We'll be able to make use of all that to evaporate more seawater and enhance the restorative benefits. And finally, in the shade under the mirrors, it's possible to grow all sorts of crops that would not grow in direct sunlight. So this is how this scheme would look. The idea is we create this long hedge of greenhouses facing the wind. We'd have concentrated solar power plants at intervals along the way.
Some of you might be wondering what we would do with all the salts. And with biomimicry, if you've got an underutilized resource, you don't think, "How am I going to dispose of this?" You think, "What can I add to the system to create more value?" And it turns out that different things crystalize out at different stages. When you evaporate seawater, the first thing to crystalize out is calcium carbonate. And that builds up on the evaporators -- and that's what that image on the left is -- gradually getting encrusted with the calcium carbonate. So after a while, we could take that out, use it as a light-weight building block. And if you think about the carbon in that, that would have come out of the atmosphere, into the sea and then locked away in a building product.
The next thing is sodium chloride. You can also compress that into a building block, as they did here. This is a hotel in Bolivia. And then after that, there are all sorts of compounds and elements that we can extract, like phosphates, that we need to get back into the desert soil to fertilize them. And there's just about every element of the periodic table in seawater. So it should be possible to extract valuable elements like lithium for high-performance batteries. And in parts of the Arabian Gulf, the seawater, the salinity is increasing steadily due to the discharge of waste brine from desalination plants. And it's pushing the ecosystem close to collapse. Now we would be able to make use of all that waste brine. We could evaporate it to enhance the restorative benefits and capture the salts, transforming an urgent waste problem into a big opportunity. Really the Sahara Forest Project is a model for how we could create zero-carbon food, abundant renewable energy in some of the most water-stressed parts of the planet as well as reversing desertification in certain areas.
So returning to those big challenges that I mentioned at the beginning: radical increases in resource efficiency, closing loops and a solar economy. They're not just possible, they're critical. And I firmly believe that studying the way nature solves problems will provide a lot of the solutions. But perhaps more than anything, what this thinking provides is a really positive way of talking about sustainable design. Far too much of the talk about the environment uses very negative language. But here it's about synergies and abundance and optimizing. And this is an important point.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, "If you want to build a flotilla of ships, you don't sit around talking about carpentry. No, you need to set people's souls ablaze with visions of exploring distant shores." And that's what we need to do, so let's be positive, and let's make progress with what could be the most exciting period of innovation we've ever seen.
Thank you.
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