Getting Technical, Practical and Moving Forward
March 17th, 2010, 12:04 am
After having a meeting with Noel and Rod last Thursday, Noel gave us really good insight about our current structures, and while unique, we are not thinking as practically as we should be, and they did not match the budget that is constraining us. We now have a more narrow direction and feel we are on the right track. From here we researched pre-fab greenhouses available to us to try to get a price-point to match our budget. We are also planning to utilize the side of the eco-house to benefit both the greenhouse and the eco-house.
Yesterday, we met with Jennifer. She was excited both about our spinal designs (see last blog), as well as our lean-to greenhouse design, as long as we hybrid it and make it more unique. We agreed to research pricing on materials for the spinal designs, create detailed drawings and schematics. We are going to get back to Jennifer with the pricing hopefully this Thursday so the choice of materials can be complete. We are also going to speak with Martha Gay-Scroggins this Thursday who is a professor in the Department of Plant Agriculture in Guelph. She is hopefully going to give us ideas on how to build the greenhouse, how to make it sustainable and anything other information we need.
Photo:http://backyardgreenhouses.com/ecom.asppg=products&specific=jplnooi0&gotogrp=230&gotopgnum=1
What is New With the Greenhouse Team?
February 24th, 2010, 8:37 pm
In the past week, our team has prepared themselves for the upcoming presentation. We have continued to work on multiple aspects of researching such as, different greenhouse sketches influenced by bio architectural designs, greenhouse functions of energy efficiency technology, and funding research. Secondly, our team was able to meet with Jennifer Willet and Rod Strickland to discuss what we have accomplished so far. They were able to provide feedback about certain aspects of our work. Jennifer suggested that we should look at certain natural functions of objects or animals that we had previously chosen to implement into our greenhouse designs and include them into our final structure. For example, examine how the object is able to catch the sun, use energy, catch moisture, and catch heat and include it in our final design. She was able to give us certain designs that she is most interested in such as, spinal infrastructure, geodesic dome, and snaky shell. Finally, as a group, we have decided that our next step is to create new designs that are able to function in a more natural manner, make models of them, and be able to present these new designs to Jennifer and Rod in a two week period.
Beehives, Ladybugs, and Eyes – Say what?
February 3rd, 2010, 12:30 am
This week the greenhouse group has focused on brainstorming a series of radical and creative designs. Which includes greenhouses shaped as domes, leaves, and other biological based designs (eyes, beehive, ladybug, etc.). We have added them to our growing archive and in Tuesdays class, created a mind-map of everything a sustainable greenhouse could entail. We have discussed how the greenhouse will function, such as heating systems, water supply and power supply. Some ideas include using solar panels to heat the water that may circulate through the greenhouse and heat the roots (root zone heating). Other ideas include implementing an underground heat sink, which will control the temperature in the greenhouse either by using water or recycled materials. In terms of irrigation, rainwater run-off from the eco-house and greenhouse can be collected and distributed to the plants. The picture included is a design proposal for our greenhouse by a group member that takes a Canadian bio-architecture approach for an interesting, unique greenhouse. For next week we plan to focus on selecting three or so baseline designs and detailing a list of contents that will be included in the greenhouse, as well as focusing on what sources of power and heating we are going to include.
High Tech and Organic!
January 27th, 2010, 9:14 pm
We have been busy researching possible self-sustaining greenhouses. We are looking for something high tech and organic looking. The greenhouse might be a 2 storey with a kitchen lab, greenhouse area and studio. We have started our archive which includes examples of very different and interesting architecture-including one shaped like an intestine. We have also gathered examples of several materials including: stainless steel kitchen, recycled materials, and different kinds of plastics. We will be deciding on a design and size in our next few meetings. We need to meet back with Jennifer Willet and Rod to confirm our choice. We took away many of the suggestions from the critique and will now be looking at a more specific time line and what our end goal will be. We are all excited to move ahead with this project!!
Photo courtesy of inhabitat.com
Introducing The Greenhouse Project
January 20th, 2010, 5:31 pm
Green corridor consists of many art projects that help create a better, greener environment. One of the many projects that green corridor is aiming to accomplish is the “Greenhouse” project. Our greenhouse team consists of several diverse discipline members; which include two business students: Esra and Julie, one mechanical engineer: James, a sociology student: Jessica and Lauren who is a psychology major. The greenhouse team has established several goals to accomplish for the winter 2010 term. Our first goal is to research a variety of creative greenhouse designs and prepare an archive of artistic designs that are most appropriate for the green corridor project as a whole. The team is collaborating with Jennifer Willet and Rod Strickland who will be supporting us with the aesthetic and technical aspects of the greenhouse design. After meeting with both artists, they have given us an idea of their needs that we must accommodate within our designs. Their needs include aspects such as a lab, studio, gallery, and a kitchen that we must incorporate into the designs. The second goal of our team is to plan methods in order to make the greenhouse function such as the power and water supply and a heating system. Our third and final goal for this project is resource planning as well as coming up with different sources of funding to construct and build the selected design.
Our team is looking forward to accomplish these assigned tasks by the end of this term, so the next team will be able to build the greenhouse as planned.
