FC United of Cambridge

Americans have gone from eating 72 take out meals per year to 127 meals per year between 1984 and 2006 (Pork Food Service and Sacbee). What happens to all the take out containers? The number of coffee cups Americans throw out each year would circle the globe 55 times (Greening Your Take-out Packaging).

Most of it is plastic or paper, and most of it gets thrown out. Some do get reused, others recycled, but it’s still a huge waste of resources.

The recent trend in greening food containers is to make them out of compostable materials: corn or sugar cane.

It turns out there are strict requirements to be called ‘compostable’, and some of the websites say the containers are biodegradable, others say compostable. From WorldCentric.org:

Compostable Plastic is plastic which is “capable of undergoing biological decomposition in a compost site as part of an available program, such that the plastic is not visually distinguishable and breaks down to carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass, at a rate consistent with known compostable materials (e.g. cellulose). and leaves no toxic residue.” American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM). In order for a plastic to be called compostable, three criteria need to be met:

Degradable Plastic is plastic which will undergo a significant change in its chemical structure under specific environmental conditions resulting in a loss of some properties. Please note that there is no requirement that the plastic has to be degrade from the action of “naturally occurring microorganism” or any of the other criteria required for compostable plastics.

Biodegradable may not be ideal, but it certainly sounds better than plastic sitting for years in a landfill. These containers, though, take energy to be made and transported, and neither corn nor sugar case is a benign crop (although a brief skimming of an article on sugar cane production makes it sounds less bad than I thought).

Ideally, people would buy a reusable container and ask for their take out food to be put in it:
But most people like the convenience of plastic containers and don’t want the hassle of carrying a container around with them at all times. If people can’t be bothered to carry around a cloth grocery bag that squishes into a small space, how can we expect them to carry around a bulky container that has to be washed after every use?

So what can a container be made of that can be reused, and what can it be reused for? I’ve been thinking about this all week, and it’s a tough question. It needs to be

• water proof
• heat resistant
• it should be able to be cleaned

.

I don’t know that much about permaculture, but what I have read intrigues me. We live in such a resource-intense world, and a lot of what we use is disposable. I like the idea of designing an agriculture system so that each sub-system’s output is another system’s input, and the loop is continuous, requiring far fewer inputs from the outside. After all, our world is a closed system (except for solar energy), and if outputs don’t get used as inputs for something else, the output becomes waste. As a future architect, though, I would like to apply this concept of interdependent systems to the built environment. Buildings require so many resources to be built, first, and then to be useful over their lifetime. While people have started using solar panels and occasionally collect rainwater, those solutions only help solve one input at a time - electricity or water. I would like to take a permaculture approach to the problem and analyze what the inputs and outputs of a building are and how one output can become the input for another system. There are some people on the web who seem to be doing that, so I’m not inventing any wheels here, but it would be nice to hear more about the study of total systems rather than just discussing the current ecological trend of the moment (ethanol, solar energy, eating locally).

Cities are desirable places to live, but the cost of housing is rising, there is less housing available, and more people than ever are moving into cities. Where can one find a place to live? On the roof! Roofs are often flat, you get the best view in the building, and you’re far away from noisy traffic. Yes, I suppose the air conditioning compressor isn’t so quiet, nor do you get the benefit of the AC, but until the penthouse owner complains, you’re the king of the castle.

Precedents of rooftop dwellings:
The Loft Cube
Soltag.net apartments

…of urban nomads:
shelter blog
Urban Nomad Shelter

…of parasitic shelters:
Parasitic Architecture
Yale architecture school project

One problem with all of these projects is that utilities are either disregarded or explained too easily away. To live, we must eat, drink, and go to the bathroom, and to have any friends we must bathe as well. In this country, extensive infrastructure makes it possible for us to connect our houses to water, drainage pipes, electricity and natural gas so that we can cook food, wash ourselves and heat our houses. While some people live off the grid, they tend to live in rural areas: they have chosen to live so rurally that there is no grid to connect to, or they want to live off the (rural) land and decide to unplug. Living off the grid in the city is much harder unless you decide to wash at the gym, eat out every night and buy bottled water all the time. You can’t dig a well for water unless you have a backyard. It’s hard to use solar panels if you live in the basement apartment. You can’t stick a composting toilet in your studio apartment. How can one become self-sufficient in the city?

By living on the roof, you solve a couple of the problems: you’re in a great location for solar panels, and wind tends to be better on the roof if you want to get wind power instead.

solar panels
Motorwind turbines

Being on the roof is also good for catching rain water.

Rainwater harvesting
humidifying water cooler

While a composting toilet may not be for everyone, it will help you deal with a lack of drainage pipe.

Composting toilets

And a composting kitchen:

I know there are ways to purify waste water by filtering it through a series of different types of plants. This would make use of dirty dish and bath water, plus it would keep a nice garden going.

Solar oven to cook in.

You can use solar and wind for power; rain water and a dehumidifier for water; a composting toilet and kitchen for waste; water purification garden for waste water; and a solar oven to cook with. You might want to throw in a gas tank for rainy days…

I love silicone rubber. I came up with the idea for silicone trivets before Williams Sonoma. Maybe this time I’ll market my idea.

Silicone rubber sandwiched between two pieces of fiber glass weave. I threw a few flower petals in there for color. Silicone is heat resistant and flexible and translucent but stretchy. Fiber glass is as flexible as cloth and is strong in tension, but like cloth it doesn’t hold its shape.

I combined the two materials to make a flexible but strong translucent material. The silicone has the added benefit of being able to encase objects within it, giving the option of adding color or opacity to sections.

I have come up with an application: a lampshade. I need a lamp under my loft bed that doesn’t take up a lot of horizontal space (to keep it away from my head).

This lampshade wraps directly around the bulb, taking up only vertical space, and because the bulb does not have an on/off switch, the silicone protects my fingers when I twist the bulb to turn it on and off.

Bonus!

I just found an opensource mapping site: http://www.openstreetmap.org/

It’s interesting to look at London (where I think it originated) and Boston - a huge difference in how much is mapped.  They also seem to use GPS traces to get the location of streets.

These are instructions on how to sew a dress that you can wear to work and get messy in and then wear out in the evening. It was designed by architecture students for architecture students. The idea was to have something you could wear in studio while you were doing messy things like casting and making models that would convert into something usable for a review. This dress uses side flaps that can either close around the back to hide the play dress or close around the front to hide the messy dress.

Ingredients:

2 yards of pretty fabric - heavy enough so that is doesn’t have to be lined

2 yards of muslin or another all purpose fabric

about 5 yards of ribbon

thread to match the nice fabric

Tools:

sewing machine

scissors

measuring tape

pencil

Step 1 - Measurements

Measure yourself around your chest - under your armpits, above your breasts. Don’t measure too tightly - this will be how tight the top of the dress is, and you will need to get it on over your head. We’ll call this ChestMeasure.

Measure from under your armpits down to where you want the dress to fall to - e.g. your knees, your ankles, mid-thigh. We’ll call this LengthMeasure.

Measure from under your armpits down to the widest point of your hips. We’ll call this HipLength.

Finally, measure around the widest spot on your hips. This will be the minimum width the dress must be at HipLength. We’ll call it HipWidth.

Step 2 - Creating the pattern

We won’t actually be creating a separate pattern. Instead, we’ll draw the final shape right on the cloth.

Lay out the two pieces of cloth flat, one directly on top of the other.

Fold them in half so that the fold is across the short dimension.

This is what you will cut out of the cloth, with the fold in the cloth on the right side of the drawing:

This is what the geometries are to create the curves:

Draw lines on the cloth using your own measurements. Cut on the heavy dotted lines. Don’t cut down the fold! When you open up the folded pieces of cloth, you should have two pieces of cloth with approximately the following shape:

Step 3 - Sewing the dress

Place the two pieces of cloth together again, matching their edges, with their good sides towards each other (right sides together).

On the two curved edges - top and bottom - measure in one quarter of the curve from either side and make a small mark. Draw two lines down from the upper marks to the bottom marks.

Place about 18″ of ribbon in the upper corners, as in the following diagram (ribbons are red), but they must be placed between the two pieces of cloth.

Sew along the dashed line, 5/8″ from the edge (normal seam allowance).

Turn the dress right side out. This is approximately what you should have:

At this point it’s a good idea to try the dress on. If the top opening is too loose, you can turn it back inside out and extend the seams towards the middle slightly. If it’s too tight, rip open the edge of the seams to give yourself more room.

The openings at the top and the bottom still are not hemmed. Hem those now by folding the edge over towards the inside. To match the hem with the side seams, make the fold 5/8″ from the edge.

Sew on the right side of the fabric 1/2″ in from the edge, sewing the fold permanently closed. By sewing on the outside of the dress (right side of the fabric) you can ensure that your hem is straight. Because the hem is so visible, you will want to make sure your thread matches the fabric well, or choose sometime that contrasts if you like that look better.

Step 4 - Attaching the ribbons

You have the side ribbons, but you need to attach the shoulder straps to keep the dress on.

Put the dress on. The nice fabric should be against your back and the muslin against your front. With the dress on, ask a friend to help you mark where you would like the shoulder straps to be attached in the front. Measure out enough ribbon to start in the front, cross over one shoulder to the middle of your back, wrap around you once and tie in back. Measure out another piece the same length.

Place one of the ribbons against the inside of the dress, where you marked the shoulder strap location on the muslin front of the dress. About 1/2″ of the ribbon should overlap against the inside of the dress. Sew the ribbon to the cloth with an X-in-a-box pattern:

Do the same with the other shoulder ribbon.

Mark the middle of the back of the dress along the top hem, on the nice fabric. Cut a small piece of ribbon, about 2″ long, and fold it into a flat U-turn.

Sew this to the inside of the back of the dress, where you made the mark on the nice fabric. Use the same X-in-a-box stitch.

Step 5 - Try on the dress

The dress is now finished. To wear it, put it over your head with the nice fabric against your back and the muslin against your front. Pass the shoulder ribbons over your shoulders and string them through the ribbon loop in the back.

To wear the dress to work in, tie the side flaps together in back and wrap the long ends of the shoulder straps from the back, around your front back again to tie in back. You should be surrounded by muslin with a bit of fancy showing in your back (right hand photos). To wear the dress to play in, tie the side flaps together in front and wrap the long ends of the shoulder straps from the back, around your front under your breasts and back to tie in back. You should be surrounded by fancy cloth, with a slit in front showing brief moments of muslin (left hand photos).

Step 6 - Modify the dress

You can play with how the ribbons are arranged. You may want to have extra long ribbons to wrap multiple times around you. You may like to loop the side flap ribbons through the back loop. You may want to add extra ribbons down the flaps to keep them closed tightly their whole length.

You can add extras to the dress. If you make the fancy cloth slightly wider than the muslin, you can add a box pleat in the back, just under the ribbon loop. This gives the dress a little extra flounce in the back. You can also line the back of the dress so when you’re wearing the play version you have more than one layer covering your back to balance the three layers weighing down your front. You can also experiment with different types of fabric, layering tulle over cloth to make a light poofy dress or using heavy brocade for a more formal look.

Have fun and be creative!

I have decided to dissect an umbrella. Although it is an everyday object, and most of its workings are easily visible, I have never really taken a good look at how one works. Also, I really wanted to autopsy a mechanical object and not an electrical one.

I started by cutting the threads that connect the cloth part of the umbrella to the metal structure. It is connected with thread in four places: at the tips of each point, and at three points along the metal ribs.

This leaves the cloth only connected to the handle at the top of the umbrella by a hard plastic top.

At the top of the post, under a little frill of umbrella cloth, you can see how the metal ribs are connected to the main post. Only a thin wire wraps around them all, holding them in a notched circle of metal. When I removed the wire, the ribs sprung out of the notches, leaving the notched cylinder empty.

The ribs were connected to the post in two other places: first by way of a short wire that slides into a hole on the first segment of each rib and is held on the post at the other end by a circle of wire; and second at another end of the rib structure, also held on the post by a circle of wire.

Once I untwisted the three wires holding the ribs to the post, I had a seven-fingered metal claw, and once the wires were threaded out of the holes in the ribs, I had seven separate fingers.

Each finger is made up of five lengths of metal. Two of them are cylindrical in shape - basically thick wires -, two are flat metal that have been shaped into half-cylinders to give them greater stability against bending, and one is flat metal that has been shaped into a full cylinder - basically a hollow wire.

The post, bereft of ribs, holds only the cloth covering and the springs and notched cylinders that keep the ribs in place.

To get the springs off, I had to separate the two sections of the post (this was a collapsible umbrella). They do not slide apart easily because they have been pinched together where they meet. The metal fin, when depressed, allows you to slide the tubes closer into each other, but it was impossible to pull them apart.

However, with brute force, I was able to separate the tubes from each other, mostly intact. The fin is an interesting shape, and I’m not really sure the purpose of the shape. The end of the inner post broke off inside the outer post, so perhaps the answer to the mystery lies inside.

Remember back to the plastic top holding the cloth on the post? I destroyed the plasic taking it off, and what remained was the the post, a cloth ruffle, and the main piece of cloth.

Here are all the pieces of the umbrella:

Conclusions

1. It is understandable why umbrellas flip open so often; the ribs, despite being formed to resist the forces of wind, are still quite flimsy.

2. The structure and method of construction is for the most part quite simple and understandable. Although I don’t have access to pieces of exactly the same shape, I could reconstruct a working umbrella based on the same structure out of metal wires or thin wooden strips. The cloth is a simple repeating shape that is sewed one to the other until it forms a circle. The ribs are pieces of metal with pin connections holding them together. The cloth is sewn onto the ribs. The post would be the most complex part, especially if I wanted it to snap open with the push of a button.

I am a second year M.Arch. student. My interests are in hand crafting, good design, design in developing countries, and everyday useful items that become beloved objects of the owner.

Hand crafting: a wooden cupboard is well made with dove tailed joints that fit perfectly; a dress is tailored and sewn to fit a single person; a wall is built out of stones that fit together without mortar and with barely a crack. All bring to mind the person who spent time making the item and how much they put into it.

Good design: my ski jacket that has pockets, clips and snaps exactly where I want them; the speed square that has the measurements I need and the lip to hold it in place; my sewing machine that has buttons for just what I want and nothing more to clutter up the control panel. Designs that assist the user with exactly what they need to accomplish and nothing extra that gets in the way.

Design in developing countries: a vaccine bottle that changes color as it spends time outside of the cold chain; the belt made of palm fronds that helps a man climb a palm tree; a flower made of a recycled coke can. I appreciate objects that do not rely on the resources and infrastructure that we take for granted here or that compensate for the lack of such resources, and I like seeing designs for things we don’t even need here - who is climbing palm trees in downtown LA?

Beloved objects: the brightly colored tiffen box that I never use (actually, all tiffen boxes); the mug that holds the right amount of coffee, has heft, and is just slightly decorated; the blanket I bought in Mali that is made of extremely soft cotton and has a simple blue design woven into it. Some objects hold me more than just because they are useful or well designed. I have emotional connections to them, not sentimental attachments because of what they represent (a gift from a particular person, e.g.) but attachments to the objects themselves.