Final Thoughts: Thinking and Rethinking in Systems

I never thought human beings thought in a different kind of way that was not in terms of relationships. We see it in theories in semiology where white is white because it is not black, we see it in physics when an object is in motion only in relation to its surroundings, and we see it just in general in how we think in terms of associations. Therefore, I wasn’t too intrigued to learn how to think in systems because I thought we already do so. However, because we naturally think in systems, we take them for granted. We never truly stop to question or really think about these relationships. The course, Systems, Sites and Buildings, is more about learning to question and research in order to achieve the best sustainable practice solutions possible. In terms of resilience, Walker and Salt state that one should “constantly reflect on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. And once an assessment of resilience is done, you are encouraged to go back and reexamine it, expand on it, and then adapt accordingly”.

As future architects, it is vital that we are able to recognize this and constantly stop to think about what we are doing and rethink what we have. It is tricky to do this nowadays because we use digital design tools: we see our buildings in isolation and many times forget there is an environment around them that has great influence on the experience of the building and its efficiency. Through the course I learned one must dig deep into the site and find out as much as you can in order to achieve the best design strategy. As part of an overall system, one must not forget to also look into the building program so as to best distribute the spaces according to the desired qualities of the spaces (theorists such as Michel Foucault have an interesting approach to this and believe that spaces should be determined by thermal qualities as much as by desired light quality).

In the course it was fascinating to learn how these elements (air, heat, energy, light) are used together to complement themselves and overall attain sustainable results. Before the course, I used to think of them individually and not as part of an overall larger system. Even though thinking in and about systems makes the design process more complex (since one must take into account these complex relationships), I learned from the course that one must not forget that the best results are some times (most times, if not all), grounded upon simple concepts. One of the things Bill said that I loved the most was “us architects love to make simple things complicated”; I believe this is one of the things one must constantly be aware of and thinking about (not giving a complicated solution if there is a simple one).

A building should be able to cope with its environment and not be an imposition on it. It should be able to work with it and not against it. After all, resilience is defined as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedbacks – to have the same identity. Put more simply, resilience is the ability to cope with shocks and keep functioning in much the same kind of way” (Walker and Salt). Under this perspective, the one given to us by the course, one is able to see heat, light, energy, air etc as tools for design that will organize our buildings in a way that will use these elements to its benefit and maximize the efficiency and experience of the building. In terms of the quote, buildings can be seen as the “shock” to the environment, and it is our responsibility to try to maintain the environment as intact as possible through responsible design.

However, one must not forget that, as it is in all systems, “there are limits to a system’s self-organizing capacity” (Walker and Salt); mechanical sources will be necessary to maintain human comfort in many occasions. In class we learned that we must attempt to reduce mechanical sources by designing with maximum efficiency and reducing the need for it (Kwok). After taking the course, I learned that operability is a vital component in sustainable design due to various psychological and environmental reasons.

I believe the case study assignment was a very good way to wrap up the concepts we had been learning in class by deeply looking into a building with a very well worked out system. It was great to see the various examples Bill brought to class, but this forced us to individually research and learn in depth about a system/s. If I had any suggestions for the course, it would be that I think it should be a second year requirement for 2 important reasons: 1. They would have the opportunity to begin their design paths with the knowledge of sustainable practice in mind and 2. Second years have an overall similar theme in studio and projects have the same scale, meaning it would be easier and “equal” to apply the course’s concepts in their building design – as a third year, our studios varied greatly from suburbia, to houses, to school projects, to conceptual human genome design so in many occasions some of us were just able to barely scrape the surface of applying a sustainable system to our buildings (that is if we had any) vs. those who had been working on a house or school since the beginning of the year.

Overall, it is a great course that opens one’s mind to the world of responsible design practice. To learn this at an early stage of the career allows us to think of it not as boring systems, but rather as tools for design that enhance our design approach. Since Lessons of the Lawn, we have been taught to “disrupt the landscape as little as possible”, and through courses like Systems, we are given the knowledge of how to do so. Now that we know about these systems and the great results they yield, it is impossible to think about design in any other way that does not begin with this approach of in depth site analysis and thought of how these can be used to enhance the design. The human experience of a building is a vital design component that the course introduced to us that we can now never take for granted. Through the course, we were given a foundation of sustainable design practice, it is now our responsibility to keep on looking into these systems and learn more about them as we continue to grow in our careers.

Some Things are Best Left Unfinished

Charette week can easily be all architect’s most dreaded period. Healthy balanced diets and daily work-out routines evolve into coffee, red bull and an occasional (if you are somehow keeping track of time) bagel or sandwich meal; the only work-out you get is that of your fingers on your right hand using the mouse and the ones on your left hand constantly holding the “shift”, “ctrl”, and “alt” on the keyboard. It is a never ending struggle between your body and brain trying to make quick decisions in terms of the project and how to be most efficient.

If you are not an architect or an architecture student, here is a bit of info of what charette is and where the term comes from: “The term ‘Charette’ (little cart) appeared in the late 1800’s. Architecture students at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris who needed to rush their designs to their instructors, placed their drawings on a cart which was called a charette. Later the word broadened in meaning and came to describe any intense, short-term design project. Today the word is used by the architectural and design community at large to describe any intense, on-the-spot design effort.” 

There are many things one learns during charettes (other than how long your body can stay sitting down/without sleep or how much caffeine you can consume before you crash); during this period of time, you are forced to make decisions that would have otherwise taken a long time and consideration to make, you see the immediate results and act quickly to make adjustments. You can say there is a lot of progress and no holding back during charettes.

My studio this semester, lead by Nana Last, was very concerned with theory and the conceptual development of the building. This could very well be a 2 semester long studio. I had to rush during charettes to have some form of something to present for the final review. I had to make up another something for this class to have as a final project. I had been working with a very well thought-off floor plan section of what the building should be, and was forced to wrap these up with a “skin” for the final review because of obvious reasons. I used parametrics to offset some points and loft them together to form the skin; it was a purely mathematical process with no conceptual thought to it (very similar to the louvre system I did for the final assignment of this class).

When getting feedback after presenting my project during the final review, I learned the most valuable lesson of this charette: “some things are best left unfinished” the architect from Barcelona told me “it is better to say ‘there is a next step I have not yet reached’ than to present something you or your concept don’t agree with”. Translated into systems, this means my building (at this point at least) is a nightmare. The human experience would be awful because the “skin” makes no sense so there currently is nothing surrounding it. Nothing about it is about systems; everything of it is of theory.

I realized that when a concept is very strong, quick and arbitrary decisions rob the building of what it can be and thus, it is best not to do so. Kirk Martini looked worried when going over my building, Robin Dripps was fascinated. It is a strange thing to think about some things being best left “unfinished”. In terms of this class I don’t think this applies mainly because it requires systems to be complete and then rethought in order to have efficient and sustainable buildings. Time is the worse enemy; it would be very interesting to see what kind of system could be adapted to the kind of building that could develop.

 

Assignment 9

Double Skin Facade example

Assignment 9 Research

Studio: Unnatural Selection: The Human Genome Project | Nana Last

Location: Zuccotti Park, New York City, USA

Building Concept: DNA “junk space” (technically non-coding for protein portion of the DNA) and the right to the city

 

 

Temperature

Cold Season: December 5 to March 13 (with an average daily high temperature below 46°F)

-Coldest month: January

Warm Season: June 4 to September 15  (with an average daily high temperature above 73°F)

-Warmest month: July

Over the course of a year, the temperature typically varies from 24°F to 82°F and is rarely below 10°F or above 90°F.

Yearly Temperature Chart:

blue – average low

red – average high

Relative Humidity and Dew Point

Relative humidity: comfortable – very humid. (44% – 91%; rarely drops below 22% and can reach as high as 100%)

Driest period: April (44% low)

Most humid period: August (can exceed 86%)

Dew point: varies from 11°F (dry) to 68°F (muggy)

There are two periods in the year that are most comfortable: The first is between May 7 and July 2 and the second is between August 26 and October 20.

Solar Position

Daily Hours of Daylight and Twilight

 

Sunrise and Sunset

 

Yearly Sun Path

 

Psychrometric Chart

Prevailing Winds:

Wind speeds: from 0 mph to 17 mph (calm to moderate breeze)

Highest wind speed period: March

Lowest wind speech period: August

The wind is most often out of the west (17% of the time), south west (13% of the time), and north west (11% of the time). The wind is least often out of the south east (4% of the time).

 

Light: The Mood Switch… Application of Light in Space

Have you ever noticed how, as technology evolves, a simple light switch begins to look more and more complicated? You walk into a room and try to turn the lights on but there are 3 different switches plus dimmers for different light sources and settings. If you look at this switch design, for instance, it takes a few more seconds than normal to realize it’s actually just a light switch. One can then begin to wonder why the difference/complication? Well, that is because human beings usually prefer when things are operable or adjustable and also because there is a deep psychological and physical connection to light: so a complicated light switch with dimmers and different options is a good thing.

Over the past few weeks in class we have been looking at different strategies to allow light in buildings efficiently and improve the quality of space. When thinking about this I realized that my interest is how one can use light to fulfill a building’s purpose, or in other words, the way in which light becomes a tool to create space and enhance function (sort of like the appreciation of the “complicated” light switch with operable settings).

Our minds and bodies respond to light and different light settings all day long (physically, our pupils constantly adjust, our bodies produce vitamin with the sun, extra warmth is received from light etc). But most interestingly, light has a great influence on the purpose of a space and people’s moods (for instance, as architecture students in UVA, I’m sure we can all agree that it is terrible when the center lights of our well-lit workspace studio goes out at 2 am and it immediately starts feeling like its time to stop working and go to sleep).

Research has shown that workers’ mood goes down when the workspace is considered too dark (or too bright). There is evidence that the change in natural light conditions also affects people’s mood (in this case study countries farther away from the equator experienced greater mood shifts; from class we know this is because changes in solar position and thus natural lighting increases the farther away you move from the equator).  This means that the way people will respond to a place goes hand in hand with the lighting of the space (and in terms of the research it directly means that light needs to be operable in workspaces so that it can adjust to changing natural light and maintain an overall equal light amount throughout the year). In this publication by “Informe Design”, they describe the different behavioral and psychological effect light has on people and spaces. Attention, body position, and navigation are few things that are influenced by light.

In terms of architecture, one can begin to appreciate the application of this knowledge in space. The way some buildings are constructed are dictated by light. This is evident in buildings such as Studio Gang’s Solar Carve Tower in NY (which I just saw an exposition of in Chicago, which was kind of ironic to look at being that in this time of year, the sun sets around 4:45 pm – very depressing honestly) and (more subtly than the Solar Carve Tower) in BIG Architect’s Residential Tower in NY.

However, there are other applications of light that I find to be more interesting than the ones mentioned above. For instance, Andrew Payne’s “Projection One” project is a fascinating example of a temporary exhibition of light and people’s response to it. This project demonstrates people’s interest towards light (such as is described in the Informe by Design publication above). The projection of light interacted with people’s heat and sound creating a temporary dynamic space that attracted people to come and play with. One can see how people are attracted to light, specially when one can interact with it.

A similar example of light projection and interaction with people and space is Foster + Partner’s proposal for the future Camp Nou in Barcelona. If you follow soccer, you know this is one of the most important stadiums for soccer fans; all over the world people look forward to look at FC Barcelona soccer team play. The thrill of being in a stadium watching a game, specially one by a team such as Barca, will be taken a step higher with Foster + Partners design. The colorful exterior of the stadium is not only suggestive of the team’s spirit and adrenaline that one experiences inside it, but it is also controlled to create various light experiences and thus interact and enhance people’s experience of the place (mood). It is said that by these light controls and color effects, “at night the stadium will be energized by lights built into the façade to become a beacon to attract fans and respond to the excitement of the match itself. Integrated within the colored tiles of the side enclosure are special lighting elements which mean that the entire external façade can be used for animated lighting displays. The entire stadium enclosure will work as a giant screen which can project moving full-color images to the stadium surround. Such images can range from low-key ambient displays to vibrant and more detailed displays on event-nights.”

Through projects such as this one, one can imagine how the use of light and color will transform the stadium and affect people’s response towards it. The thrill and passion for the game will be greatly enhanced by these light settings on the structure (its as if you would compare a 4^th of July with fireworks vs that with no fireworks; the thrill is enhanced by the lights). I think it is fascinating to see how the different methods of application of light changes the perception of a place, specially if its operable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be at such a grand scale as this stadium, but could also be by having that “complicated” light dimmer switch at home and adjust light according to need (dim lights for a happy hour, for instance). Light has the potential to be a “mood switch”.

Assignment 8 Second Iteration

Massachusetts Psychrometric Chart from Weather Tool:

Natural Ventilation Diagram:

 

Passive Solar Heating:

 

 

Air Particle Analysis on Natural Ventilation System:

Plan Air Flow  “Sketch” (Ground Floor):

 

Assignment 8: The Genzyme Center Ventilation Case Study

Building: Genzyme Center

Architects: Behnisch Architekten

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, US (North Latitude)

image from architravel

Climatic conditions for Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Cambridge Massachusetts has all 4 seasons well defined. Winter feels extremely cold and summer has a very nice warm weather (I’ve been there twice: once during winter and once during summer).

In terms of temperature, “weather.com” has a very clear graph representing the average high and low temperature year round. Other useful information such as relative humidity and wind speed is graphed and compared to the average of the entire US by the World Media Group.

In short, the following best describes the weather fo Cambridge:

– Temperature:

• Coolest month: January with an average of 29 F (low: 22 F; high: 36 F)
• Warmest month: July with and average of 73.5 F (low: 65 F; high: 82 F)

Difference in temperature between coldest and warmest months: low: 43 F;  high: 46 F (an average of 44.5 F difference)

– Relative Humidity:

• Annual average humidity: 67.3%
• Most humid month: February: 91%
• Least humid month: October: 43.4%

Cambridge’s yearly average humidity is 10.22% lower than the rest of the US.

The driest months are March, October and November ranging between the 40-50%. The rest of the months are on average around the 70%s range (except for February and September that are in the 80%s range). 

Humidity in hottest month (July): 71.3%
Humidity in coldest month (January): 83.9%

– Dew Point:

• Coolest month’s (January) average: 16.5 F
• Warmest month’s (July) average: 63 F

image from weather spark

The average dew point for April and October is the same: 39.5%

-Prevailing Winds:

• “The prevailing wind is from the west, with an average velocity of 10 to 13 miles per hour” (CIS statistics)
• Windiest month: February 19.5 mph
• Least windy month: October 5.2 mph

Wind speed for coldest month (January): 12.9 mph

Wind speed for warmest month (July): 6.7 mph

Overall, Cambrige is humid (this humidity makes it “‘feel’ colder because it increases conduction of heat from the body” during winter and warmer during summer). The most humid and windy month is February, so it feels the coldest (it is 7.1% more humid and winds are 6.6 mph faster). Even though July is the warmest month, the average temperature, as can be seen from the psychrometric chart below, is within the comfort zone (one could then argue that there is no need for mechanical cooling and that natural ventilation is enough). In Cambridge, the weather is within the comfort zone in its hottest month and then goes all the way to the left in its coldest month in the psychrometric chart. Thus, the strategies for building design that can be used are active solar and conventional heating during winter (most likely starting November and up to April),  natural ventilation during the summer (roughly June – August) and passive solar heating for the other months.

Thus, for the Genzyme Center, Benisch Architects used a variety of sustainable practice strategies to design a building that avoids the use of artificial sources as much as possible. The building features a “loggia” envelope – double facade of glass (provides tempered space using solar heat radiation and ventilation flaps), various daylight systems, gardens etc. For natural ventilation, other than the ventilation flaps on the loggia and fresh air provided by the gardens, the building uses the principles of the stack effect and has at the center a “grand open-air atrium (large return air duct and light shaft), operable windows and blinds, an airflow monitoring system (controlling the air coming in and out of the building), a reflecting pool (provides humidity during the dry winter months and reflects natural light), and shallow floor plates to promote ventilation (cross ventilation: from the exterior and into the central atrium where the stack effect occurs).

To represent the stack ventilation of the Genzyme Center, I used a definition on Grasshopper that distorts a grid based on an attractor point. I set the attractor point at the top so that the upper portion of the grid creates open spaces, which I envision as a metaphor of rising hot air at its “particle” level: less dense. also, one cna also envision that this “openness” of the warmer air has “more space” to retain humidity (the greater the temperature the more water it can retain). One can thus picture the distance between the attractor point and the grid as a measure of warm air (controlled by a param; if there is less warm air, I can reduce this distance and have less “warm air” represented by “pancaking” the grid back into position )I will complete the diagram for the next iteration by creating a definition that includes the air coming into the building as cool and warmer air leaving the building (attractor point perpendicular to the atrium for every level) as well as fixing other details and clarity.

 

Diagram demonstrating “shallow floor plans” and ventilation

 

Building with “stack ventilation definition”

Building with “stack ventilation definition” and temperature gradient

Reflections on Evaporative Cooling

All of my life I have had a bulky old-school air conditioning unit protruding a wall in my room without having a single clue on how it actually worked. To me, it has always been nothing but a switch that as soon as I moved it to its “on” condition, a loud noise from the machine and my father’s voice stubbornly repeating there was no need to turn it on started.

Other than liking the noise it made and the slight cooling effect (my dad would always adjust it to a savings mode that did not allow it to cool completely) I knew it was completely unnecessary and was therefore almost never granted the “award” of turning it on. The reason it wasn’t necessary is that my house is designed to have cross ventilation all over. As Kwok states in his writing, “the most effective method to lessen energy use for mechanical cooling is to eliminate the need for it through climate-adapted design”

The spaces in my house are open and thus have little obstruction between air inflow and outflow. The windows are located around a midpoint height, allowing the air coming in to refresh you directly. Also, the changing heights of my house’s roof allow the integration of many heat outlets. You can overall feel a cool breeze enter the house (if you open all of the windows) and the air quality I dare say is very good. On the other hand, when the air conditioner was turned on, I would usually wake up feeling incredibly thirsty.

I never really thought about it, but apparently mechanical cooling “takes moisture out of air” (reason why they leak on the outside) and instead “fans in” cool dry air. Even though learning in class how mechanical cooling works (and finally realize why I would wake up thirsty with the a/c on) was fascinating, what caught my attention the most was a random image in the lecture of a Port-a-Cool. When I was little, my dad was in charge of selling these evaporative cooling machines and distributing them in large (or small) industries/factories in Honduras. I remember going with him to the factories and having to hear the explanation of how it worked over and over again. He thought it was really cool, I then thought it was boring (at age 7, I never thought I was going to be majoring in architecture and studying systems and how they work, and even worse than that, I never thought I would be writing about them).

Let me tell you a few things about Port-a-Cools. First of all, size wise they look like anything but portable. Second, they are very energy efficient and do cool very well by using water. These huge fan-like things have big panels inside them that look like corrugated cardboard which are kept moist by connecting a hose to the machine.

A fan is placed in front of these panels in order to cool down a space. These things are the antithesis of the air conditioner: they put moisture into the air. Also, unlike mechanical cooling which works best in an airtight space, Port-a-cools work best when there is natural air flow coming in. Port-a-cools “cool air by filtering it through water, thus lowering the air’s temperature. Evaporative coolers produce humid air because the air absorbs water during the cooling process.”

These machines are big and loud – not exactly something you would want to have in the middle of your house or a public space. You usually see them in factories and recreation centers. In fact, I would love for them to be used in all recreation centers. I don’t know about you, but usually I prefer running out than in a gym because the dry air of the gym’s mechanical cooling system dehydrates me.

Even though evaporative cooling is not something people usually consider, I find it really interesting to think about how convenient and effective it is in many occasions. Evaporative cooling comes into social life in many other forms that we usually take for granted. It can be applied more discretely and aesthetically pleasurable than port-a-cools. For instance in hot public spaces, such as Disneyland, they do pretty well selling evaporative cooling fans that literally can (at least psychologically) save you from having a heat stroke. Evaporative cooling has a huge role in old Europe during the hot summer days. The heat is usually terrible, and unlike America, mechanical cooling is not present in many spaces. In many public spaces, they use evaporative cooling to lower the radical temperatures.  Even though you can’t see the actual mist in this picture of a public space in Montenegro, the umbrella structures (whose shape resembles those of the Senscity in Vegas) provide shade and at the same time spray water out of the upper “tips” of the umbrella producing an overall cool nice space. They also use regular fans to amplify the cooling sensation. These same mist-and-fan concepts are applied throughout other public spaces (making the public extremely grateful they exist).

Even though not the same thing, one can look at the Blur Building so as to appreciate vapor/mist and think about how these concepts could be applied to evaporative cooling in public spaces. Maybe a mini Blur Building could be made in Disney to save parent’s the money of buying the spray fans and having heat strokes. Overall, I think its fascinating how these things can come to take many shapes, some more aesthetically pleasant than others, and the application of it become public attractors (the fans, the cooling in Europe etc).

Caving In

Ever since the semester started, UVA’s third year architecture students have been trying to get used to a weekly routine of workload excess. It seemed unreal to find out that for this week we would have no systems assignment. We could all definitely use a weekend with a whole lot more extra hours to ourselves.

As if things couldn’t have been better already with this news, hurricane Sandy managed to cancel class for 2 days – something that never happens in UVA. These events called for nothing less than a celebration and a relaxed weekend.

We were told to go out for a hike or something, however, I already usually go out and run so I decided to use this free time to “cave in”. Staying away from the cold, inside my not-so-nicely insulated apartment, being a couch potato and watch movies in a blanket all day long became the perfect plan.

The Lord of the Rings was on and we all enjoyed the first scenes in which the hobbits are all relaxed and doing nothing truly work related in the Shire. We were being like them in every sense – relaxing without knowing the dangers that lie ahead: for them, the whole mess with the ring and what not, for us, the workload that we were ignoring in exchange for caving in.

My memory, however, made a connection with the concept of the hobbit’s house and passive energy. To some extent, I was wishing my apartment was buried underground, like the hobbit’s house, and have my TV there and not directly next to a huge cold window. The hobbit house had no mechanical cooling/heating and they didn’t look as if they needed it.

Semi-buried in the ground, the hobbit’s house reminded me of Kwok’s mentioning of “earth sheltering” in the “Green Studio Handbook”. These houses rely a great deal on thermal mass since they are pretty much “caved in” the ground. In the case of the hobbit house by being “caved in” by green space the interior should not become an oven but rather a nice cool space. During the winter, I could imagine the lack of space exposed to the exterior (insulation) would trap heat on the inside making it more comfortable.

I wasn’t too surprised to find out that the “hobbit house” was actually being applied to architecture in many situations. If you think about it, in many occasions architects decide to “extend the ground into the building” creating green areas or walk-ways as envelopes for buildings. Others have literally replicated the hobbit house.

Take a look at the following examples, they all have some form of green-envelope; they are variations/evolution of the hobbit house.

Replications of hobbit house

BIG architect’s 8 house

West Kowloon’s Terminus

The Jardi Botanic de Barcelona (note the grass covering the structure and the light inlet it has)

A more direct approach to thermal conditions and the “hobbit house” can be seen in Matteo Thun’s Bella Vista Trafoi Hotel in Italy’s alps. In this case, the hotel looks like a modern version of the Shire. It uses passive design principles to heat and cool the spaces. Some of these principles are the “triple paned” windows that keep noise and cold out, “ground heat pumps” and what Kwok calls “earth cooling tubes”.  (Facts on Matteo Thun’s Bella Vista)

If you look at the following diagrams, you can see (and if you speak German, you can also read) how the structures also take into account the sun and the changes in season. It would be great to be able to understand what the diagram with the layering of the green envelope says to further understand how it functions as a thermal mass. Overall, the design is definitely eco-friendly and uses passive design in radical weathers. I find it amusing to see how things we take for granted (the hobbit’s house in the Lord of the Rings) can actually yield great results. After all, way before the technological boom, people would “cave in” as shelter in a similar way the hobbits house caves in.

Rethinking a Population in Catastrophe: Using Simple Concepts to Stay Warm

When I was very young, my parents were watching a movie in the living room they had told me I could not watch with them; I, of course, hid behind a sofa and saw the entire thing. I wasn’t older than 7, but the impression the movie had on me still remains. While we were discussing in class human comfort and body temperature, I remembered the assignment on how a population survives a catastrophe, and then the flashback of the movie plagued my mind: Alive. That is the name of the movie. “Alive” because it literally is about a group of people trying to stay alive over nothing.

 

image from Alive webpage. 

 

The 1972 plane crash in the Andes is a story many do not know about. In Latin America, it is a story of heroes. (documentary from 2010 of the incidents) These people were stranded in the Andes at extremely cold temperatures for 10 weeks. The plane had 45 people in it, 25 survived the crash. 16 survived the 10 weeks. The temperature was “less than 40 degrees below cero at night”. How did they manage to do this?

The survivors had 4 main concerns in terms of surviving: 1. Staying warm 2. Not dehydrating (“human body become dehydrated five times faster in 11.500 feet high, which was the height of the fuselage, over the sea level” (Interview with Parrado) 3. Eating 4. Look for help.

In terms of staying warm, the passengers used basic principles of thermal heat: insulation, body heat, conduction. They occupied the “fuselage of the airplane” as shelter. They then placed all of the luggage as a wall to block the wind from coming in, insulating the space they were in. By staying close together in this “insulated” space, through body heat’s conduction people were able to stay warm. If it hadn’t been for this insulating wall, “the survivors would have died the first night” (Interview with Parrado).

As a water source, they used the metal from the seats to put snow on, which would be melted by the sun; this water was stored in the containers that they found on the plane. If it hadn’t been for the aluminum and its reflective/conductive quality and the melting of snow, they would have dehydrated.

Eating is something extremely important to maintain body heat. “The human body vigorously works to maintain an ideal internal temperature to ensure all organs and mechanisms work properly”; to do this, the body needs energy, which is provided through food.  Metabolism plays an important role: “the higher (faster) it is the higher the normal body temperature or the slower the metabolic rate the lower the normal body temperature”. Also, when food is made into fat, this layer becomes an insulator for the body. For the Andes survivors, food was limited to the provisions they had in the plane – which were a few sweets and bars. In order to survive, this forced them to make a traumatic decision which shocked/moved the rest of the world: eat the corpses’ flesh. The corpses were preserved because of the cold, and they would be the only way to survive. (Watch the survivors talk about it).

Finally, to find help, two of the survivors went to look for it. To be able to do this and survive the cold, they found an insulating blanket in the airplane that they sewed together to create a form of sleeping bag where they could sleep in together and with body heat and insulation, stay warm enough.

One can see through the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash how a population truly survives a catastrophe. In this case, the situation called for desperate measures. When we planned our “survive a catastrophe” project, we were thinking of a more “utopian” system; as Bill said in class, “as architects, we usually find a way to make simple things complex”. Here, they survived based on basic principles of heat. They didn’t use photovoltaic cells to melt snow or provide enough heat to survive, they used conduction and insulation principles (body heat, insulating the space they were in etc.). If you saw the video above, you can hear one of the survivors, a medicine student, say how eating was vital to maintain body temperature and thus, organs functioning. They had to eat in order to survive and find help. Overall, one can only pray people are never placed in a situation like this ever again in which surviving is based on making the hardest decisions you’ll ever make; hopefully, a population in catastrophe will have systems more like the ones we proposed for class.