ShareLog - Fractal City - using AE fractal noise to generate complex forms in Mir. Build Your Own Nation: Expert Advice From THE FUTURIST (May-June 2009) ShareThis Sick of pesky government oversight?
Don't like taxes? Pessimistic about democracy in general? Why not find your build your own island nation and declare yourself king? Modern land-moving technology makes it easier than ever, but hardly an simple undertaking. THE CASE FOR MICRONATIONS AND ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS By McKinley Conway In early centuries, artificial islands were built to create home sites easier to defend against wild animals or hostile tribes. In recent times, new islands have been built to provide sites for airports and other urban infrastructure.
For example, in Japan, boatloads of dirt and rock were hauled from a nearby mountain and dumped into a huge box in Osaka Bay to create an island site for the new Kansai international airport. In addition, there are many primitive villages in remote areas built on stilts over shallow water. Without question, the most advanced artificial island projects today are found in Dubai. NEW LANDS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY By Erwin S. Lets grow an Avatar Forest. After making the successful and popular movie Avatar (2009), James Cameron started the Avatar Home Tree Initiative.
This initiative consists of building “Avatar” forests on 17 places on Earth in collaboration with local organizations. Among these places are the USA, Sweden, Brazil, Spain, The Netherlands and the UK. Totally there will be 1 million trees planted. With this initiative the line between nature and fiction becomes increasingly vague. Of course we aren’t new to the recreation of nature. In The Netherlands the initiative is an collaboration between Twentieth Century Fox, the Dutch National Forestry Commission and the foundation wAarde (Worth Earth). Of course the idea of creating new forests to create a more healthy environment is never a bad idea, and by using a popular movie to get attention for it, is just logical. Pooktre Tree Shapers —
Floating city ( oceanic ) Spiral Island - A Bottle Island that Floats. Then build your own island.
Richie Sowa did. He spent 2 1/2 years building his island off of Mexico's coastline. He built it using 250,000 spiral bottles, inserted into bags, and then tied with nets. He collected the bottles over the months, by picking them up from the beaches of Cancun. He also had people that would save them, and give them to him, as well. It took 4 months to get a base of about 8 meters, before he began to put the plants on his island.
His island consisted of mangroves, palm trees, a lemon tree, bananas, coconuts, spinach, tomatoes, and almonds, all homegrown on his private bottle island. It took Richie 6 months to get the island up to the size of 16 meters wide x 20 meters long. The island survived 2 hurricanes, and several tropical storms, until one day ... Two years later, and Spiral Island #2 is now located off the coast of Isla Mujeres, in Mexico. Living Root Bridges. In the depths of northeastern India, one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren’t built – they’re grown.
What could 21th century architects learn from these dynamic construction principles? I would like to see this applied on highways. The living bridges of Cherrapunji, India are made from the roots of the Ficus elastica tree. This tree produces a series of secondary roots from higher up its trunk and can comfortably perch atop huge boulders along the riverbanks, or even in the middle of the rivers themselves. In order to make a rubber tree’s roots grow in the right direction – say, over a river – the Khasis use betel nut trunks, sliced down the middle and hollowed out, to create root-guidance systems.
The thin, tender roots of the rubber tree, prevented from fanning out by the betel nut trunks, grow straight out. Via Living Root Bridges, via Makezine.