Holcim Awards CompetitionThis is a really sweet competition that has been held for a couple of years now. Contestants submit ideas for new sustainable construction projects in different regions of the world. The open-ended nature of the competition makes for a myriad of entries ranging from the typical to the atypical. One of the gems contained within is the student project submitted by Magnus Larsson. Head over to BLDGBLOG for an extensive article on the implications of a unified desert barrier composed of structured sand.
The Holcim Awards is an international competition of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. The competition celebrates innovative, future-oriented and tangible sustainable construction projects and visions from around the globe and provides prize money of USD 2 million per three-year competition cycle.
Magnus Larsson's project: "Dune anti-desertification architecture, Sokoto, Nigeria"
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WTF? Uhm seriously...what the hell! Who has read Cat's Cradle? This is such a well documented project - such study and interesting intentions, discovery, perception, and creativity. I am still awed and questioning what and how did this suddenly manifest. Has anyone checked more into this?
ReplyDeleteI completely forgot about cat's cradle, lets hope this hypothetical "freezing" compound is only effective on sand. The project is from a competition that seeks new ideas to progress the built form. This is the brain child of a very gifted arch student. I would love to live in a generation that saw project like this realized. Now imagine placing the same concepts into new frontiers. How about a chemical compound that creates solid ground from the sea and off gases steam to be recycled as drinking water. Or biological nano structures that adapt living organisms into inhabitable structures, like an actual tree-house, bent to a form from the intervention of billions of bio-carpenters.
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