Builds

Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Iquitos, Peru (midterm)

Posted by Will Mooreston

A team project looking into possibilities for power generation in a floating, informal settlement called Claverito, in Iquitos, Peru. The format of the class is Landscape Architects teamed up with students from other disciplines (like me, Environmental Science), to collaborate on solutions that improve the ecological and human health for this community. The below is what I worked on for the midterm, with the final over here.

The people currently use makeshift power cables patched into the municipal grid, combined with kerosene generators and kerosene lamps. It’s all very dangerous and polluting, so my team looked for alternatives. We initially looked into hydropower, but section of Amazon tributary they live on is fairly stagnant. Our solutions:

  1. Follow literoflight.org‘s example to provide interior lighting during the day.
  2. Use a GravityLight, which residents could possibly build themselves from scrap parts (except for low-wattage LED bulbs, which would need to be shipped in).
  3. PotatoLights for supplemental energy.

Cooked potatoes produce more electricity than raw, it turns out. I was able to get mine to produce enough to make a tiny red LED light up. Not enough to really do any good, but a neat proof of concept.

potato light lit

 

potato light complete

Team-member Russ made a functional GravityLight:

gravity light demo

 

And team-member Sharon made some lovely boards:

gravity light board 1

gravity light board 2layout midterm

Crow Bowl

Posted by Will Mooreston

crow bowl - evening

I installed this piece on a Monday morning, next to the Burke Museum. Within 5 minutes of walking away, I had my first visitor…

 

The crow cawed at the piece for several minutes, before walking away. I observed from 1045­-1215, and again from 1715-­1730, but no one seemed to really notice my work, or if they did, they did not stop to look more closely. This was disappointing, as I’d worked hard on it, but also kind of neat, as some think Land Art should be installed far out from civilization, away from any chance of commercialization. I also like that the only real interaction I saw was from a possible contributor to the piece itself!

crow bowl - morningIf I’d designed it with an eye level component, or more attention­ getting paths, it might have been more effective as an “intervention.”
There was a toddler who seemed to notice and point to the piece, but was dragged along by his classmates’ tether before drawing the attention of their teacher.

There were tour buses in front of the space in the morning, which were gone by the evening, so it’s possible that some Burke tourists noticed my work as they were leaving. I hope so.

While I was gathering the feathers, an older man stopped me to ask if it was for art. I said yes, and pointed at where it would be. He asked if there would be any Native American influence, but I said “Oh no no no, since I’m not Native American myself.” I was thinking it would have been insensitive and culturally appropriative to intentionally add any Native American references, but maybe not acknowledging them at all is just as insensitive? I kept the piece just as my own reaction to the site, but I still don’t know if that was right.

 

 

3D Printed Beer Tap Handle

Posted by Will Mooreston

One day, Olson Kundig bought themselves a 3D printer, and then held an office competition to design and print handles for the office Kegerator, to get the staff up to speed on using the new equipment. I used the opportunity to learn Rhino for the first time, as well as how to solder. I found an LED kit online somewhere that would light the LEDs in series, and wired it to a mercury switch so they triggered when the handle was tipped. Neat!

My design didn’t win the competition, but it was the only one that lit up!

Solar Powered Paper Horse

Posted by Will Mooreston

Originally found here and here (second link no longer works). This was a fun crafting project I put together when I was at Olson Kundig, in which you print out the designs on card stock, cut them out and fold them, then glue them together with a little motor inside to move the legs. I wired it up to an old solar panel kit left over from a former intern’s experimentation, but it only ever limped along. When connected to a battery pack, though, it ran like a champ!

paper horse and solar panel

paper horse