Hydramax is an upcoming project from the Future Cities Labs. This Port Machines project will be on display at SFMOMA till July 29. This model is considered to be a live example of a “Live model.” Actually, Live Models are models where effects of environmental forces like fog, sunlight and wind are determined through interaction with the people and the same phenomenon is going to be applied in Hydramax . The project submits a very innovative thinking on the urban waterfront post sea-level rise San Fransisco. Apart from the existing hard ends of the waterfront the project also includes the new “soft systems” that comprises of water parks, community landscaping, animals refuges and aquaponic plantations thus making it completely one of its kind. This architecture blurs the difference between buildings, scenery, infrastructures and equipments.
The model will be made up of materials like custom printed circuit boards, cast and thermoformed acrylic, infrared sensors , Arduino based microcontrollers, shape memory alloy motors. It will be a huge urban automatic structure. With the help of thousands of sensors, this structure is expected to collect and store rainwater and fog and at the same time will modulate the flow of air, solar exposure and also the smart building systems.
Apart from this, a network of infrared sensors have been included in all the four sides of the model. This network of sensors will then record the distance between the visitors visiting the gallery and its edges. Later on, the information recorded by these sensors will be used to determine the actual white feather like “fog harvesting robots” and control the brightness of embedded LEDS. One can get a very clear idea of the project by looking at its model under display.
Via: Archdaily