• Clothes
• Shoes
• Cement/Concrete
• Wood
• Glass
• Plastic – but I ask you does this off gas making it toxic?
• Batteries
• Street Signs
• DVD’s
• CD’s
• Cardboard Boxes
• Electronics
  • Cell phones
  • Video Games
  • TV
  • VCR
  • CD Player
  • DVD Player
  • Tivo
  • Speakers
  • Etc

• Wires
• Plants
• Plant Pots
• Shelves
• Refrigerators
• Dishwashers
• Washer
• Dryer
• Stoves
• Roofs
• Light Poles
• Lights? Is this toxic though?
• Lawn Furniture
• Place mats
• Tables
• Chairs
• Pots
• Pans
• Plates
• Silverware
• Plastic ware
• Cups
• Bowls
• Toothbrushes
• Water
• Old garden tools
• Beds
• Sheets
• Towels
• Duvee cover
• Dressers
• Tires
• Car parts
• Appliances
• Hot Tubs
• Pools
• Paper
• Printer Cartridges
• Pens and Pencils
• Toys
• Statues
• Awards
• Photos
• Old Cameras
• Books
• Magazines
• Candles
• Railroad Tracks
• Railroad Cars
• Railroad Parts
• Bus Parts
• Car Parts

Hello All,

Now that we are switching gears and moving into a new direction I would like to share the boards we created for the Solar Energy exhibition.

These will now become idea place holders for our future exhibition garden around the new building.

Thus, we have a departure point when we get to the point of designing the new permanent building.

Why shipping containers?

Container History

Long term growth in shipping traffic:

According to David Edgerton’s “The Shock of the Old”, the world merchant fleet was
rated at 553 gross registered tonnes (GRT, a measure of capacity) in 2000. “It carried
more material than ever before in history”, comments Edgerton “and so cheaply that the price
of manufactures was barely affected by freight rates.”

In 1914, the world merchant fleet carried only 45 million tonnes; in 1950 85 million
tonnes was shipped globally; and in 1970 had increased to 227 million tonnes internationally.

The largest ships – as of 2000 – were 90,000 GRT, with a crew of 19, and could carry
more than 8,000 containers each.

After the U.S. Department of Defense standardised the 8′x8′x10’ container for military.
This was rapidly adopted for shipping purposes. There was an over-whelming need to
have a standard size for containers, to ensure they fit all ships, cranes, and trucks.

The U.S. container shipping industry dates to 1956, when trucking entrepreneur
Malcom McLean put 58 containers aboard a refitted tanker ship, the “Ideal-X”, and
sailed them from Newark to Houston. What was new in the USA about McLean’s
innovation was the idea of using large containers that were never opened in transit
etween shipper and consignee and that were transferableon an intermodal basis,
among trucks, ships and railroad cars. McLean had initially favored the construction
of “trailerships” – taking trailers from large trucks and stowing them in a ship’s cargo
hold. This method of stowage, referred to as roll-on/roll-off, was not adopted
because of the large waste in potential cargo space onboard the vessel, known as
broken stowage. Instead, he modified his original concept into loading just the
containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or
“box” ship.

Containerization revolutionized cargo shipping. Today, approximately 90% of
non-bulk cargo worldwide moves by containers stacked on transport ships; 26% of all
containers originate from China. As of 2005, some 18 million total containers make
over 200 million
trips per year.

The five standard lengths are, 20-ft., 40-ft., 45-ft., 48-ft., and 53-ft. United States
domestic standard containers are generally 48-ft and 53-ft (rail and truck).

Presentation Board “Solar Energy Exhibition” – Option “A”

East Elevation

South Elevation

West Elevation

North Elevation

Presentation Board “Solar Energy Exhibition” – Option “B”

Perspective

South Elevation

West Elevation

North Elevation

East Elevation

Hello All,

We are now switching gears and planning the best ever Shades of Green education and innovation in art and design exhibit with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to raise awarness and bring greater attention to global climate change.

It’s a fusion of culture, design, art, and innovation over three months featuring collaboratively designed functional art created by teams of students from universities around Los Angeles each focused on a specific and different global warming issue.

Our task now is to collaborate on the event and the space itself.

Questions we should be responding to are:

What is a space for an event such as this like?

What materials can we use?

What should it be called?

What is the Mission and Vision?

That said this visioning section is intended as a team forum and archive for our ideation process.

The success of this forum shall be measured by the degree to which we all choose to participate in it.

Thus I encourage everyone to “just do it” when you have any ideas just login and jot them down here WITHOUT judgement.

Every idea is valid and shall be considered period. The point is DO NOT censor your self just throw it out there, because it may just be a the idea we are looking for or it may trigger an idea from someone else that is the idea we are looking for.

Now let’s start brainsorming!

IDEAS FOR NAMES:

“Shades of Green” artistic innovations in sustainable design. Is that close Adam?

“SMart” Sustainable Mechanized art moving us toward a healthy landscape!

IDEAS FOR MATERIALS:

Plastic bottles

Aluminum cans

Tires

License Plates

Compact CD’s

CRT’s

Signs

Thin Film PV’s

Shoes

Clothes

Tin Cans

Batteries

IDEAS FOR THE SPACE:

Tent made of some kind of alternative recycled material suspended over a vast concrete area adjacent to the park at LACMA

Walls made of various kinds of recyclable materials (i.e. one wall crushed aluminum cans, another plastic bottles, another ground up tires in a “gabion”, another stacked batteries etc.) These walls could inform the movement through the space as well as break it up into separate exhibit rooms or areas.

Tent made of CD’s bound together in a mesh suspended from tent poles maybe even old telephone poles symbolizing the old growth trees we once clear cut. The CD’s symbolizing the disposable society we have created out of a business model for assured long term immense profit. The CD’s would also serve very well in reflecting the suns hot rays away from the visitors below and provide some amount of filtered light and shade inside the tent.

Thin film PV’s as the tent material so the tent itself can generate it’s own electricity while show casing cutting edge PV technology.

We could even create a hybrid tent using CD’s and thin film PV’s.

Hello All

Here is Bob’s first animation of Solar Exhibit Option “B” from our design session on February 16th 2008.

The concept for this one is to reuse four shipping containers twenty feet long by eight feet wide by eight feet six inches high. Each container is capable of standing on it’s own in a vertical orientation in order to take advantage of the “stack affect”.

The “stack affect” is a phenomenon caused by rising warm air currents creating positive air pressure at the top and negative pressure at the bottom. In a chimney or tower this phenomenon is most beneficial as due to the height. By putting remotely operated sky lights at the top and operable windows at the floor we can generate this air flow naturally as the positive pressure at the top and negative pressure at the bottom will perpetuate itself. Furthermore, this passive system can be completely controlled by a computer as the temperature changes and sensors detect those changes the skylights and windows will automatically open or close based on the current interior condition. Thus, we can create a passive cooling space as a demonstration of efficient passive heating and cooling.

Likewise the PV arrays on the outside are designed to shade the exterior skin from the heat of the sun, which it would absorb and transfer to the interior space as heat gain.

The exterior skin is composed of a hodge podge collection of recycled plastic laminate sheets on marine grade plywood on one and a half inch metal hat channels to act as a rain and sun skin. The skin keeps the effects of weather and the sun from beating up and beating down the shipping containers. The idea being to reduce the maintenance costs of repainting the containers, make them more energy efficient by moderating the heat gain in the summer.

The entire box then can be disassembled into four individual containers and put onto a truck with a crane and moved to a new location and reassembled.

Don’t take the animation to seriously in this regard as the windows, doors, skylights, and solar panels would remain attached to their respective container. Look for a demonstration of that process in the next animation.

That is all for now let me know if you have any questions or issues.

Here is Bob’s latest animation of the Solar Exhibit for your eye candy pleasure.

The animation is from our working session last weekend February 9, 2008.

This is only a progress animation so you all can see how we are progressing.

This is design option “A” and the idea is that we reuse an existing shipping container by modifiying it into a mobile habitable space carried on a flat bed truck.

The PV (photo voltaic) arrays are remotely and mechanically rotated to the optimum solar angle for that particular day.

It also has hydrolic jacks to lift it so the flat bed can manuever under it and carry it off with minimal man or woman power.

Bob and I are very excited to share this with you and we recommend that you keep checking back each week for more postings of our progress.

We now have our first completed board of Solar Exhibit “A” which we are very excited to show you all soon.

Our goal is also to have a draft board of Solar Exhibit “C” this week as well and an animation of that project posted early next week.

Then you can look for postings of Solar Exhibit “B” the following week.

I expect we can convene for our first design critique in about 4 weeks and I will keep you posted on that here also.

Here is Bob’s first animation of the Solar Exhibit for your eye candy pleasure.

The animation is from our working session last weekend February 2, 2008.

This is only a progress animation so you all can see what is happening.

This is design option “A” and the idea is that we reuse an existing shipping container by modifiying it into a mobile habitable space carried on a flat bed truck.

The PV arrays are remotely and mechanically rotated to the optimum solar angle for that particular day.

It also has hydrolic jacks to lift it so the flat bed can manuever under it and carry it off with minimal man or woman power.

Bob and I are very excited to share this with you and we recommend that you keep checking back each week for more postings of our progress.

We now have a draft board of Solar Exhibit “A” which we hope to have finished by this weekend February 9, 2008.

Our goal is also to have a draft board of Solar Exhibit “B” this weekend as well and an animation of that project posted early next week.

Then you can look for postings of Solar Exhibit “C” the following week.

I expect we can convene for our first design critique in about 4 weeks and I will keep you posted on that here also.

Hello All,

Bob and I had some quality design time over the weekend. We are both very excited about our progress.

We expect to be putting our rough draft boards together this week, and tweeking the designs a bit.

Thus I anticipate we will be ready to present our visions to the group the second weekend in February for feedback.

I apologize for jumping the gun by committing to soon, but I think our concepts and boards will be much stronger and therefore our critique will be much more fruitful.

I will let you all know how we are progressing over the next week.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Check out this video I think it is valuable to us for inspiration about what is available to us right now in the design of our exhibitions.

Click on this link http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/122

Thank you Bob Chen for sharing this!