Metamorphosis Project

About half way through architecture school I was given a design project by one of my professors at the beginning of the semester. Usually we were given a ‘fun’ project to loosen us up and then a more serious project, which usually coincided with something the professor was working on at the time. The project which we were given was to design vacation a house for our favorite architect. At the time I was very interested in Paolo Soleri who I had spent time with in the Arizona desert helping to build his visionary city Arcosanti.

I thought about where Soleri would go to 'get away' and recharge his batteries. Since he lives and works in the high desert I thought he would enjoy being him out on the ocean for a while. I began to think about what would be the ideal structure in which he would be comfortable that could thrive the rigors of the open sea. I needed to design an artificial island of sorts which would remain relatively stable in the most severe storms yet not be affixed to the land. I wanted Soleri to drift in solitude and contemplation.

I the late sixties the Scripts Institute of Oceanography built a deep seas research vessel called the Flip.

This vessel consisted of a front section built in the shape of a ship and a hundred foot long tube at the rear. The vessel was towed far out to sea and then a series of ballast chambers would flood in the tube causing the entire vessel to ‘flip’ vertically in the water. The top third of the vessel stuck out of the water and provided a very stable platform from which the scientists could gather data for all sorts of oceanographic and atmospheric experiments.

I proposed Solerie’s house should follow a similar shape. My professor and fellow students were skeptical of the stability of such a design from my early sketches. So I built a small model from a drinking straw with a weight at one end, representing the ballast, and a foam chunk at the other end representing the actual dwelling. I also built a small wave chamber. When I subjected my crude model to the full furry of a simulated storm of epic proportions in the chamber, the model barely bobbed or oscillated at all in the water.

Once the basic form was agreed upon, I began to design the guts of this thing. In order to survive on its own in the harsh environment of the open ocean I realized it needed to be a living, breathing organism. Because a human, or humans, were to live on this thing there needed to be a symbiotic relationship between them and the vessel to ensure the sustainability of the collective organism. First there needed to be a source of capturing and storing energy. Where does energy come from on the open ocean? I could think of four sources, solar, thermal (differences between surface temp. and deep water temp.) and mechanical in the form of wave and wind action. I decided to use both solar and wave action in varying forms.

I thought of wave action as being more consistent and therefor more reliable than wind action. I proposed running a vertical column though the center of the stem. This shaft would be have openings at the top and bottom to allow a column of water to rise up and down as waves passes by outside of the stem. A turbine with oscillating blades would be mounted either at the top of the shaft, to catch air flow, or at the bottom, to catch water flow.

But how would this vessel be constructed? Initially it could be built using common ship building techniques with steel or composite materials. I became aware of an emerging technology of growing a concrete-like material called 'seacrete' or 'biorock' in the ocean using low voltage electricity and the chemical nature of sea water.

I began designing a structure that would grow out of the saturated minerals present in sea water, as well as utilize high tensile membranes (eventually also grown using bio-engineered algees and other organisms). A large part of this was to utilize wave action to provide the energy required to make it all happen. This led to the realization that at some point the structure could produce a surplus harvested of energy to 'take it to the next level'.

I have to admit that this is a fanciful pet project or 'Gedankenexperiment'. I have been working on this since the mid 80's, pulling together developing technologies that I have encountered along the way as well as my own personal experience from my various long distance nautical endeavors over the years.

With the continued development of nano-technologies, as well as the emergence of carbon/graphene based materials, the possibilities are even more attainable than when I first envisioned them. The sea- crete technology alone, coupled with solar, wind and wave based energy capturing systems has relevance in today's world for reef restoration of coastal communities around the world as sea levels and meteorological conditions intensify due to global warming.

For an overview of the Metamorphosis project and older pictures of the various stages see:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2131107597350.2100909.1235801502&type=1

Boxing up Desire

Fall update from Seattle: After ariving in Kona and working furiously to get Desire ready to meet my weather window, I discovered that NOAA had issued a proclimation that they had just figured out that they were still seeing conditions that last year's la ninia weather conditions were still in effect in the Pacific.

What that ment for me was that instead of a 35-40 day sail back to Seattle I would most likely encounter a 45-55 day journey. I spent the next few days thinking about my boat and my own capabilities and realized that it just didn't make sense to expose myself to that level of risk in terms of being able to carry enough provisions for such a journey as well as the long term effects of fatigue, sleep depravation and exposure to the unpredictable nature of ocean travel.

I then made one of the toughest discussions of my life. Given that I had expended lots of time and resources the previous year (as well as this year) to bringing Desire back to my home waters, and that I was committed to spending the next few years trying to make a success of my new company, it would be next to impossible to mount another effort of this sort any time soon.

I realized that instead of looking at this as a rescue mission I needed to think of it as a salvage mission. I built a sturdy crate and boxed up all of the books, momentous, tools and gear that I wanted to keep from Desire and arranged with an oceanic freight company to ship it back to Seattle. I sorted through the stuff that was left and gave away a bunch of it to friends in Kona who could use it and I organized the stuff that should stay with Desire. I spent the rest of my time sprucing Desire up as best I could and then flew home to Seattle, entrusting Desire to Craig's List and friends who would look after her until she was sold.

The crate of stuff (all 687 pounds) arrived safely here in Seattle a few weeks ago. I've had a few looky loo's (keel kickers) interested in Desire but no serious takers yet. Meanwhile I'm charging ahead on several fronts to grow my budding company out of the dirt.