k@personal

Crowd-sourcing city improvements

What links a wall covered with bright blue paper clouds, exercise-bike-powered irrigation and nest boxes for swifts made of scavanged insulation material? They are just some of the crazy-but-they-just-might-work ideas submitted in answer to a call for architecture projects to improve city living.

<Trampolines for London? Bouncing around the city sounds a great idea to me>

Calling for small-scale projects that could be implemented in London, Ideas on a Postcard, Please, run by not-for-profit organisation Architecture for Humanity, aims to make the big smoke a better place to exist.

They got a deluge of suggestions, many of them focussing on the emerging fascination with urban greening. One of the most intriguing projects is the already running Nestworks from 51% studios, which provides nest boxes for birds and bats in a targeted way, building on the ecosystems already present in the urban environment. According to the studio's Cathi du Soit, birds and insects treat urban environments rather like mountainous regions and any attempt to increase biodiveristy needs to take this into account. "It's a very arid environment," continued her colleague Peter Thomas. The pair are working with the RSPB's Peter Holden to begin a citizen science monitoring programme next week, which will take a look at how the boxes has impacted on biodiveristy since they were installed in 2010.

Also exhibited were the studio's inmidtown project's habi-sabi, a set of IKEA-style flat-pack biodiversity-fostering structures. Including beehives and nest boxes, the structures are all made from compressed scavanged insulation material and fiber from car interiors. The Barsmark PT200 composite's structural properties make it a good choice, says Thomas, and shows no signs of leaching when wet. Thomas believes materials like this hearken to a future where reclaiming from previous consumables will be a significant resource.

Other projects suggested ways to improve community and wellbeing in the city - such as the blue "Happy" clouds that allow people to contribute an reason to feel good, or the more biologically driven "Quickie Booth" which aims at bringing "affection" back to public spaces - and novel energy solutions such as Heba Nazer's H2Grow, which called for parks to be fitted out with bikes used to pump water into the flower beds.

The idea of making city living more pleasant resonates with the Guggenheim Lab's Confronting Comfort enterprise. The project, which has just moved to Berlin, carried out experiments in Manhattan last year to look at how the subtleties of the urban environment affect the emotional response of the people living within it.

Supplies for next Saturday's workshop

One of today's jobs was sourcing readymade materials for next Saturday's workshop. I went down to the Lock7 cycle cafe (http://www.lock-7.com) on Prichard's Road and the kind folk there donated a whole heap of dead bike parts to me. There are some seriously exciting goodies in there - saddles, chains and crank sets along with rarer seat posts and front forks:

More than I could carry! They very kindly also lent me their delivery bike to get the goodies back home. Now I just have to source a trolley or trailer to get it to Rich Mix next weekend.

Bikes - the green machine?

The following is a rundown of some research I've been doing for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, where I am running a workshop on using found materials to make art about consumer behaviour. I decided to focus on bikes, because I am a total cycling fanatic and make a lot of my art out of old ones I am given...

Bikes are great - the greener way to travel. Take my daily commute to
work. Every day I brave the London traffic on my two-wheeled mean
machine to get to my office at New Scientist towers.

According to Travelfootprint, I generate 105.8 g of CO2 and 0.8 g of
NOx travelling to work by bike, less than a tenth the amount of CO2
I'd release if I took a small car on the same 4 mile journey, and a
quarter the NOx. A rush hour bus? I'd be responsible for twice my
cycling CO2, four times the NOx. The tube? The margins are smaller at
rush hour, but the bike still wins out. In fact, Travelfootprint tell
me that cycling is greener even than walking when it comes to CO2 and
NOx emissions.

But what if we start looking into bike manufacture? Now there are some
numbers coming so please don't doze off. Equally, if you think I've
made an error in my calculations or assumptions, please do point it
out.

Using Travelfootprint's methodology, their value from an IISI report
(2,352 g CO2 per kg of steel), and making some back-o-the-envelope
calculations - let's say we're looking at a 12kg steel bike - the
overall carbon footprint of the materials to make the bike is 28,224 g
CO2. I really ought to add to that the manufacturing emissions and
distribution, but for now let's just run with it as is. Say I keep my
bike for a 5 year period, riding every week day to and from work.
That's 24.5 g CO2 per ride right there, a value that tips me over to
being more polluting than the tube. And that's a conservative
estimate: it doesn't include the emissions from manufacturing the
parts or shipping them around for assembly.

Don't get me wrong here, I really do think bikes are fantastic. But
what these number show is that it's more of a close-run thing than you
might realise. Most bike frames are made in China and Taiwan, for
example, and the materials to make them are sourced internationally.

As an example of all the to-ing and fro-ing that goes on in bike

manufacture, this super interactive tool at sourcemap shows you the
origins of a Cube mountain bike put together at the border of Germany
and the Czech Republic.

So, we need to make the most of the bikes we have - ride them for
longer, renovate and repair them. While there are EU regulations in
place (End of Life Vehicles Directive) for the disposal of cars -
insisting that they are cleaned of nasties and raw materials salvaged
- the same isn't true of bikes. Just look at the number of stripped
frames you see languishing locked to lamposts or cowering in the
canal.

Steel frames are a great choice if you're looking for longevity,
whereas carbon frames are a disaster. If you do have to say goodbye to
your beloved steed, you could see if there's somewhere that will buy
the metal for scrap. All of these things might help tip the balance
back to bikes being the greener option when it comes to CO2.

Just don't get me started on the environmental disaster that is the
mining industry, with its acidic effluent and heavy metal discharge
into aquifers... That's a job for tomorrow.

My desk

Transport For London does its bit for the environment

Spotted on clerkenwell rd/ rosebury ave junction

Sent from my iPhone

Nitin Sawhney pictures!

At the Royal Albert Hall! They played a piece specially commissioned for the hall's pipe organ - it was beautiful. Absolutely transported me to somewhere fantastical and warm. So grateful I got the opportunity to go. The funny ovals are on the ceiling. The colours were stunning!

Sent from my iPhone

Me and the Yuri Gagarin statue at Star City @LondonSciFest :)

Thank you John for the lovely flowers

I got home to find these waiting for me, from my wonderful housemate who, I'm sad to say, moved out today. Miss you already John xxx

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adventures of evilbunny

for marc, who couldn't sleep and wanted me to paint him a picture.

so, it's summer. your skin feels warm in the still evening air. you're on a rooftop, sitting and looking west out over the city. across roofs, between aerials, your gaze moves upwards, outwards, to the horizon. you can feel a great freedom inside you from the sheer amount of sky above you. and in front of you, in a sky crossed with contrails, past which tiny white clouds are floating, the sun is setting. the sky's blue deepens the higher you lift your eyes, reminding you that out there, beyond the protection of the atmosphere, there is a universe full of potential - so vast it is almost beyond comprehension. and ahead, as the sun dips down, down behind the buildings, aglow with its fierce burning, the horizon blazes with molten gold.