MOLECULAR ENGINEERED HOUSE (FOR THE YEAR 2200)

The following is a diary, created by the owner of a molecular-engineered house was written during its construction. It is set in the year 2200.

Day 1: Excavation begins on site where assembly vats will be placed.

Day 2: Vats delivered to the building site, along with selected chemicals and bulk materials in liquid form. The various materials are then pumped into the vats.

Day 3: The code, developed from an architect's designs and then engineered and molecularly modeled, is ceremonially placed in the vat. We are amused that this code represents what long ago were the drawings, specifications, and strategies of construction management.

Day 4: Molecular growth, in the form of a vascular system, begins. This starts with roots stemming from the chemical composite. Reaching up and out of the vat to ground level, the roots form rudimentary "grade beams" extending horizontally to the edge of the house, where they curve upward to support the superstructure. Cross ribs connect the grade beams and form the ground floor platform.

Day 5: The growth of the superstructure starts with the development of primary exterior and interior vertical ribs. The infill of minor connecting ribs  - "the lattice" -  also begin to develop. The lattices are of varied densities, and are programmed to meet stress requirements-being less dense and more open in pattern where door openings are specified, for example. Fine web work and membranes appear as protective enclosures and interior partitioning. A neural network communicating via transmissions and not preprogrammed-couples to the vascular system and begins operation.

A NEW SPECIES OF ARCHITECTURE

With all of the dazzling opportunities offered by a revolutionary building process, which we are told will be inevitable, what course are we to take? Molecules, we must be reminded, can be programmed to produce utilitarian box shelters, or houses of any frivolous style. Designs of historic revival, popular as nostalgic escape from technology shock, may continue for, as Marshall McLuhan has said of most cultures, "we proceed into the future looking back through the rear-view mirror." It has also been observed that, in the United States at least, with few notable exceptions, engineers don't look ahead because they're not paid to do so. We will overcome technology shock as we always have. Understanding the implications of the new technology is ultimately a matter of how we direct our minds and emotions.

I have, up to this point, presented basic research.  Subsequently, it is my challenge and responsibility to address matters of applied science; matters of technology by which inventions, devices, and useful products might be produced.  In doing so, I express my reverence for pure science, but from here on, I am my own man.

Is the production of a building-size product through MNT possible?  To what extent is this new building method applicable to habitable structures?  Processes of molecular growth within a sealed factory vat are quite possible.  However, increasing the vats to accommodate buildings the size of ships is not a practical solution.  We have little choice but to turn out building elements of a standard dimension to be transported and assembled in the most conventional way.

Day 6: The upper platforms, supported by lateral brackets stemming from some of the major structural ribs, are accessible by a sprouting central spiral staircase. Exterior protective membranes conceal the interior The molecules of the membranes link to create an unbroken fabric. The membrane: provide openings for access that are prompt ed by two molecular activities. First, the membranes are infused with electric current by a manual selector that induces the molecules to disengage and form the openings. Second, other molecules, acting as muscle at the opening edge, flex to draw the exterior membrane apart. We enter our house.

Day 7: For the first time, we experience the space, ample for a small house. light glows through the translucent membranes. With a signal, these membranes change from translucent to opaque to transparent, providing a view anywhere at any time desired. Our house is self-sufficient, functioning without dependence upon any outside public services. Solar power activates heating, cooling, recycling of wastes, and purifying of water. The vats and vascular system, vital to the growth of our house, remain and will convey additional materials when repair or replacement is required. Interior finishes grow around us. "Body support," known previously as sofas, chairs, tables, and beds, are springing up from the floor, out from the wall ribs, and hanging from the arched vault-furniture as an extension of the structure itself. The floor, a "morphable topographic carpet," consists of a resilient, molecular, spongy substance that is responsive to our every comfort, whim, or tactile experience.

Day 8: We return the next day to find our house more familiar. As a "light modulator," the membrane responds to the ever-changing conditions of the immediate environment to appear as cloudy, opalescent, gossamer, iridescent, opaque. We have created an artificial, organic, protective cocoon.

Day 9: After six days of molecular growth, we move in. The house anticipates our changing needs, expanding the living space to form a small study, repartitioning the master bedrooms, rearranging and redesigning the "body supports," and extending the wheeled legs to a new site. These shape changes demonstrate the flexibility of the molecular engineering.  In future years, if we cannot find a buyer for our house, we will demolish it, or more correctly, the house will demolish itself. The building growth operations will be recycled for future buildings.  -  John M Johansen FAIA

Continuing to innovate architecture into his ninth decade, Johansen

sketches a nanobuilding that will be “grown” from the subatomic level.

SYMBOLISM           PHILOSOPHY           RESIDENTIAL DESIGNS  -  MAJOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS           EXPERIMENTAL           THEORETICAL          OTHER WORKS          BOOKS & DVDS          SITE MAP          CONTACT

HOME          CHRONOLOGY          ABOUT THE ARCHITECT          CHILDHOOD          EDUCATION          EARLY WORKS          ARCHITECTURE          NANOARCHITECTURE          TEACHING POSITIONS          AWARDS

SYMBOLISM           PHILOSOPHY           RESIDENTIAL DESIGNS  -  MAJOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS           EXPERIMENTAL           THEORETICAL          OTHER WORKS          BOOKS & DVDS          SITE MAP          CONTACT

HOME          CHRONOLOGY          ABOUT THE ARCHITECT          CHILDHOOD          EDUCATION          EARLY WORKS          ARCHITECTURE          NANOARCHITECTURE          TEACHING POSITIONS          AWARDS

As an experimental architect, I choose to look forward; which is to come to know and understand this newly emerging building technology, as radical as it may be, to find its evolving characteristics, and express them in architectural terms. For these radically new characteristics will be the basis of our designs for a New Architectural Species. As other members of this species, I now propose three more projects: the "morphable house," the "self-erecting bridge," and the "self-erecting tower."

I am mindful that the molecular house and high-rise apartment building may not be realized for some years, and that my architectural concepts and designs must be viewed, at this time, as somewhat precocious. Yet it would be well for our society to be prepared with intelligent and serviceable architectural proposals when the "assembler breakthrough"  occurs. I am mindful also of the many talented architects in the coming decades with more advanced knowledge of this technology at their disposal than is available now, who may express themselves differently.

However, it is my earnest hope that I will be considered as one of the few architects at this time to have grappled with this challenge. May my projects be, in any event, an exhortation to those who follow me.  -  John M Johansen FAIA

DESIGNING CITIES OF THE FUTURE

First of all ...the scale of urban design is too large for one architect to conceive or to design, as a totally determinate form. Secondly, permutational or open-ended programming will force a new concept, that of indeterminacy: changeable structures, changing to accommodate changing requirements. Therefore, buildings may not look the same from year to year.

There will be no time to compose and continually recompose for changing needs. In fact, there will be no need to compose at all, once we shift to the idea of free, life-generated assemblages rigged on an ordering device, which may be structural, transportational, distributional, or any combination of these. The future city may look like one building; it will most certainly be a continuous construction. The building, as a fragment, may look like many. The city in its total interconnectedness may appear to be one building. Except for scale, the governing principles would be the same.   -  John M Johansen FAIA

The essence of my proposal is molecular "growth" out of and beyond the confines of the vat.  In the early stages of molecular growth processes, small molecules survive only in a sealed vat where an entactic environment is assured.  However, it is likely that these perishable protein molecules will build larger, more durable molecules that will withstand and survive in the external environment.  This growth, development from simple to complex molecules, from inside to outside the vat, is the critical and essential assumption of my proposal.  It is only in this way that the production of large products can be realized.   -  John M Johansen, FAIA

PropOSAL