Critical Zone Sensor

Critical Zone Sensor

Brouwer, Menno (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Schoonderbeek, M.G.H. (mentor)
Jennen, P.H.M. (mentor)
Milani, S. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Borders and Territories

2021-07-08

Our contemporary world is filled with sensors, from weather stations to infrasound facilities and seismic monitoring stations. These sensors constitute a specific spatial and architectural reality in the Critical Zone and introduce the idea of the territory as a sensing device. The Critical Zone is a thin layer of several hundred meters thick above and below the surface of our planet in which human activity has a significant impact on earth’s geology and ecosystems. This generates the program of the project; A Critical Zone Sensor. The project aims to integrate the multiple disciplines of Critical Zone Science such as geology, hydrology and ecology and distribute its sensing devices in one project to understand the critical zone as one heterogeneous and complex system. The chosen site is Almaty’s most Critical Zone. The site is characterized by natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and mudflows. The project aims to have little implication on the Critical Zone, responds to the natural hazards with its flexible legs and suspend its sensing devices in the canyon. With its energy intensive program, the project aims to be self sufficient and work with a performative shell inspired by biomimicry. This shell is developed through several philosophical concepts such as Duchamp’s Bachelor Machines, Deleuze & Guattari’s Desiring machines and the Body without Organs. This results in a folded shell with encapsulated humans which are connected to the environment through sensing spikes. The project speculates on an intimate relationship between the human body and technology where what is sensed on the outside is perceived in a bodily experience on the inside. The project is made for the sensor and treats the human as a guest resulting in a continuous spatial complexity and a intimate habitation of squeezing, folding and crawling. The shell is 3D printed with a magnesium based composite and together with the cavities on the shell, the porous and highly corrosive material generates a symbiosis between the project and the Critical Zone.

Critical Zone
Earth Magnitude
Sensor
Deleuze
Body without Organs
Bachelor Machines
Desiring Machines
Biomimicry

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Menno Brouwer