"RFP"

"The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones."

I think this quote comes from the Amory Lovins talk, and it's been echoing in my head for over a month now.

An assortment of Ted Talks, "Switch" by Craig Morris, and a stack of venture capitalist analysis on emerging green industries has pumped me up about the potential of biomass fuelcells. Biomass waste in, electricity and water out; it's like magic. Rest assured, biomass waste is not concentrated in only a few volatile regions in the world, but is harvested every day from sewage treatment plants or algae blooms, at the nation scale, at the region scale, at the individual home scale. Even the process of desalination works in this diagram: saltwater in, fresh water out + brine-grossness biomass waste out/in to fuelcell; electricity out and water out. Given the concerns for the next century hover around sources of energy and sources of potable water, the future of fuelcell development seems easy: invest now.

Drawing from a combination of influences from Professor Williams's "Learning Places" seminar last fall and my own crash-course education on sustainable fuels, the programmatic vehicle notion has expanded to not just What the alibi of the research is, but How it is, or at least beginning to wonder more about the nature of the space. Is it solemn, is is pure pragmatics? I believe right now the interest will come from the overlap of the research elements with the public elements, how the site is the intersection of research and production with the public realm, as well as the didactic relation the situating of the place has with the complexity of everyday natural events. The mill complex can be a place that weaves institutional investigation, industrial craft, and public experience into a productive, porous education center for the citizens of the new century.


Words written in bold on my digital sticky notes:

RIPARIAN: (legalese) of, relating to, or situated on the banks of a river

FARMS: lab/research, power, agricultural, digital, learning

PALIMPSEST: (wesley wei, piranesi)


As in, a RIPARIAN research FARM, resonating as a PALIMPSEST of the sustainable modalities of a previous age.