WEBVTT

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I was one of those kids that, every time I got in the car,

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I basically had to roll down the window.

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It was usually too hot, too stuffy or just too smelly,

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and my father would not let us use the air conditioner.

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He said that it would overheat the engine.

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And you might remember, some of you,

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how the cars were back then, and it was

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a common problem of overheating.

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But it was also the signal that capped the use,

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or overuse, of energy-consuming devices.

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Things have changed now. We have cars that we take across country.

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We blast the air conditioning the entire way,

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and we never experience overheating.

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So there's no more signal for us to tell us to stop.

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Great, right? Well, we have similar problems in buildings.

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In the past, before air conditioning, we had thick walls.

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The thick walls are great for insulation. It keeps the interior

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very cool during the summertime, and warm during the wintertime,

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and the small windows were also very good because

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it limited the amount of temperature transfer

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between the interior and exterior.

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Then in about the 1930s, with the advent of plate glass,

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rolled steel and mass production, we were able

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to make floor-to-ceiling windows and unobstructed views,

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and with that came the irreversible reliance on

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mechanical air conditioning to cool our solar-heated spaces.

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Over time, the buildings got taller and bigger,

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our engineering even better, so that the mechanical systems

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were massive. They require a huge amount of energy.

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They give off a lot of heat into the atmosphere,

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and for some of you may understand the heat island effect

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in cities, where the urban areas are much more warm

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than the adjacent rural areas,

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but we also have problems that, when we lose power,

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we can't open a window here, and so

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the buildings are uninhabitable and have to be made vacant

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until that air conditioning system can start up again.

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Even worse, with our intention of trying to make buildings

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move towards a net-zero energy state, we can't do it

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just by making mechanical systems more and more efficient.

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We need to look for something else, and we've gotten ourselves a little bit into a rut.

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So what do we do here? How do we pull ourselves and dig us

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out of this hole that we've dug?

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If we look at biology, and many of you probably don't know,

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I was a biology major before I went into architecture,

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the human skin is the organ that naturally regulates

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the temperature in the body, and it's a fantastic thing.

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That's the first line of defense for the body.

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It has pores, it has sweat glands, it has all these things

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that work together very dynamically and very efficiently,

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and so what I propose is that our building skins

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should be more similar to human skin,

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and by doing so can be much more dynamic, responsive

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and differentiated, depending on where it is.

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And this gets me back to my research.

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What I proposed first doing is looking at a different material palette to do that.

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I presently, or currently, work with smart materials,

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and a smart thermo-bimetal.

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First of all, I guess we call it smart because it requires

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no controls and it requires no energy,

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and that's a very big deal for architecture.

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What it is, it's a lamination of two different metals together.

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You can see that here by the different reflection on this side.

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And because it has two different coefficients of expansion,

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when heated, one side will expand faster than the other

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and result in a curling action.

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So in early prototypes I built these surfaces to try to see

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how the curl would react to temperature and possibly allow

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air to ventilate through the system,

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and in other prototypes did surfaces where the multiplicity

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of having these strips together can try to make

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bigger movement happen when also heated,

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and currently have this installation at the Materials & Applications gallery

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in Silver Lake, close by, and it's there until August, if you want to see it.

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It's called "Bloom," and the surface is made completely

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out of thermo-bimetal, and its intention is to make this canopy

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that does two things. One, it's a sun-shading device, so that

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when the sun hits the surface, it constricts the amount of sun passing through,

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and in other areas, it's a ventilating system,

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so that hot, trapped air underneath can actually

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move through and out when necessary.

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You can see here in this time-lapse video that the sun,

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as it moves across the surface, as well as the shade,

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each of the tiles moves individually.

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Keep in mind, with the digital technology that we have today,

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this thing was made out of about 14,000 pieces

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and there's no two pieces alike at all. Every single one is different.

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And the great thing with that is the fact that we can calibrate

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each one to be very, very specific to its location,

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to the angle of the sun, and also how the thing actually curls.

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So this kind of proof of concept project

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has a lot of implications

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to actual future application in architecture,

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and in this case, here you see a house,

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that's for a developer in China,

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and it's actually a four-story glass box.

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It's still with that glass box because we still want that visual access,

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but now it's sheathed with this thermo-bimetal layer,

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it's a screen that goes around it, and that layer can actually

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open and close as that sun moves around on that surface.

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In addition to that, it can also screen areas for privacy,

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so that it can differentiate from some of the public areas

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in the space during different times of day.

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And what it basically implies is that, in houses now,

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we don't need drapes or shutters or blinds anymore

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because we can sheath the building with these things,

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as well as control the amount of air conditioning you need inside that building.

NOTE Paragraph

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I'm also looking at trying to develop some building components for the market,

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and so here you see a pretty typical

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double-glazed window panel, and in that panel,

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between those two pieces of glass, that double-glazing,

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I'm trying to work on making

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a thermo-bimetal pattern system

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so that when the sun hits that outside layer

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and heats that interior cavity, that thermo-bimetal

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will begin to curl, and what actually will happen then

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is it'll start to block out the sun

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in certain areas of the building,

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and totally, if necessary.

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And so you can imagine, even in this application, that

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in a high-rise building where the panel systems go

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from floor to floor up to 30, 40 floors, the entire surface

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could be differentiated at different times of day

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depending on how that sun moves across and hits that surface.

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And these are some later studies that I'm working on

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right now that are on the boards, where you can see,

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in the bottom right-hand corner, with the red, it's actually

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smaller pieces of thermometal, and it's actually going to,

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we're trying to make it move like cilia or eyelashes.

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This last project is also of components.

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The influence -- and if you have noticed, one of my

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spheres of influence is biology -- is from a grasshopper.

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And grasshoppers have a different kind of breathing system.

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They breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles,

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and they bring the air through and it moves through their system to cool them down,

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and so in this project, I'm trying to look at how we can

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consider that in architecture too, how we can bring

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air through holes in the sides of a building.

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And so you see here some early studies of blocks,

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where those holes are actually coming through,

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and this is before the thermo-bimetal is applied,

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and this is after the bimetal is applied. Sorry, it's a little

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hard to see, but on the surfaces, you can see these red arrows.

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On the left, it's when it's cold and the thermo-bimetal

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is flat so it will constrict air from passing through the blocks,

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and on the right, the thermo-bimetal curls

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and allows that air to pass through, so those are two different

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components that I'm working on, and again,

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it's a completely different thing, because you can imagine

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that air could potentially be coming through the walls

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instead of opening windows.

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So I want to leave you with one last impression about

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the project, or this kind of work and using smart materials.

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When you're tired of opening and closing those blinds

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day after day, when you're on vacation

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and there's no one there on the weekends to be turning off and on the controls,

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or when there's a power outage, and you have

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no electricity to rely on, these thermo-bimetals

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will still be working tirelessly, efficiently

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and endlessly. Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)