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5.19.2012

ArchiKluge




ArchiKluge is the first of a series of small experiments written in Java which explore ‘artificial creativity’, automatic design and generative approaches in architecture. ArchiKluge is a simple Genetic Algorithm that evolves architectural diagrams. It explores the qualities of design made by machines, devoid of any intention, assumptions or prejudices, and which often display a very peculiar form of mindlessly but relentlessly pounding against obstacles and problems until overcoming them, a manner of acting nature and machines commonly exhibit.

A Genetic Algorithm is a program that evolves populations of solutions to certain constrains, quite the same way evolutionary processes do in nature. Each population starts with a number of randomly generated individuals, which reproduce or not according to their performance against a ‘fitness function’. The individual usually consist of a genotype, or certain encoded information on which the genetic algorithm operates (reproducing, mutating, recombining it), and the decoded and translated information, known as the phenotype, of which the fitness is evaluated. The system can then iteratively evolve fitter individuals.

In this case the genotype of the Genetic Algorithm of ArchiKluge consists of a 64 bit Java long integer, and the phenotype of the translation of this integer in to a spatial layout, simply produced by folding the long number in to 4x4x4 lattice, each bit expressing the state of a cell in the lattice (empty of filled, 4x4x4=64). There are 2^64 or 18446744073709551616 possible combinations of the lattice. If instead of using a Genetic Algorithm, we would calculate each and every of these possibilities to find out the best ones, taking us a millisecond for each (about the time it takes in an average PC now),we would have to wait about 584,942,417 (585 million) years for the results. By the time we would be finished the computer would have evaporated or fossilised, and ourselves would provably have evolve in to something else, perhaps flying slugs or one legged lizards.

ArchiKluge’s Genetic Algorithm:
ArchiKluge implements a Steady State Genetic Algorithm with Tournament selection. It takes two randomly selected individuals and substitutes the least fitted by their common offspring (produced by a cross over operator). Mutations are also randomly performed in the individuals. The genotype-phenotype translation described above is based on a paper by Lionel March, ‘A Boolean description of a class of built forms’(Lionel March, the Architecture of Form, 1976, Cambridge University Press). The fitness function consist of the addition of each cell’s added ‘shortest paths’, a measure often used in network analysis (and in space analysis such as Bill Hillier’s Space Syntax). This means that for each cell in the 4x4x4 lattice, the shortest path to every other cell is calculated, a good individual being that which has many cells with other cells as far as possible from themselves (but still reachable). This Fitness function is intended only as an example, and it could be interesting in the future to incorporate an interface that allows user defined fitness functions.

For illustrating the resulting circulations through the evolved layouts, the paths left by random walkers, or agents that move randomly through the lattice have been used.

pablo miranda carranza



The Journey to Emergence


The Journey to Emergence
Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 03/23/2009 - 07:00, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:02
This is part I of a series of excerpts of an article to be published in the International Journal of Architectural Research entitled The Principles of Emergent Urbanism. Additional parts will be posted on this blog with the editor's permission until the complete article appears exclusively in the journal's upcoming issue.
Of the different domains of design urban design is an oddity. While the design of a machine can be traced to a definite, deliberate act of invention, and even the design of buildings (architecture) is rooted in known production processes, the design of cities was never seriously attempted until well after cities had become a normal, ordinary aspect of civilized living, and while the design of machines and buildings was a conscious effort to solve a particular problem or set of problems, cities appeared in the landscape spontaneously and without conscious effort. This places the efficacy of urban design in doubt. The designers of machines and buildings know fully how the processes that realize their design operate, and this knowledge allows them to predictably conceive the form they are designing. Urban designers do not enjoy such a certainty.
How is it possible for what is obviously a human artifact to arise as if by an act of nature? The theory of a spontaneous order provides an explanation. According to Friedrich A. von Hayek (Hayek, 1973) a spontaneous order arises when multiple actors spontaneously adopt a set of actions that provides them with a competitive advantage, and this behavior creates a pattern that is self-sustaining, attracting more actors and growing the pattern. This takes place without any of the actors being conscious of the creation of this pattern at an individual level. The spontaneous order is a by-product of individuals acting in pursuit of some other end.
In this way cities appear as agglomerations of individually initiated buildings along natural paths of movement, which originally do not require any act of production as dirt paths suffice. As the construction of individual buildings continues the most intensely used natural paths of movement acquire an importance that makes them unbuildable and these paths eventually form the familiar “organic” pattern of streets seen in medieval cities. This process still takes place today in areas where government is weak or dysfunctional, notably in Africa where urban planning often consists of catching up to spontaneous settlement, and in the infamous squatter slums that have proliferated in the 20th century.
A transect of the city of Tultepec in Mexico provides a snapshot of the different phases of spontaneous urban growth. (Google Earth image)
As urbanization becomes denser, the increasing proximity of concurrent, competing individual interests causes conflicts between the inhabitants of the emerging town. Individuals build out their properties in such a way that it interferes with others, for example by blocking paths or views. These acts threaten the sustainability of the spontaneous order, and to resolve this situation the parties involved appeal to the same judges that rule on matters of justice. These judges, again according to Hayek, are required to restore and preserve the spontaneous order with their rulings. These rulings provide the first building regulations and, when government authority becomes powerful enough to do so, are compiled into comprehensive building codes to be applied wherever the force of that government extends. (Hakim, 2001)
The compiled building codes are later brought by colonists to create new settlements, reproducing the morphology across multiple towns but each time in a pattern that is adapted to the local context. Early town planning efforts are attempts at regularizing the building codes in order to plan for long-term organization of cities, but maintain the spontaneous production process. Most notably the rapid urbanization of New York City was accomplished by very simple rules on the size of blocks laid out in the 1811 Commissioners Plan for New York. Unlike the experience of urbanization in previous centuries, where urban growth was slow and often stagnant, the urbanization of New York took place in a time of rapid social and economic changes, and the city government had to invent building codes involving issues that never could arise in a pre-capitalist society: first the tenement, then the skyscraper, and ultimately, the automobile.
Modernism: the replacement for the spontaneous order
Architects and urban planners of the early 20th century, confident in the techniques of engineering and industrial production, believed that the spontaneous city had become irrational and had to be replaced with a new design fully integrating new industrial technology. The Swiss architect Le Corbusier is famous for designing a complete city around the automobile and building models of his design. In so doing he adopted a process of urbanization that was completely planned hierarchically, applying the processes familiar to architects at the scale of an entire city. He also ridiculed the morphology of spontaneous cities as being the product of donkey-paths.


This scale model of Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin marks the turning point where city plans as constraints on individual initiative are replaced with architectural design at the scale of millions of inhabitants. (Le Corbusier, 1964)
Although the architectural program of high-rise living of Le Corbusier was discovered to be a colossal failure, the modernist process of development replaced spontaneous urbanization in the industrialized world. The housing subdivision substituted adequately for the high-rise tower block, providing affordable housing in large numbers to a war-impoverished society. This production process is still in force today, separating cities into three distinct zones: residential subdivisions, industrial and office parks, and commercial strips.
Modern city planning has been successful at its stated objective, producing a city designed specifically around automobile use, yet it was immediately and has been perpetually the target of criticisms. Most significantly the vocabulary of these criticisms had to be invented in order to spell out the critics’ thoughts because the type of deficiency they were observing had never been seen. Words like placeless or cookie-cutter were invoked but fell on the deaf ears of urban planners who were trained in Cartesian processes and industrial production techniques.
The most devastating criticism of modernist urban planning came in the form of a sociological study and personal defense of the spontaneous city, the book Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. (Jacobs, 1961) In it she described in great details how the functions of a spontaneous city related and supported each other. Her concluding chapter, the kind of problem a city is, is still the most relevant. In it she attacks the scientific foundations of urban planning at a paradigmatic level, and claims that the methodology of the life sciences, at the time undergoing the revolution created by the discovery of DNA, is the correct approach to studying cities.
Death and Life of Great American Cities has been adopted by contemporary urban planners as a textbook for urbanity. Its descriptions of the characteristics of a city are now the models upon which new developments are planned. The old urban development of housing subdivisions and office parks is being substituted for the new urban development that has streets, blocks, and mixed uses, just as Jacobs had described to be characteristic of life in the city. A major difference between Jane Jacobs’ preferred city and the new urban plans remains. The layout of mixed uses is organized and planned in the same process as Le Corbusier planned his city designs. The scientific suggestions of Jacobs have been ignored.
The discovery of emergence and complexity science
In the time since Jacobs published her attack on planning science molecular biology has made great technological achievements and provided countless insights into the morphology of life. In parallel the computer revolution has transformed the technology of every human activity, including that of design. But the computer revolution brought along some paradigm-altering discoveries along with its powerful technology. In geometry, the sudden abundance of computing power made it possible for Benoit Mandelbrot to investigate recursive functions and his discovery, fractal geometry, generated a universe of patterns that occurred in many aspects of the physical universe as well as living organisms. (Mandelbrot, 1986)
Some thinkers saw that the life sciences were part of a much more general scientific domain. They formed the Santa Fe Institute and under the label complexity studied not only organisms but also groups of organisms, weather systems, abstract computational systems and social systems. This research formed a body of theory called complexity science that has resulted in the creation of similar research institutes in many other places, including some centers dedicated specifically to urban complexity.
Their scientific revolution culminated in two major treatises within the last decade, both from physicists practicing in a field of complexity. The first was A New Kind of Science by computer scientist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram, 2002), where he presents an alternative scientific method necessary to explore the type of processes that traditional science has failed to explain, presenting a theory of the universe as a computational rule system instead of a mathematical system. The second was The Nature of Order (Alexander, 2004) by architect Christopher Alexander, where he presents a theory of morphogenesis for both natural physical phenomena and human productions.
A definition of emergence
To define what is meant by emergence we will use the abstract computational system upon which Wolfram bases his theories, the cellular automaton. Each cell in a row is an actor, making a decision on its next action based on its state and the states of its direct neighbors (its context). All cells share the same rule set to determine how to do this, that is to say all cells will act the same way with the same context. In this way each row is the product of the actions of the cells in a previous row, forming a feedback loop. The patterns of these rows are not in themselves interesting, but when collected in a sequence and displayed as a two-dimensional matrix, they develop complex structures in this dimension.



The 30th rule of all possible rules of one-dimensional cellular automata produces a chaotic fractal when displayed as a two-dimensional matrix, but most other rules do not create complex two-dimensional structures. The first line of the matrix is a single cell that multiplies into three cells in the second line in accordance with the transformation rules pictured below the matrix. This process is reiterated for the change from the second to the third line, and so on. All the information necessary to create structures of this complexity is contained within the rules and the matrix-generating process. (Wolfram, 2002)
The same general principle underlies all other emergent processes. In a biological organism a single cell multiplies into exponentially greater number of cells that share the same DNA rules. These cells create structures in a higher dimension, tissues and organs, which form the entire organism. In the insect world complex nests such as termite colonies emerge from the instinctual behavior of individual termites. And in urbanization, buildings form into shopping streets, industrial quarters and residential neighborhoods, themselves overlapping into a single whole system, the city.
References
Alexander, Christopher (2004). ‘The Process of Creating Life’, The Nature of Order Vol. 2, Center for Environmental Structure
Corbusier, Le (1964). La Ville Radieuse. Éléments d’une doctrine d’urbanisme pour l’équipement de la civilisation machiniste, Édition Vincent Fréal et Cie, Paris, France
Hakim, Besim (2001). ‘Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from Sixth-Century Palestine,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historian, vol. 60 no. 1
Hayek, Friedrich A. (1973). ‘Rules and Order’, Law, Legislation and Liberty Vol. 1, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London and Henley, UK
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House and Vintage Books, New York, USA
Mandelbrot, Benoit (1986). The Fractal Geometry of Nature, W.H. Freeman, New York, USA
Wolfram, Stephen (2002). A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, USA

What is Generative Architecture?



What is Generative Architecture?
A bicycle is a static system of interactive parts, governed by environmental forces and component relationships. The bicycle requires a skilled cyclist to become a dynamic system successfully operating in changing conditions. Like a bicycle under rider-power, an inhabited building is dynamic. Architects arrange a future building to suit its inhabitants; they become generative architects when they treat building design as component set invention, and if they subject the proposed components to design development using semi-autonomous or autonomous rule-systems.

http://www.lamastudio.com/theory_GenerativeArchitecture.asp

5.14.2012

instant city by Archigram

http://wanderinglondon-ming.blogspot.co.uk


Instant City forms part of a series of investigations into mobile facilities which are in conjunction with fixed establishments requiring expanded services over a limited period in order to satisfy an extreme but temporary problem.

[Instant City is] A research project based on the conflict between local, culturally isolated, centres and the well serviced facilities of the metropolitan regions. Investigating the effect and practicality of injecting the metropolitan dynamic into these centres by means of a mobile facility carrying the information – education – entertainment services of the city, extended through the establishment of this together with the national telecommunication network. The initial study for this project is to be published in May. Grant approval for the main stage is under negotiation at this time. This project is carried out in co-operation with the Architectural Association. The Systems Consultant is Professor Gordon Pask of Brunel University Department of Cybernetics; Audio Visual Consultants, Program Partnership; Film Consultant Dennis Postle of B.B.C. Television.

The illustration shows a possible configuration when the Instant City is attached to a declining industrial area. The structures used are known forms such as toweres as in building operations, air structures and converted commercial vehicles.

Archigram


The Notion

In most civilised countries, localities and their local cultures remain slow moving, often undernourished and sometimes resentful of the more favoured metropolitan regions (such as New York, the West Coast of the United States, London and Paris). Whilst much is spoken about cultural links and about the effect of television as a window on the world (and the inevitable global village), people still feel frustrated. Younger people even have a suspicion that they are missing out on things that could widen their horizons. They would like to be involved in aspects of life where their own experiences can be seen as part of what is happening.

Against this is the reaction to the physical nature of the metropolis – and somehow there is this paradox – if only we could enjoy it but stay where we are.

The Instant City project reacts to this with the idea of a `travelling metropolis’, a package that comes to a community, giving it a taste of the metropolitan dynamic – which is temporarily grafted on to the local centre – and whilst the community is still recovering from the shock, uses this catalyst as the first stage of a national hook-up. A network of information-education-entertainment –‘play-and-know yourself’ facilities.

In England the feeling of being left out of things has for a long time affected the psychology of the provinces, so that people become either overprotective about local things or carry in their minds a ridiculous inferiority complex about the metropolis. But we are nearing a time when the leisure period of the day is becoming really significant; and with the effect of television and better education people are realising that they could do things and know things, they could express themselves (or enjoy themselves in a freer way) and they are becoming dissatisfied with the television set, the youth club or the pub.

A Background to Archigram Work

With our notion of the robot (the symbol of the responsive machine that collects many services in one appliance), we begin to play with the notion that the environment could be conditioned not only by the set piece assembly but by infinite variables determined by your wish, and the robot reappears in the Instant City in several of the assemblies.

The planning implications of Instant City have emerged more and more strongly as the project has developed, so that by the time we are making the sequence describing the airship’s effect upon the sleeping town, it is the infiltrationary dynamic of the town itself that is as fascinating as the technical dynamic of the airship. Again we have to reflect on the psychology of a country such as England, where there is a historical suggestion that vast upheaval is unlikely. We are likely to capitalise on existing institutions and existing facilities whilst complaining about their inefficiency – but a country such as England must now live by its wits or perish, and for its wits it needs its culture.

A Programme Background

The likely components are audio-visual display systems, projection television, trailered units, pneumatic and lightweight structures and entertainments facilities, exhibits, gantries and electric lights.

This involves the theoretical territory between the ‘hardware’ (or the design of buildings and places) and ‘software’ (or the effect of information and programming on the environment). Theoretically it also involves the notions of urban dispersal and the territory between entertainment and learning.
The Instant City could be made a practical reality since at every stage it is based upon existing techniques and their application to real situations. There is a combination of several different artefacts and systems that have hitherto remained as separate machines, enclosures or experiments. The programme involved gathering information about an itinerary of communities and the available utilities (clubs, local radio, universities, etc) so that the ‘City’ package is always complementary rather than alien. We then tested this proposition against particular samples.

The first stage programme consisted of assemblies carried by approximately 20 vehicles, operable in most weathers and carrying a complete programme. These were applied to localities in England and in the Los Angeles area of California. Later, having become interested in the versatility of the airship, we came to propose this as another means of transporting the Instant City assembly (a great and silent bringer of the whole conglomeration).

Later we applied the method of the Instant City to proposals for servicing the Documenta exhibition at Kassel in Germany. By this time also there had developed a feedback of ideas and techniques between this project and our Monte Carlo entertainments facility.

A Typical Sequence of Operations (truck-borne version)

1. The components of the ‘City’ are loaded on to the trucks and trailers at base.

2. A series of ‘tent’ units are floated from balloons which are towed to the destination by aircraft.

3. Prior to the visit of the ‘City’ a team of surveyors, electricians, etc have converted a disused building in the chosen community into a collection-information and relay-station. Landline links have been made to local schools and to one or more major (permanent) cities.

4. The ‘City’ arrives. It is assembled according to site and local characteristics. Not all components will necessarily be used. It may infiltrate local buildings and streets, it may fragment.

5. Events, displays and educational programmes are supplied partly by the local community and partly by the ‘City’ agency. In addition, major use is made of local fringe elements: fairs, festivals, markets, societies, with trailers, stalls, displays and personnel accumulating on an often ad hoc basis. The event of the Instant City might be a bringing together of events that would otherwise occur separately in the district.

6. The overhead tent, inflatable windbreaks and other shelters are erected. Many units of the ‘City’ have their own tailored enclosure.

7. The ‘City’ stays for a limited period.

8. It then moves on to the next location.

9. After a number of places have been visited the local relay stations are linked together by landline. Community One is now feeding part of the programme to be enjoyed by Community Twenty.

10. Eventually, by this combination of physical and electronic, perceptual and programmatic events and the establishment of local display centres, a ‘City’ of communication might exist, the metropolis of the national network.

11. Almost certainly, travelling elements would modify over a period of time. It is even likely that after two to three years they would phase out and let the network take over.

12. As the Instant City study developed, certain items emerged in particular. First, the idea of a ‘soft-scene monitor’, a combination teaching-machine, audio-visual jukebox, environmental simulator, and, from a theoretical point of view, a realisation of the ‘Hardware/Software’ debate (which is still going on in our Monte Carlo work), as the notion of an electronically aided responsive environment. Next, the dissolve of the original large, trucked, circus-like show into a smaller and very mobile element backed by a wonderful, magical dream descending from the skies. The model of the small unit suggests two trucks and a helicopter as the carriage, with quick folding arenas and apparatus that can quickly be fitted into the village hall. Another stimulus was the invitation to design the ‘event structure’ for the 1972 Kassel Documenta, an elaborate art/event/theatre scene requiring a high level of servicing but a minimum of interference with the ‘open-air creative act’. The ‘Kassel-Kit’ of apparatus can therefore be considered as a direct extension of the original IC Kit.


Are we back to heroics then, with a giant, pretty and evocative object? The Blimp: the airship: beauty, disaster and history. On the one hand we were designing a totally unseen and underground building at Monte Carlo, and on the other hand flirting with the airborne will-o-the-wisp. The Instant City as a series of trucks rushing round like ants might be practical and immediate, but we could not escape the loveliness of the idea of Instant City appearing out of nowhere, and after the ‘event’ stage, lifting up its skirts and vanishing. In fact, the primary interest was spontaneity, and the remaining aim to knit into any locale as effectively as possible. For Archigram, the airship is a device: a giant skyhook.
Operationally, there were two possibilities. A simple airship with apparatus carried in the belly and able to drop down as required. Otherwise, a more sophisticated notion of a ‘megastructure of the skies’. Ron Herron’s drawings (ref) suggest that the ‘ship’ can fragment, and the audio/visual elements are scattered around a patch of sky. Once again, the project work of the group has picked up a dream of it own past – the ‘Story of a Thing’ made (almost) real.

We then built a model, which could hang out its entrails in a number of ways. This was the simpler ‘ship’, which reads with the scenario of a small town transformation. In the drawing with airship ‘Rupert’, a major shift in Instant City was first articulated: the increasing feeling for change-by-infiltration. The ‘city’ is creeping into half-finished buildings, using the local draper’s store, gas showrooms and kerbside, as well as the more sophisticated set-up. And there is a mysterious creeping animal: the ‘leech’ truck, which is able to climb up any structure and service from it: with the resulting possibility of ‘bugging’ the whole town as necessary. Gently then, the project dissolves from the simple mechanics or hierarchies of ‘structuring’ and like-objects. Just as did the Plug-In City: it sowed the seeds of its own fragmentation into investigations of a gentler, more subtle environmental thing.

Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].

5.13.2012

Independent at Home: Six Systems for Self-Sufficient Living

http://www.thecoolist.com/independent-at-home-six-systems-for-self-sufficient-living/



In a world that is constantly evolving, sometimes for the worse, independent living can be an invaluable discipline.  With smart tactics and technologies, you can grow your own food, power your own home and sever the wires that make you dependent on anyone but yourself.  In celebrating the independent spirit, we’ve explored six systems for self-sufficient living that make for an exciting, rewarding and enriched life of greater independence.  Say goodbye to the power grid, the supermarket and the cable company– you won’t be needing them any more.
This post is brought to you by Saab. At Saab, we believe in independent thinking. It’s in everything we do.Learn more here.

Vertical Hydroponic Gardening

It’s hard to beat the flavor of food grown by your own labor.  Urban gardening is a fast-growing trend, and those with an understanding of hydroponic technology are at this trend’s forefront.  Vertical Hydroponics allows a gardener to produce large quantities of vegetables in a limited amount of space.  Above, chef John Mooney uses 60 aeroponic garden towers to produce 1000 plants on the roof of his NYC restaurant Bell Book and Candle.  These towers periodically pump nutrient-rich water through the roots of its plants, using only 10% of the water of traditional gardening while significantly increasing growth rates.  If you have the space and the sunlight, you can set up your own vertical hydroponic garden using this technology.  Companies likeMyTowerGarden and others produce easy-to-use aeroponic kits, while others have opted to design and build their own system.  In a small amount of space and with a small amount of water, tech-savvy gardeners can produce enough vegetables to sustain a household– and cut the supermarket out of the equation.
Vertical Hydroponic Gardening Gallery
  

Cutting the Cables, Living Wirelessly

In the modern home, today’s consumer pays bills to cable companies, internet service providers and electric companies.  Combined, a renter or home owner shells out nearly $200 a month on average for services that are redundant in nature.  With a 4G connection from your mobile provider and a suite of alternative energy sources, each of these hard lines can be cut for a 21st century way of living.  Your communications (voice, data and video) can be ran off of your mobile device if it is 4G capable and you live within reach of a 4G tower.  Sure, the prices from mobile providers have a long way to fall, but this is the first time in mobile history where your phone’s internet connection is as fast or faster than your DSL/cable line.  You can pay out $200 a month for standard services, or your phone can compliment your electric system for off-grid, wireless living without the added cost or restraint.  (as an example, this article was researched, written and produced on a laptop using our phone’s 4G wi-fi hotspot functionality)

Rainwater Storage and Reuse

Your hydroponic garden, your lawn and your landscaping all need water to survive, but that water doesn’t need to come from the utility company.  Using rainwater storage and reuse systems, individuals can collect water from rain and use it for non-potable purposes, a practice that is good for your wallet and the environment.  Above, DIY hacker Chad Person has designed a network of rain barrels that can store nearly 200 gallons of rain water for reuse.  This system connects to a house’s gutter downspouts and fills during rainfall.  The natural pressure of the water within forces water out of the spigots at their base as needed.  Connect a hose or fill a bucket and you can keep that lawn, landscaping and hydroponic garden kicking when things get dry.
Rainwater Storage and Reuse Gallery
  

Passive Lighting and Climate Control

It is remarkable what a skylight, a breezeway, a green roof and the winter sun can do for a home’s energy costs.  Passive lighting and climate control use intelligent design and building practices to take advantage of nature when heating, cooling and lighting a home.  A skylight, like in the image above, can single-handedly light a room without the need for electrical lighting.  Cross-ventilation can help cool a room during warmer months.  Green roofs can act as natural insulation all year round.  Last, designing a home around the annual shifting of the sun can keep a home cool during the summer and warm during the winter.  Aiming windows at the winter sun can bring its heat into a home, while the summer sun can bounce off of a well-placed awning.
Passive Lighting and Climate Control Gallery
  

Urban Livestock Farming

So your hydroponic garden is kicking out more vegetables than you know what to do with– but what about eggs, milk and cheese?  Urban livestock farming is another trend growing in cities around the world.  On rooftops and back yards, urban farmers raise chickens, goats and other animals for their eggs and milk.  Designer Frederik Roije created the stylish, modern hen house shown above, a reflection of the interest young creatives have on self-sufficiency in urban environments.  City laws and neighborhood associations may not take kindly to certain livestock, so it’s important to find out what you can and cannot keep.  If you’re in the clear, a pair of goats and a chicken coop will yield more omelets and homemade chevre than anyone could desire.  Surprisingly, goats make great pets as well– and they’ll quickly replace your lawn mower by keeping your grass short.
Urban Livestock Farming Gallery
  

Renewable Residential Energy Systems

While fossil fuels and other energy costs continue to rise, the price of renewable energy systems continue to drop.  Today, homeowners can supplement or replace the energy grid with solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal systems.  Each of these systems carries a hefty price tag up front, but the lifetime savings of these systems can be measured in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Photovoltaic solar panels can be attached to roofs or open spaces in yards, some of which can provide all energy needs for homes in sunny climates.  Wind turbines are usually more supplemental than grid-replacing, but “grid tie” wind turbine systems can generate a lot of juice in windy environments.  Last, geothermal energy systems are growing in popularity, allowing homeowners to tap into the earth’s natural heat to to manage their home’s climate control.  A suite of these renewable options can be used in concert to keep a home running, and small-scale systems can be used to replace part of a home’s energy needs.  A single solar panel could be enough to power your aeroponic garden, for example.
Alternative Energy Systems Gallery
  
Thanks for reading, we hope to have inspired you to explore some new options for self-sufficient, independent living at home.  Do you have a tactic or technology you use to live independently that we didn’t mention?  We’d love to hear about it in the comments.  Also, if you use any of the above methods, feel free to tell us about your experience!