NO TECH MAGAZINE

Timbrel Vaulting in South Africa by Peter Rich Architects

December 21, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Construction, Random, Roofs

Reader Sergio Carratalá informs us of yet another recent example of timbrel vaulting – a medieval building method that we described extensively in “Tiles as a substitute for steel“.

It concerns the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa, designed by Peter Rich Architects from Johannesburg. The project won the World Building Award at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) held in Barcelona last month.

The Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, which is built to house artifacts from the region’s prehistory, was constructed using local materials and using the skills and labour of local people. Unemployed South Africans were trained in the manufacture of earth tiles and in building the
timbrel vaults.

Timbrel vaulting (or “Catalan vaulting”) is being rediscovered as an ecological building technique because it saves large amounts of building materials and thus embodied energy. This also makes it a cheap building method, at least in regions were hand labour is affordable. Via Sergio Carratalá.

More pictures below (courtesy of Peter Rich and the WAF).

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Art Can Save The World – But Then We Need More Artists

December 21, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Art, Trash

These days, artists have no difficulty in finding free materials to work with. The same stuff can be used over and over again, for different purposes. One artwork can be transformed into another. Why can’t our industrial production system work the same way? Because it is automated and needs standardized parts. Mass production and re-use of scavenged materials don’t match, unless the materials undergo the (mostly energy-intensive) intermediate step of recycling.

Above: Hubcap creatures by Ptolemy Elrington (also see his lamps – why do we need new materials to make lamps? There is enough trash in the world to make lamps for another 10,000 years).

Windmills and Wind Motors – How to Build and Run Them (1910)

December 15, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Random, Wind Power, Wind turbines, Windmills

“I have endeavoured in the following pages not only to interest the practical amateur in a branch of mechanics unfortunately much neglected, but also to present a series of practical original designs that should prove useful to every reader from the youngest to the most advanced.”

Chapter 1 : windmill evolution
Chapter 2 : a small working model windmill
Chapter 3 : a small American type windmill
Chapter 4 : a small working windmill
Chapter 5 : a practical working windmill
Chapter 6 : production of electricity by wind power

Windmills and wind motors – how to build and run them (1910).

The declining marginal return of research and development

December 13, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Joseph Tainter, Quotes, Technology, Technology productivity paradox

The decreasing benefits from specialized, derivative work, viewed from the perspective of the overall history of science, are acquired at substantially greater cost. The costs to societies of early support of science tended to be minimal. Generally, as in the ancient Mediterranean or Medieval Europe, it consisted of little more than the support of individual naturalists or mathematicians and their students, or the support of religious specialists who also performed scientific inquiry. Science today, in contrast, is a costly process involving complex institutions, sophisticated technology, and large, interdisciplinary research teams.

This costly science certainly produces astonishing results, but these cannot be claimed to be more valuable than the generalized knowledge of earlier, less expensive science. As impressive, for example, as modern travel technology is, it is hard to argue that it is of greater consequence than the development of the wheel, or of water craft, or of the steam engine. As astounding as it is to put human beings on the moon, this is not of greater import than the principles of geometry or the theory of gravity. However valuable may be genetic engineering, the benefits of this complex process must always be attributed in part to the nearly cost-free work of Gregor Mendel. (…). Exponential growth in the size and costliness of science, in fact, is simply necessary to maintain a constant rate of progress.

Quoted from: “The Collapse of Complex Societies“, Joseph A. Tainter, 1988 (Amazon link). Excerpts.