Wooden Bridges

June 2, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Bridges, Civil engineering, Construction, Random, Travel, Wood

wooden bridge new

This wooden bridge (length 32 metres, width 12 metres, height 16 metres) was inaugurated on April 15th in Sneek, the Netherlands. The “Krúsrak” is the first wooden bridge in the world that can support the heaviest load class of 60 tons. Its life expectancy is 80 years.

Thanks to a chemical treatment of the softwood, the bridge can withstand insects, fungi and the harsh weather conditions in the most northern province of the Netherlands (Friesland). Wooden bridges require much less energy to construct than steel or concrete bridges.

Only the road-surface of the “Krúsrak” is made of steel – originally it was planned to be of wood, too, but then it should have been 2 metres thick. More information here (in English) and here (in Dutch).

Related: Covered bridges – how to build and rebuild them. Also: wooden pipelines.

Waste Heat

May 31, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Energy

“A 2007 study of Tokyo showed that summer temperatures in neighborhoods with office buildings are warmer by nearly 2 degrees Celsius when air conditioning units are running – because as the units cool the insides of buildings, they also pump heat into the air.” Read, via.

Homebrewed CPU

May 31, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Computers, DIY

Homebred CPU

“Intel’s fabrication plants can churn out hundreds of thousands of processor chips a day. But what does it take to handcraft a single 8-bit CPU and a computer? Give or take 18 months, about $1,000 and 1,253 pieces of wire.”

Via Wired. More about the project here.

Magic Motorways

May 21, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Cars, Futurism, Streets, Travel, Utopias

Futurama city for the motor age

In the “Highways and Horizons” pavilion at the 1939-40 World’s Fair in New York, General Motors presented Americans with “Futurama”, a vision of the city of 1960. Norman Bel Geddes designed an enormous scale model, showing a utopian city rebuilt for the motor age, completely separating cars and pedestrians. Five million people came to see the exhibit, waiting more than an hour for their turn to get a sixteen-minute glimpse at the motorways of the world of tomorrow. There
is a technicolor movie of the show online, as well as the accompanying book that Geddes wrote to explain his (and the motor industry’s) ideas (or propaganda): “Magic Motorways“.

Update: another movie here (via). Related: London traffic improvements (the Bressey Report, 1938).

How to Depave the Planet

May 18, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Farming, Gardening, Streets, Travel

how to depave the planet

The crack garden. “A crack team of guerrilla gardeners will undertake tactical missions to etch similar tectonic fissures in the parking lots of failed suburban malls and abandoned inner neighborhoods of post-industrial cities. With pneumatic drills or with pick axes and some elbow grease, they’ll wound the earth’s (un)natural asphalt skin, so that forgotten ecologies may return and hopefully fester”. Via Pruned. More how-to information here.

A Perpetuum Mobile Railroad

May 17, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Inventions that never made it, Travel

Perpetuum mobile railroad

The March 1925 issue of Science and Invention featured this Aerial Railroad. By a combination of inclined ramps and overhead suspension from cleverly curved tracks the “trolley car” passenger vehicle could go forever without power. It falls while suspended in the air from the downward inclined track, swinging forward as it does. When it contacts the lower tracks its momentum carries it up the inclined track until the whole process repeats. Source.