Design concept for a collapsible stackable city car

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2009.Page 214 blank.Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-213).Problems associated with the massive adoption of automobiles have become the center of a world-wide debate. While new technologies will eventually discover a sustainable solution to the environmental concerns (pollution, depletion of energy sources), cities will continue struggling to accommodate the increasing number of cars. The ability for people to move quickly across large distances and the infrastructure required by the automobile (mainly roads and parking) have also created an unsustainable urban landscape in many countries. The argument of this work is that these problems are partly the result of an outdated set of design premises for the automobile which have not changed since it appeared in the late 1800's. A typical car is too big, too heavy, most of the times it only transports one person for a few miles, and then it remains unused for 95% of the time. These inefficiencies multiplied by the staggering number of vehicles in circulation have resulted in huge energy losses, pollution and vast portions of the city lost in support systems for the car. The work discussed here proposes a different approach to urban transportation, by combining the advantages of mass transit with the convenience of personal mobility. Instead of designing automobiles to fullfil any kind of travel need and additional parking structures destined to accommodate 85% of these automobiles, this work proposes a reconfiguration of the car based on the characteristics of the majority of vehicular urban travel.(cont.) The design of the car operates on a shared-ownership model, with a collapsible structure that allows vehicles to contract and park in stacks. Based on the available data, results indicate that such a design could potentially reduce the actual space requirements for a car between 1/20th and 1/75th. The design of the car is complemented by the use of electric in-wheel motors, developed in connection with the Smart Cities group run at the MIT Media Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Mitchell, for additional efficiency, especially in terms of energy consumption.by Fanceo Vairani.Ph.D

On the perception of computer-generated architectural representations

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78).Representations of an architectural space have a diversity of purposes and their implementation should be carefully evaluated in order to be coherent with those objectives. Some of them are analytical descriptions, where its components are easily identifiable but relations among them may appear distorted to enhance a particular attribute. Methods used to represent a space, however, are also capable of a more expressive nature, as in art. Those expressions need not be an attempt to evoke the experience of the space in consideration, but just ideas the architect wants to share with his reality. The use of digital media allows incorporating time as another component to the spatial properties that static media has, expanding its possibilities both in terms of content as well as of form. This thesis suggests the use of diverse film theories as referential background for the creation of motion graphics, as a newly developed kind of architectural representations. Film theory and practice should help understand the implications of adding this other dimension to static images, as it resembles a proportional similarity to motion graphics. This does not imply that these two channels are the same or incomparably different. Hypothetically, there is a common field that brings them together and from which we can learn similarities as well as differences. A number of experiments were performed to test the validity of some of the notions expressed by several film theories in the realm of computer-generated motion graphics. A case study was selected to work with and a number of experiments would render several alternative representations of this particular architectural event, in this case, the church of Saint Pierre, in Firrniny, France, designed by Le Corbusier in 1962. They represented the same object, but these representations would have a completely different character and, arguably, might evoke a different reading of the space. These studies are an attempt to understand how to synthesize visually different ideas and convey distinct meanings to provoke the reading of the building in divergent directions.by Franco Vairani.S.M