Supersize Ant Architecture

an anthropological study has filled an ant colony with cement, and then dug away the surrounding earth to reveal the huge structure.


Giant Ant Colony is a World Wonder - Watch more Funny Videos

this video has gone a bit viral, at least with the people I know, but its unbelievable. my initial reaction was that i wanted to ditch being a human and jump on the ant wagon, live inside one of those things, be part of something of that scale that is a complete communal effort of epic proportions. and there are obvious reasons to why a person would think that, but clearly being an ant, you wouldn't appreciate your own creation. this basic thought had initially failed to enter my mind. There's a quote from Carl Sagan's cosmos series that i've been talking about a lot with a friend at the moment as well that sums up this dilemma completely, 'We are a way for the cosmos to know itself'. The fact that we can examine, marvel at and understand the beauty of this ant colony, is crazy in itself.

Ants have the perfect blueprint for intelligent life. Whereas humans are largely focused on selfish gains, the ants are biologically programmed to share life, the workload and the product. and they don't even have to think about it. There are clearly examples of where humans have combined to create a huge feat of engineering or building, but this is usually overshadowed by a tyrannical source of power. maybe the internet, world wide web, is our equivalent to this huge infrastructure?it seems that although we are endowed with this huge cocktail of conscience and intelligent thought there will eternally be the ones who use this to bad effect. could you see a person, group of people, linking up to span a bridge across a huge gorge and then letting the rest of the population walk over them to get to the other side?even if it was possible.

Heres an old related article i read recently, from New Scientist:

An ant "empire" has been found stretching 6000 kilometres from Italy to Portugal. The supercolony of Argentine ants is thought to be the largest cooperative unit ever recorded, says Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (early edition). The ants, which were introduced to Europe by accident in the 1920s, instantly accept genetically similar newcomers into nests even if they are from distant colonies. The empire's reign is threatened, however, by a second supercolony of hostile ants that has established itself in eastern Spain.

glad i've finally covered ants, there was some greater point to this post. I forgot it.

Giddings

Haiti How-to: Shelter.

Over the last 2 days, a workshop has been taking place at Brookes University run by Bill Flinn of CENDEP; The constructing of a temporary timber structure for disaster situations, such as Haiti at present. Though essentially a simple and cheap structure, it is structurally very strong, and hurricane and earthquake-proof to relatively high standards. The aim was to film or photograph the exercise as an educational resource for redevelopment.

It is a basic design of four joining wall panels and a roof structure of rafters and batons constructed in situe. It is the smaller details, bracing and connections which are key.

 

The 2 side walls have 1 diagonal wooden brace each, the timber offering strength in both tension and compression. The taller wall, to demonstrate an alternative, has a metal cross brace (the metal is only strong in tension).

Joints between many timber strips have metal taping nailed across, which increases the strength of connections immensely. A test conducted at the end of the 2 days showed how much stronger the metal taping made the joints; a small strip of metal made such a difference that it had to be repeatedly pushed back and forth until the metal snapped. This  behaviour is very unlike that of wind, showing that simply adding a strip of metal to each joint effectively makes the structure hurricane proof. The diagonal wooden bracing is flush with the verticals. This makes cladding easier and more flexible. In reality the cladding can be made from any available resources; sheet wood/metal, bamboo, leaves etc

We were amazed at how easy and quickly this temporary home for 5 could be erected, and really got us thinking. The shelter is only intended as a temporary solution, potentially housing a family for 3 years.

The possibilities also extend to ideas for summer shelters at home and just as easily an entire house, and show ways to simply build modular communal life.

Pictures and video from the Haiti shelter workshop are going to be made into a PDF and publisised on the internet as an educational resource for survivors in Haiti. Hopefully it will be picked up quickly enough to make a difference on the ground before hurricane season begins.

Links

We've added a few links on the right to other peoples blogs and websites, either people we know, or interesting strangers:

- aM laboratory : website of a guy called andre michelle, described by himself as a "collection of my studies, extracted while developing my commercial projects or just by researching new technologies". basically this guy works with flash programing. i dont know a lot about what he actually does to make this things but they are fun to play with. 'ToneMatrix' is cool.

- BLDGBLOG : the blog of Geoff Manaugh, speculation on architectures of all sorts. the book is also worth a long read, especially the chapters 'music, sound and noise' and 'landscape futures. book.

- Kit Penn - Joe Penn's dad. Creative photography experiments and relevant poems/texts.

- Shaun Ryder - fellow architecture student. shaun can draw like a chinaman.but with such good theorys and concepts as well. his project last term for a nudist club was sick! have a look. do it now

- Atlas Obscura - A site with loads of nuts places in the world that you can marvel at and will probably never visit. personal favourites: 'newnes glow worm tunnel' and 'ministers treehouse'. my perfect house would be a combination of the two.

- Tomorrows Thoughts Today - another architecture blog, the webspace of Liam Young and Darryl Chen. loads of interesting posts on there ideas about dystopia/utopia/urbanism etc.