ARCH-4980.3 | Carla Leitao, Adjunct Professor

CLOUD POWER
Spatial Infrastructures

JOHN BAKER

The current electrical power system is pervasive throughout our culture and is coupled with many other modern infrastructural network systems. The power system has been in place for many years and has become an essential part of modern society. This is most prevalent during times of disaster when the system is fractured, causing an internal and external rolling infrastructural breakdown.

Current systems of power exchange exist as closed linear connections between objects or buildings within a space with little influence upon the surrounding urban constructs, beyond urban planning. The static point-to-point, hierarchical branching, system exists pervasively and homogeneously throughout all urban typologies with little ability for adaptation and a vulnerability for collapse from singular instances of disconnection.

Through the emerging technology of magnetic resonant coupling technology developed at Witricity Corp. there is the potential to create a radial spatial, non-linear, infrastructure of exchange.  The technology has been demonstrated within the context of a single enclosed space, but how will it manifest itself within our open urban context?  The deployment of a spatial wireless infrastructure will be needed along with plans for future urban developement.

A spatial infrastructure would mean that the surrounding urban space, along with spatial objects, would be curators to an always adapting exchange system of multiple connections. Curation would be focused on the ability of urban frameworks and conditions to affect the frequency and density of social occupation to drive the confluence and exchange of energy and people. Protocols of transactions with value storage will be essential to drive the overall system, where exchange would reward the more fortunate and help the less for the health of the overall local population; resource equalization.

The system will establish itself as a new construct of our urban environment that will move beyond the original disaster influence.  The system will form to adapt our habits and patterns of urban occupation, and enable the bottom-up developement of new individual and cooperative organizations.