The Mission of Terreform ONE

Terreform ONE [Open Network Ecology] is a nonprofit architecture and urban design research-based consulting group.  We endeavor to combat the extinction of all planetary species through pioneering acts of design. Our projects aim to illuminate the environmental possibilities of cities and landscapes across the globe.

We operate as an interdisciplinary lab of specialists advancing the practice of socio-ecological design. The group cultivates resilience through innovations in building, transportation, infrastructure, water, food, waste treatment, air quality, and energy.

Our collaborative process includes speculating about the ways in which emerging technologies will impact future urban generations and local biodiversity. As an organization, we strive to create inclusive spaces and systems that manifest environmental and social justice for all beings.

Design Against Extinction

Terreform ONE is Hiring - Fellowship Jobs Open!

Terreform ONE Fellowships

Description

You are invited to submit an application for the highly selective six-month research and design fellowship program sponsored by the RNR Family Foundation. Ideas and products from the fellowship will be integrated into a large-scale installation for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Triennial. Each design fellow will be given the opportunity to utilize a diverse array of advanced fabrication/rapid prototyping techniques to examine socio-ecological theory and species habitat quality. Our overall intent is to end extinction by all means possible on this fragile planet. Hosted by Terreform ONE in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s premiere New Lab maker village, it is an interdisciplinary platform to engage divergent ideas about urban systems and the environment.

Skills + Qualifications

We are looking for architects/landscape architects/industrial designers who are impassioned, intellectually rigorous, and highly flexible with outstanding skills in one or more of the following areas:

·       Environmental Science, Ecology, or Conservation Theory

·       Physical Modeling and Prototyping

·       Rendering, Visualization or Animation

·       Coding/Programming or VR/MR

Compensation

The fellows will be awarded a monthly stipend for the entirety of the program.

Schedule

The fellowship is divided into two three-month phases with the research phase commencing in October through December. After the holiday break, we will reconvene in January for the prototyping phase which runs until April. The program is structured to give the fellows the autonomy to follow research trajectories that lead them outside the studio into places such as the wood/machine shop, architectural archives, bio-hacking laboratories and more.

To Apply

Send a CV, portfolio of relevant work (3MB maximum), and cover letter to info@terreform.org. Your cover letter should express your unique talents and how you plan to impact this interdisciplinary research group, e.g. specialist fabrication skill, coding or programming language, designing in virtual reality platforms, and etc.

Select applicants will be interviewed via in-person or skype. No phone calls, please!

About

Terreform ONE is a nonprofit architecture, urban design, research, and consulting group that promotes smart design in cities. Through our projects and outreach efforts, we aim to illuminate the environmental possibilities of cities across the globe. 

Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Building in New York City with Terreform ONE

 

The Monarch Sanctuary (Lepidoptera terrarium) will be eight stories of new commercial construction in Nolita, NYC. Programmatically, the building space will mostly contain retail and office life. Yet central to its purpose is a semi-porous breeding ground, way station, and sanctuary for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). It is a pioneering building – one that aims to be ecologically generous, weaving butterfly conservation strategies into its design through the integration of open monarch habitat in its facades, roof, and atrium. Not just a building envelope, the edifice is a new biome of coexistence for people, plants, and butterflies.

The monarch butterfly of North America is a threatened species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services is currently assessing whether the monarch needs to be granted “endangered species” status, while the monarch population erodes due to the combined forces of agricultural pesticides and habitat loss. Monarchs are a delicate presence in New York City, migrating each year from Mexico and Florida to the city’s precious green spaces to lay their eggs on the milkweed plant.

This project will vitally serve as a large-scale Lepidoptera terrarium. A permeable vertical meadow, the Monarch Sanctuary is a double-skin facade integrated with an open garden that serves as a crucial way station and habitat for the at-risk butterfly. It will bolster the Monarch’s presence in the city through two strategies: open plantings of milkweed and nectar flowers on the roof, rear facade, and terrace will provide breeding ground and stopover habitat for wild monarchs, while semi-enclosed colonies in the atrium and street side double-skin facade will grow Monarch population. The insects will have fluid open access to join the wild population, enhancing overall species population numbers.


Our connection to the community of NYC is essential. The prime location will attract attention and educate the public on Monarch extinction. It has a total area of 30,000 square feet and is to be located in the heart of Nolita, between Soho and the burgeoning art district along the Bowery, and a few blocks west of the New Museum. The site is just around the corner from the Storefront for Art and Architecture and currently exists as two plots occupied by small residential buildings, which will be combined into a single property.


Although it is a relatively small commercial building by New York standards, the building will present a striking public face and a powerful argument in favor of a diversity of life forms in the city. It will face Petrosino Square, a small triangular paved public park, named after a fallen NYPD lieutenant. The façade of the Monarch Sanctuary building will add a lush vertical surface to the edge of the square.

The double-skin street facade, with a diagrid structure infilled glass at the outer layer and with “pillows” of EFTE foil at the inner layer, encloses a careful climate - controlled space, 3’ deep and 7 stories tall. This “vertical meadow,” the terrarium proper, serves as an incubator and safe haven for Monarchs in all seasons. It contains suspended milkweed vines and flowering plants to nourish the butterflies at each stage of their life cycle. Hydrogel bubbles on the EFTE help maintain optimal humidity levels, and sacs of algae help purify the air and the building wastewater. Solar panels on the roof provide renewable energy to assist in the powering the facilities. Butterflies can come and go as they need from inside the building skin system and roof.

Other features of the project are equally in service of the insects. LED screens at the street level provide magnified live views of the caterpillars and butterflies in the vertical meadow, which also connects to a multi-story atrium adjacent to the circulation core. Interior partitions are constructed from mycelium, and additional planting at the ceiling enhances the interior atmosphere and building biome. Hovering around the building, a few butterfly-shaped drones take readings and maps of the immediate microclimate. They return every few minutes to recharge, and their combined real-time data works to maintain the butterfly health.

The building is intended to serve as an object lesson in enhancing the urban environment with green technologies, including plant life and other creatures, in designing for other species, and in conveying images of new possibilities for the urban environment. This project alone will not save the Monarch but it will crucially raise awareness about our much-loved insect residents.

Terreform ONE
Principal Investigator: Mitchell Joachim.
Project Management: Vivian Kuan.
Advisors: Nina Edwards Anker, Lisa Richardson.
Architects / Designers: Christian Hubert, Nicholas Gervasi, Maria Aiolova, Kristina Goncharov, Yucel Guven, Zhan Xu, Larissa Belcic, Shahira Hammad, Deniz Onder, James Leonard, Zack Saunders, Xinye Lin, Sabrina Naumovski, Theo Dimitrasopoulos, Jules Pepitone, Dan Baker, Daniel S. Castaño, Aidan Nelson, Aleksandr Plotkin, Kristian Knorr, Sophie Falkeis, Rita Wang, Michael Brittenham.
Consultants: Bednark, Anouk Wipprecht, Simone Rothman.
Sponsors: BASF, Intel, RNR Foundation, Future Air.
Client: Kenmare Square LLC. Jackie Jangana, and Andrew Kriss.

Nature - Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial Exhibition Team:
Terreform ONE, Mitchell Joachim, Vivian Kuan.
Nicholas Gervasi, Xinye Lin, Theo Dimitrasopoulos, Jules Pepitone, Dan Baker, and Bednark Studio.

Monarch Sanctuary™ Patent Pending. 
Copyright © 2018-19 All Rights Reserved.
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2018/11/15/cooper-hewitt-and-cube-design-museum-to-co-organize-2019-design-triennial/

Architect's Newspaper with New Lab and Terreform ONE

The Architect's Newspaper: "Brooklyn’s New Lab goes big with a tech hub for urban entrepreneurs".
https://archpaper.com/2018/04/new-lab-goes-big-with-tech-hub-entrepreneurs/

The Butterfly Drone 3D Print with Terreform ONE

Terreform ONE and Anouk Wipprecht

Mitchell Joachim and Michael Silver, XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design, Actar publishers

Mitchell Joachim and Michael Silver. XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design, ACTAR Publishers.

Architecture must not only be functionally green, but its formal, conceptual and physical properties also need to constitute a novel and integrated living material system, one that can flourish within the larger world around it. 

XXL-XS represents the emerging discipline of ecological design by assembling a wide range of innovators with diverse interests. Geo-engineering, synthetic biology, construction site co-robotics, low-energy fabrication, up-cycling waste, minimally invasive design, living materials, and molecular self-assembly are just a few of the important advances explored in the book. At one extreme are massive public works, at the other, micro to nano-sized interventions that can have equally profound impacts on our world. From terraforming to bio-manufacturing, a whole new generation of designers is proposing unique ways of confronting the difficult challenges ahead. In this way design becomes a totality of relationships that affects all disciplines, which can no-longer be thought of as self-contained fields, each handled separately by narrowly focused specialists. Globalization demands a restructuring of the profession, as we know it. This requires a new breed of generalists who can work across fields and engage research on multiple sites around the globe. Today we need planetary designers versed in the craft of integral design.

Our thesis is therefore both global and performative in scope. We need an architecture that is more than just a constellation of bio-picturesque images, digitally generated surface effects, and conventional materials. We seek a holistic architecture that uses the best techniques to connect directly with existing natural systems while creating a renewed ecology that can sustain itself well into the future. Along these lines, many of the projects featured in this book simply abandon the old tropes and construction processes of the past by creating numerous green alternatives that proliferate along unexpected pathways.

Foreword by Michelle Addington and project contributions by Lateral Office, Mason White, Lola Sheppard, BIG, Bjarke Ingels, Kai-Uwe Bergmann, Rachel Armstrong, Clouds AO, Terreform ONE, Maria Aiolova, Nurhan Gokturk, Vivian Kuan, Andrew Maynard, Magnus Larsson, Vincent Callebaut, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Melanie Fessel, Höweler + Yoon, B+U, Eric Howeler, Hugh Broughton, Bittertang, Antonio Torres, Pneumastudio, Chris Perry, Cathryn Dwyre, Pablo Garcia, Split Studio, Jason Vigneri-Beane, Doug Jackson, Mark Neveu, Kokkugia, Roland Snooks, Future Cities Lab, Ferdinand Ludwig, François Roche, Studio KCA, Marcin Jakubowski, The Living, Chris Woebken, Zbigniew Oksiuta, ecoLogicStudio, Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto, Philip Beesley, Jenny Sabin, Phil Ross, Oliver Medvedik, Greg Lynn, Aurora Robson, Carlo Ratti, Rhett Russo, Ginger Krieg-Dosier, Rust Belt Robotics, Evan Douglis, Markus Kayser, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, Skylar Tibbits, Zuloark, Martina Decker, Peter Yeadon and Genspace.
Featured Essays: Lydia Kallipoliti Jason Bellows, Stephen Cassell, David Catling, AUDC Kazys Varnelis, Natalie Jeremijenko, Graham Burnett, Jessica Green, Anna Dyson, Nina Tandon, Anil Netravali, Alex Felson, Ioanna Theocharopoulou. 
Cover Design: berger + stadel + walsh


SEE INSIDE:
https://issuu.com/actar/docs/xxl-xs

ORDER HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/XXL-XS-New-Directions-Ecological-Design/dp/1940291879

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