I was one of those kids that, every time I got in the car, I basically had to roll down the window. It was usually too hot, too stuffy or just too smelly, and my father would not let us use the air conditioner. He said that it would overheat the engine. And you might remember, some of you, how the cars were back then, and it was a common problem of overheating. But it was also the signal that capped the use, or overuse, of energy-consuming devices.
小時候,每當我鑽進汽車 第一件事就是要搖下車窗 車廂裡不是太熱太悶,就是充滿異味 我父親還不允許我們開空調 他說開空調會讓發動機過熱 你們當中有些人可能還記得 以前的汽車什麼樣 那時候發動機過熱是個普遍的問題 但同時它也是一個信號 表明了耗能設備的使用,或者說過度使用
Things have changed now. We have cars that we take across country. We blast the air conditioning the entire way, and we never experience overheating. So there's no more signal for us to tell us to stop.
時過境遷。我們現在可以駕車跨越國境 空調一直開著 也不會讓發動機過熱 於是不再有任何信號告訴我們該停下了
Great, right? Well, we have similar problems in buildings. In the past, before air conditioning, we had thick walls. The thick walls are great for insulation. It keeps the interior very cool during the summertime, and warm during the wintertime, and the small windows were also very good because it limited the amount of temperature transfer between the interior and exterior. Then in about the 1930s, with the advent of plate glass, rolled steel and mass production, we were able to make floor-to-ceiling windows and unobstructed views, and with that came the irreversible reliance on mechanical air conditioning to cool our solar-heated spaces. Over time, the buildings got taller and bigger, our engineering even better, so that the mechanical systems were massive. They require a huge amount of energy. They give off a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and for some of you may understand the heat island effect in cities, where the urban areas are much more warm than the adjacent rural areas, but we also have problems that, when we lose power, we can't open a window here, and so the buildings are uninhabitable and have to be made vacant until that air conditioning system can start up again. Even worse, with our intention of trying to make buildings move towards a net-zero energy state, we can't do it just by making mechanical systems more and more efficient. We need to look for something else, and we've gotten ourselves a little bit into a rut.
是不是很棒?我們在建築中遇到了同樣的問題 在沒有空調的過去,建築物有厚厚的牆壁 厚牆能很好地隔熱 讓建築內部冬暖夏涼 小窗戶也非常有用 它限制了內外部的 溫度轉換 後來到了20世紀30年代,隨著平板玻璃、 軋鋼和批量生產的出現 我們能夠造出落地窗,實現開闊視野 隨之而來的是一種無法逆轉的依賴 我們必須對受陽光照射的空間進行機械降溫 大樓越來越高,規模越來越大 工程不斷進步,機械系統極其龐大 而且運行這個系統耗能巨大 它向大氣排放大量的熱能 你們也許知道城市熱島效應 是說市區比周邊的郊區 要熱很多 但相應會產生問題:萬一斷電了 所有的窗戶都無法打開 人們無法呆在裡面,必須撤離 直到空調系統重新開機才能再次進入 更糟的是,由於我們旨在做出 零能源建築 我們無法僅僅通過把機械系統做得更加高效來實現目標 我們需要另闢蹊徑,但卻困住了自己的手腳
So what do we do here? How do we pull ourselves and dig us out of this hole that we've dug? If we look at biology, and many of you probably don't know, I was a biology major before I went into architecture, the human skin is the organ that naturally regulates the temperature in the body, and it's a fantastic thing. That's the first line of defense for the body. It has pores, it has sweat glands, it has all these things that work together very dynamically and very efficiently, and so what I propose is that our building skins should be more similar to human skin, and by doing so can be much more dynamic, responsive and differentiated, depending on where it is.
我們怎麼辦?我們怎麼從自掘的墳墓中 拯救自己? 也許你們不知道,如果從生物學的角度看問題 我在讀建築前曾是生物專業的學生 人類的皮膚是一個能夠自然調節 體溫的器官,構造精妙絕倫 這是人體防禦的第一道屏障 有毛孔,有汗腺, 所有一切協同做出動態而且高效的反應 所以我提議建築的皮膚 也應該像人類的皮膚一樣 應該更動態,更靈敏 根據位置的不同而更易區分
And this gets me back to my research. What I proposed first doing is looking at a different material palette to do that. I presently, or currently, work with smart materials, and a smart thermo-bimetal. First of all, I guess we call it smart because it requires no controls and it requires no energy, and that's a very big deal for architecture. What it is, it's a lamination of two different metals together. You can see that here by the different reflection on this side. And because it has two different coefficients of expansion, when heated, one side will expand faster than the other and result in a curling action. So in early prototypes I built these surfaces to try to see how the curl would react to temperature and possibly allow air to ventilate through the system, and in other prototypes did surfaces where the multiplicity of having these strips together can try to make bigger movement happen when also heated, and currently have this installation at the Materials & Applications gallery in Silver Lake, close by, and it's there until August, if you want to see it. It's called "Bloom," and the surface is made completely out of thermo-bimetal, and its intention is to make this canopy that does two things. One, it's a sun-shading device, so that when the sun hits the surface, it constricts the amount of sun passing through, and in other areas, it's a ventilating system, so that hot, trapped air underneath can actually move through and out when necessary.
這種想法把我帶回了我的研究 我首先要做的是從其他材料庫中選材 目前我在用智慧材料 一種熱雙金屬 之所以叫它“智慧”,我想首先一個原因是 它不用控制,也無需耗能 這在建築學上至關重要 它究竟是什麼呢?這是兩種不同金屬材料的疊加 你們可以從兩面的不同反光看出來 由於它在加熱時有兩種不同的膨脹係數 一面會比另一面膨脹得更快 材料就會發生捲曲 在最早的模型中我做了這些表面 來檢驗這個曲面如何對溫度產生反應 這個系統如何能讓空氣迴圈 在另一些模型中我又做了一些表面 這些長條所帶來的多樣性 在被加熱時能夠產生更大的運動 目前這些裝置在銀湖的M&A美術館展出,一直到8月份 離這裡不遠,你們可以去看看 展覽叫做“綻放”,這個表面完全是用 熱雙金屬做成的,我們想讓這個穹頂 擁有兩個功能。第一,這是一個遮陽的設施 當陽光照射到表面,它能夠減少穿過材料的陽光 在其他區域,它是一個通風系統 材料下面無法流動的熱空氣可以 在必要時穿過這些材料得到釋放
You can see here in this time-lapse video that the sun, as it moves across the surface, as well as the shade, each of the tiles moves individually. Keep in mind, with the digital technology that we have today, this thing was made out of about 14,000 pieces and there's no two pieces alike at all. Every single one is different. And the great thing with that is the fact that we can calibrate each one to be very, very specific to its location, to the angle of the sun, and also how the thing actually curls.
在這個延時錄影中你們能看到 當太陽東升西落,陽光和陰影相應移動 每一片材料也會單獨運動 請記住,運用今天的數位技術 這個裝置其實是由14,000片材料組成 每一片都不盡相同,每一片都是獨特的 這裡有個再美妙不過的事實 我們可以把每一片材料都非常精准地放到它們自己的位置上 對應陽光的照射角度,並且精確控制每一片的曲度
So this kind of proof of concept project has a lot of implications to actual future application in architecture, and in this case, here you see a house, that's for a developer in China, and it's actually a four-story glass box. It's still with that glass box because we still want that visual access, but now it's sheathed with this thermo-bimetal layer, it's a screen that goes around it, and that layer can actually open and close as that sun moves around on that surface. In addition to that, it can also screen areas for privacy, so that it can differentiate from some of the public areas in the space during different times of day. And what it basically implies is that, in houses now, we don't need drapes or shutters or blinds anymore because we can sheath the building with these things, as well as control the amount of air conditioning you need inside that building.
這樣概念式的專案 有許多的啟示 可以實際運用在未來建築上 在這個案例中,你們看到一個房子 這是為中國的一個開發商做的 實際上這是一個四層樓高的玻璃盒子 它依然是個玻璃盒子,因為我們仍然需要有這樣的視覺呈現 但它現在包裹著一層熱雙金屬材料 是一層環繞這個建築的屏障 表層可以根據陽光的移動而開關 此外,它也可以根據隱私的需要來開關 所以在一天中的不同時刻,這個空間中的區域 能跟其他公共區域區分開來 這意味著,在今天的房屋中 我們不再需要窗簾和百葉窗 因為我們可以用這種新材料來遮蔽建築 同時也能夠調節室內的溫度
I'm also looking at trying to develop some building components for the market, and so here you see a pretty typical double-glazed window panel, and in that panel, between those two pieces of glass, that double-glazing, I'm trying to work on making a thermo-bimetal pattern system so that when the sun hits that outside layer and heats that interior cavity, that thermo-bimetal will begin to curl, and what actually will happen then is it'll start to block out the sun in certain areas of the building, and totally, if necessary. And so you can imagine, even in this application, that in a high-rise building where the panel systems go from floor to floor up to 30, 40 floors, the entire surface could be differentiated at different times of day depending on how that sun moves across and hits that surface.
我也在嘗試開發市場需要的建築元件 你們現在看到的是一個很典型的 雙層玻璃窗構件 在兩層玻璃中間 我嘗試做出 一個熱雙金屬構造系統 在外層收到陽光照射的時候 中空層受熱 熱雙金屬開始捲曲 材料就能抵擋陽光 遮蔽建築的部分區域 或者在需要的時候遮蔽全部區域 你們可以想像這種應用 在高層建築中 三四十層樓都安裝這種構件系統 整個表面都可以在一天中不同時刻做出區分 隨陽光照射角度不同而不同
And these are some later studies that I'm working on right now that are on the boards, where you can see, in the bottom right-hand corner, with the red, it's actually smaller pieces of thermometal, and it's actually going to, we're trying to make it move like cilia or eyelashes.
這些是我近期的研究 你們可以看到現在展示的投影片上 在右下角红色的模型 其實這是一些小片的熱雙金屬 我們希望它能模仿睫毛運動
This last project is also of components. The influence -- and if you have noticed, one of my spheres of influence is biology -- is from a grasshopper. And grasshoppers have a different kind of breathing system. They breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles, and they bring the air through and it moves through their system to cool them down, and so in this project, I'm trying to look at how we can consider that in architecture too, how we can bring air through holes in the sides of a building. And so you see here some early studies of blocks, where those holes are actually coming through, and this is before the thermo-bimetal is applied, and this is after the bimetal is applied. Sorry, it's a little hard to see, but on the surfaces, you can see these red arrows. On the left, it's when it's cold and the thermo-bimetal is flat so it will constrict air from passing through the blocks, and on the right, the thermo-bimetal curls and allows that air to pass through, so those are two different components that I'm working on, and again, it's a completely different thing, because you can imagine that air could potentially be coming through the walls instead of opening windows.
最後一個專案也是由零件組成 你們或許已經注意到我受生物學影響很深 ——這個造型受到了蚱蜢的影響 蚱蜢有一種獨特的呼吸系統 牠們用腹部兩側的通氣孔呼吸 空氣流遍全身來降溫 在這個專案中,我探討的是 如何將其運用於建築中 如何通過建築兩側的呼吸孔來讓空氣流通 這是一些早期關於風擋的研究 是通氣孔的運用實例 這是安裝熱雙金屬前 這是安裝後。不好意思,圖片有些模糊 但是你們能看到表面上的這些紅箭頭 左邊這張圖是氣溫低的時候 熱雙金屬是平的,可以限制空氣流出 郵編這張圖是氣溫高的時候,熱雙金屬發生捲曲 空氣開始流動,這是我正在著手的兩個不同的構件 我要再次重申 它們是劃時代的,因為你們可以想像 空氣可以透過牆進來 而無需開窗
So I want to leave you with one last impression about the project, or this kind of work and using smart materials. When you're tired of opening and closing those blinds day after day, when you're on vacation and there's no one there on the weekends to be turning off and on the controls, or when there's a power outage, and you have no electricity to rely on, these thermo-bimetals will still be working tirelessly, efficiently and endlessly. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)
最後我想向你們展示 這個專案,這樣運用智慧材料的作品 當你們對日復一日開關百葉窗感到厭倦 當你們在休假時 沒有人在家裡開關空調 或者說突然斷電了,你沒有 任何可以用的電源,熱雙金屬 仍舊會不知疲倦地高效工作 永不停歇。謝謝大家(掌聲) (掌聲)