Metal that breathes | Doris Kim Sung

153,509 views ・ 2012-10-25

TED


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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I was one of those kids that, every time I got in the car,
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I basically had to roll down the window.
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It was usually too hot, too stuffy or just too smelly,
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and my father would not let us use the air conditioner.
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He said that it would overheat the engine.
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And you might remember, some of you,
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how the cars were back then, and it was
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a common problem of overheating.
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But it was also the signal that capped the use,
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or overuse, of energy-consuming devices.
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Things have changed now. We have cars that we take across country.
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We blast the air conditioning the entire way,
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and we never experience overheating.
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So there's no more signal for us to tell us to stop.
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Great, right? Well, we have similar problems in buildings.
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In the past, before air conditioning, we had thick walls.
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The thick walls are great for insulation. It keeps the interior
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very cool during the summertime, and warm during the wintertime,
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and the small windows were also very good because
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it limited the amount of temperature transfer
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between the interior and exterior.
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Then in about the 1930s, with the advent of plate glass,
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rolled steel and mass production, we were able
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to make floor-to-ceiling windows and unobstructed views,
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and with that came the irreversible reliance on
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mechanical air conditioning to cool our solar-heated spaces.
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Over time, the buildings got taller and bigger,
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our engineering even better, so that the mechanical systems
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were massive. They require a huge amount of energy.
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They give off a lot of heat into the atmosphere,
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and for some of you may understand the heat island effect
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in cities, where the urban areas are much more warm
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than the adjacent rural areas,
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but we also have problems that, when we lose power,
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we can't open a window here, and so
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the buildings are uninhabitable and have to be made vacant
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until that air conditioning system can start up again.
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Even worse, with our intention of trying to make buildings
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move towards a net-zero energy state, we can't do it
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just by making mechanical systems more and more efficient.
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We need to look for something else, and we've gotten ourselves a little bit into a rut.
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So what do we do here? How do we pull ourselves and dig us
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out of this hole that we've dug?
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If we look at biology, and many of you probably don't know,
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I was a biology major before I went into architecture,
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the human skin is the organ that naturally regulates
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the temperature in the body, and it's a fantastic thing.
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That's the first line of defense for the body.
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It has pores, it has sweat glands, it has all these things
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that work together very dynamically and very efficiently,
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and so what I propose is that our building skins
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should be more similar to human skin,
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and by doing so can be much more dynamic, responsive
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and differentiated, depending on where it is.
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And this gets me back to my research.
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What I proposed first doing is looking at a different material palette to do that.
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I presently, or currently, work with smart materials,
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and a smart thermo-bimetal.
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First of all, I guess we call it smart because it requires
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no controls and it requires no energy,
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and that's a very big deal for architecture.
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What it is, it's a lamination of two different metals together.
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You can see that here by the different reflection on this side.
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And because it has two different coefficients of expansion,
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when heated, one side will expand faster than the other
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and result in a curling action.
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So in early prototypes I built these surfaces to try to see
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how the curl would react to temperature and possibly allow
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air to ventilate through the system,
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and in other prototypes did surfaces where the multiplicity
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of having these strips together can try to make
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bigger movement happen when also heated,
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and currently have this installation at the Materials & Applications gallery
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in Silver Lake, close by, and it's there until August, if you want to see it.
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It's called "Bloom," and the surface is made completely
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out of thermo-bimetal, and its intention is to make this canopy
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that does two things. One, it's a sun-shading device, so that
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when the sun hits the surface, it constricts the amount of sun passing through,
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and in other areas, it's a ventilating system,
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so that hot, trapped air underneath can actually
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move through and out when necessary.
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You can see here in this time-lapse video that the sun,
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as it moves across the surface, as well as the shade,
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each of the tiles moves individually.
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Keep in mind, with the digital technology that we have today,
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this thing was made out of about 14,000 pieces
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and there's no two pieces alike at all. Every single one is different.
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And the great thing with that is the fact that we can calibrate
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each one to be very, very specific to its location,
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to the angle of the sun, and also how the thing actually curls.
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So this kind of proof of concept project
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has a lot of implications
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to actual future application in architecture,
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and in this case, here you see a house,
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that's for a developer in China,
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and it's actually a four-story glass box.
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It's still with that glass box because we still want that visual access,
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but now it's sheathed with this thermo-bimetal layer,
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it's a screen that goes around it, and that layer can actually
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open and close as that sun moves around on that surface.
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In addition to that, it can also screen areas for privacy,
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so that it can differentiate from some of the public areas
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in the space during different times of day.
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And what it basically implies is that, in houses now,
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we don't need drapes or shutters or blinds anymore
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because we can sheath the building with these things,
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as well as control the amount of air conditioning you need inside that building.
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I'm also looking at trying to develop some building components for the market,
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and so here you see a pretty typical
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double-glazed window panel, and in that panel,
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between those two pieces of glass, that double-glazing,
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I'm trying to work on making
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a thermo-bimetal pattern system
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so that when the sun hits that outside layer
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and heats that interior cavity, that thermo-bimetal
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will begin to curl, and what actually will happen then
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is it'll start to block out the sun
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in certain areas of the building,
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and totally, if necessary.
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And so you can imagine, even in this application, that
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in a high-rise building where the panel systems go
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from floor to floor up to 30, 40 floors, the entire surface
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could be differentiated at different times of day
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depending on how that sun moves across and hits that surface.
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And these are some later studies that I'm working on
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right now that are on the boards, where you can see,
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in the bottom right-hand corner, with the red, it's actually
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smaller pieces of thermometal, and it's actually going to,
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we're trying to make it move like cilia or eyelashes.
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This last project is also of components.
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The influence -- and if you have noticed, one of my
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spheres of influence is biology -- is from a grasshopper.
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And grasshoppers have a different kind of breathing system.
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They breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles,
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and they bring the air through and it moves through their system to cool them down,
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and so in this project, I'm trying to look at how we can
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consider that in architecture too, how we can bring
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air through holes in the sides of a building.
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And so you see here some early studies of blocks,
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where those holes are actually coming through,
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and this is before the thermo-bimetal is applied,
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and this is after the bimetal is applied. Sorry, it's a little
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hard to see, but on the surfaces, you can see these red arrows.
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On the left, it's when it's cold and the thermo-bimetal
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is flat so it will constrict air from passing through the blocks,
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and on the right, the thermo-bimetal curls
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and allows that air to pass through, so those are two different
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components that I'm working on, and again,
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it's a completely different thing, because you can imagine
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that air could potentially be coming through the walls
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instead of opening windows.
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So I want to leave you with one last impression about
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the project, or this kind of work and using smart materials.
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When you're tired of opening and closing those blinds
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day after day, when you're on vacation
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and there's no one there on the weekends to be turning off and on the controls,
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or when there's a power outage, and you have
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no electricity to rely on, these thermo-bimetals
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will still be working tirelessly, efficiently
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and endlessly. Thank you. (Applause)
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(Applause)
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