“1.1 Desertification
In the desert, we are dealing with a natural ground – sand dune. The sand dune is a continuous landscape with undulating levels, which is formed by wind erosion. The thesis took a settlement – Langshankou, Bayannur, Inner Mongolia as a testing ground to speculate possible design opportunities about living in the desert. With respect to the natural wind forces towards the southeast direction, the desert has been expanding over 500,000 miles2 from Mongolia to northeast China. The selected site is laying on the boundary of Gobi Desert, where continuous mining and overgrazing both fasten the rate of land degradation, although the nomad and Chinese government has been outlining different methodology to stop the invasion of sand, the impact cannot be redone. The three-north shelter forest program launched in the 19781 initiate series of human-planted windbreaker forest strips shelterbelts within the desert to hold back the rate of desertification and to provide timber to the local settlements. However, the excessive use of external water resources and human power does not help the settlements to live with desertification. Hence, in this thesis, we questioned whether before continuously planting trees, series of resonate structures can be built to perform as a shelterbelt providing protection for the settlements, the nomad, and the livestock.
1.2 The Ground
The thesis specifically takes natural ground as the site condition. The ground itself is shaped by natural materials and forces which creates different terrain and texture. Land degradation took away the nutrition of the ground which create creases along the landscape. This idea of integration of nature landscape can be reflected by some of the landart artists including Allan Wexler, Richard Serra and Michael Heizer. Their works open a dialogue of the interaction between human and landscape2, and materials. These artists create spaces that are closely connected with the change of nature suggesting an alternative way of how architecture itself to transform and reshape by the nature through time. Perhaps architecture can become a tool to articulate the ground surface, where spaces are be created.
2.1 Building with Existing
Materials and architecture are inseparable, and we have been constantly researching on new materials and construction techniques in our discourse. Perhaps we can take a step back and to challenge how the natural forces such as the sun, the wind, the rain shape architecture. This is similar to one of Robert Smithson’s art piece – partially buried woodshed, 1970, where he uses the weight of the earth and the growth of vegetation as a media to slowly decompose the shed.3 Architecture is no longer a static monument, but a structure that resonance with the natural environment carrying its own history through time.
Human has never truly ultilise sand as a readily materials. In the past decades, people have constantly explored the potential of desert. This unpredictable and unreachable area has come closer to every one of us. In the Middle East area, Egypt in particular, earth block is the main building material. 4 Houses are made from mud and brick which helped to withstand the extreme weather condition in the desert. Sand, can also be classified as earth, where a compacted sand structure layers such as sand bags provide certain thermal comfort to the interior. Sand, on the other hand is the richest material in the desert, it opens a design opportunity of whether it can be performed as a primary building material that integrated with additional light weight structure and provides stability and thermal comforts to the interior
The storms brought from the drought-hit Mongolia penetrate through the city and causing pollutant PM10.5 Sandstorm threaten both the nomad who lived in the grassland and the city. Mongolian traditional ger was designed in a round structure to withstand spring winds ranging up to 18-20 m/sec.6 In contrast with the impression of the endless sand dune in the desert, the selected materials are lightweight steel frame membrane structures. The fabric and steel construct a seemingly weightless skeleton floating in the desert which the tensile strength perform as strong as a solid concrete wall.
2.2 Transformation
The symphony between heavy and light materials became one of the major design strategies in the project. The use of light weight steel structure once performed as a micro sand dam to stop the sand from invading the settlement but also acts as a formwork that capture the sand dust brought by the wind. The sand piled up from the ground providing weight that stabilize the lightweight structure and perform as a thermal mass to the interior space. Throughout the time when the wind brings the sand to the structure, the landscape will be re-shaped with architecture and perform as shelterbelt for the settlement to live with the desert.
3.1 Design Process
One of the main challenges of the research topic is to understand how the sand resonances with the structure. A physical experiment set up are built for the wind stimulation. This is to understand how the sand physically piled up according to the form of the structure. The design process can be separated into 7 stages with a leading question. Through observation of the experiment and understand how the blowing sand react with the structure, the process has led to a cable net structure with double curvatures that lies along to withstand both wind pressure and earth pressure. The sand is filled according to the form of the structure, and the mast running along the two sides to transfer loads to the ground.
During the experiment, the fabric lays along the structure has deformed and reshape by the sand and the structure evolves vigorously from an iterative process. The design of the structure has changed from a retaining wall structure to an agricultural-use pavilion; from steel truss system to cable mast system; and ultimately from precise to approximate.
