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Week 6.1 - Floating Schools

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Bangladesh is extremely densely populated and one of the least developed countries in the world. At the same time, the country has been identified by the United Nations as one of the countries most affected by climate change. Due to the geographical location and the backwardness of domestic economic strength, millions of Bangladeshis living in low-lying areas have been forced to endure extreme weather such as river flooding, rising sea levels, and devastating tropical storms. As rivers engulf towns and seawater invades coastal communities, more than one-fifth of Bangladeshis are flooded every year. UN experts warned that by the end of the century, about 20 million Bangladeshis will be able to become "climate refugees" Frequent floods often isolate this remote village from the nearest school, which prevents students from going to school for education. So, the most common means of transportation on the street is simple wooden boats. In order to change this situation...

Week 6 - Smart street in London

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Bird Street has become the world's first "smart street" in 2017. In order to transform the street into a “smart street”, a retail trade representative of Bond Street, Oxford Street and Regent Streets (New West End Co), partnered with a short-term rental booking platform (Appear Hear), to provide shopping for travel through smart technology. The goal is to offer shopping travelers with an innovative shopping experience that will fully exploit Bird Street's strong retail potential. Bird Street is a short walk from the Selfridges department store and Bond Street subway station and has long been considered a strong retail potential. At present, Bird Street has added a lot of technological elements. For example, the sidewalk of the street can use to generate electricity by people walking, which provide energy for streets and shops and collect relevant data for research. The street is 10 meters long and the new pavement system Pavegan panel converts ele...

Week 5.1 - Vegetables can make buildings stronger

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Concrete is the most widely used man-made material on the planet and has always been used as the basis for the built environment. However, as architects and the public are paying more and more attention to the causes and effects of climate change, people are increasingly eager to find more high-performance materials to improve or replace cement because the damage caused by cement is not negligible. Plant composite concrete made from vegetables such as sugar beets or carrots has superior structural and environmental properties over all currently available commercial cement additives, such as expensive graphene and carbon nanotubes. The potential of plant composite concrete lies in the ability of nanoplatelets to increase the content of hydrated calcium silicate in concrete mixtures, and hydrated calcium silicate is the main substance controlling structural properties. This chain effect means that the amount of cement required for construction will be reduced. In additio...

Week 5:Bowl-shaped roof

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For countries with a dry climate, water scarcity is always an intractable problem. The Iranian company BMDesign Studios has designed a double-roof system called Concave Roof, which can be used to collect rainwater in a bowl-shaped container on a building roof in a hot and dry climate. For a dry environment, precipitation is one-third of the world's average, and the rate of water evaporation is three times the global average. The design system solves the problem of water shortage, which not only provides natural cooling in the house but also compensates for the shortcomings of building water consumption. The Concave Roof consists of two roofs and there has another dome-shaped convex roof below the roof of the bowl-shaped catchment. Any small amount of precipitation can be collected through this design and combined into larger droplets. Water droplets are collected before the water evaporates, and this combination of a concave roof and a convex roof also provides a natu...

Week 4.1 - The world's first 3D printing restaurant : Food Ink

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3D printing has developed to the present day, and the materials that can be used have been used in the industrial fields of metals, ceramics, polymers, composite materials, construction materials, and other common materials. In recent years, 3D printed food has also appeared frequently in our sights. This restaurant was created by the Dutch 3D printer manufacturer byFlow. In 2015, byFlow launched a 3D printer called Focus, which prints a wide range of ingredients including chocolate. The food provided in the restaurant includes hummus, chocolate mousse, pea puree, goat cheese, pizza, etc.; or, these foods can be molded from "paste"; The 3D food printer uses a new electronic blueprint system that not only facilitates printing food but also helps people design different styles of food. The "materials" used in the printer is an edible material such as chocolate sauce, butter, cheese, and the like. Once people draw the food pattern on the computer and match the ing...

Week 4 - Apple GiveBack

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Nowadays, the speed of upgrading electronic products is far beyond our imagination. Especially mobile phones. With the update of technology, more and more old mobile phones are gradually phased out, and the replacement speed of mobile phones also increases accordingly. As a result, a variety of e-waste of waste mobile phones increases, and many electronic components are very serious for environmental pollution. In order to maximize the use of old mobile phones and effectively improve the utilization of resources and protect the environment; Mobile phone giant Apple has also started recycling resources of mobile phone electronic components. The GiveBack is part of Apple's environmental program, announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2018. The aim is to raise public awareness of existing environmental problems and mobilize the public to participate in the environmental movement, through green and low-carbon living, improve the overall environment of the earth. Apple will make a...

Week 3.1 - Intelligent power generation system: smartflower

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Among many clean energy sources, solar power generation is one of the cleanest energy sources. In today's increasingly serious environmental pollution, the advantages of solar energy are extremely valuable; However, the application of solar energy has also encountered dispersion, instability, low efficiency and high cost. The traditional solar panels have been unstable due to the angle of sunlight, etc., resulting in solar panels that can only be fixed on the roof. In recent years, renewable energy production, collection, and storage technologies have been advancing. Researchers have developed solar power stations that can track the sun's angle based on the phototaxis of sunflowers. This technology can improve solar power generation capacity and store energy. And can be used as a fully independent off-net version and connected as a backup power source;   An Austrian technology company combined this technology with industrial design and launched the world's fir...