Reciprocal Consumption

A Recreational Power Plant

By

Kai-Yu Yu

©2011 Kai-Yu Yu

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Science, School of Architecture at Pratt Institute

January 2011

1
 Table of Contents

1. Manifesto

2. Contemporary One-Way Consumption

• Population

• Energy Reserves

• Consumption

• Consequences

3. Future Reciprocal Consumption

• Recreational expenses

• Green Technology

• Reciprocal Energy Resource

4. Design Approach

• Site

• Program

• Digital Technique

• Outcome

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

2
1. Manifesto

Architects have to take into account the environment and context of the

neighborhood, community, city, even the world and take more responsibilities to design

more worthy existing structures that do not merely fulfill the need of inhabitants but also

response to a bigger scale conditions. After all, construction is a resource-consuming

behavior and normally last for decades after it is done.

Architects should take the responsibility to make the best out of our limited

mother earth, or say, energy. Places that support our lives are treated as dislikable

places and always are located in suburb or remote spots having no connection with the

world they support. Between the supporting facilities and the supported lives, the

relationship is one way. Maybe we can try to push the world to a status that architecture

can be consuming but also generating simultaneously and the relationship of the

supporter and supported become reciprocal.

3
2. Contemporary One-Way Consumption

• Population

We are facing a severe problem of population explosion. The increase of people

on the planet is so fast that the whole world is starting to worry about the consequence

this situation might result in. According to the report from U.S. Census Bureau, world

population has rapidly increased in the past two hundred years from one billion people

in nineteen century to seven billion in present and the interval of every other billion is

getting shorter and shorter (see Fig.1). Based on the estimation of United Nation, world

population is going to reach fourteen billion within 90 years. That is twice as many

people there are right now in 2010 (UN 13).

Fig.1: World Population

4
• Energy Reserves

The resources we use to sustain the need of the whole world are draining out

through multi-decade excessive use since the Industrial Revolution. In a research

known as the Hubber Peak Theory, a diagram shows the petroleum production curve of

the cumulative productions, the reserves and the projected future discovery (see Fig.2).

This research done by M. King Hubbert in 1956 suggested that we have already

reached the summit of petroleum production, which is used as one of the main origin of

over eighty percent of modern energy along with coal and gas (22).

Fig.2: Hubber Curve

Another report from World Energy Council reveals more detailed amount of the

three main origins of our primary energy source. According to the report in 2010, there

are 1,239 billion barrels of oil, 860 billion tonnes of coal and 186 trillion cubic meters of

5
natural gas (World Energy Council, 9, 49, 159). After converting these data into energy

unit, that is 1,913,000,000,000, 4,681,300,000,000 and 1,855,900,000,000 mega watts

an hour that the oil, coal and natural gas reserves we have right now can generate

respectively. Therefore we can get that the energy we can obtain from our remaining

un-renewable energy sources is only 8,450,200,000,000 mega watts an hour.

6
• Consumption

This humongous amount of population takes a great amount of resources to

produce energy and other materials in order to sustain their modern lives. According to

U.S. Energy Information Administration, the total worldwide energy consumption is 495

quadrillion Btu in 2007 (see Fig.3). After turning this information into MW-h, our annual

energy usage was 145,070,145,000 MW-h in 2007. An astonishing result is unfolded

after an quick calculation ─ we are going to use up all the energy reserves in sixty years.

That is only if we keep using the same amount of energy as we did in 2007.

Unfortunately it is impossible as the population exploding on the planet. The projection

of future energy consumption gives us a clear clue that we are going to face the

exhaustions of the remaining energy reserves very soon.

Fig.3: Worldwide Energy Consumption

7
• Consequences

Due to the fact that we are generally using combustion as the manner in the past

two hundred years to convert fossil fuels into energy, the amount of greenhouse gases

has already exceeded the threshold of being able to self-metabolize the greenhouse

gas. It is suggested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that approximately

30,000,000,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2007 (see Fig.4) and

the accumulation of un-neutralized greenhouse gases has started to harm the earth.

Fig.4: Worldwide Carbon Dioxide Emission

Greenhouse gases hold the heat within the atmosphere which results in

temperature rise. NASA indicates that the average of the planet will rise 1.4 to 5.8 °C by

2100. The rise temperature also leads to the melt of glacier and cause the sea level rise

(see Fig.5, 6). The Greenpeace Organization says that the sea level will rise up to 88

8
cm within a hundred years. Nowadays, eleven out of the fifteen biggest cities locate in

the areas where rivers merge into ocean and over seventy percent of the population

resides in coastal area. The rise of the sea level might bring these populated places into

water. The damage would no doubt be severe (see Fig.7).

The redistribution of the mass on earth after the glaciers are melted in to the

ocean would even make the axis of earth shift significantly. This global mass

redistribution could move the axis up to 1.5 meters, a new study from the journal

Geophysical Research Letters claimed.

Fig.5: Glacier Melt

9
Fig.6: Sea Level Rise

Fig.7: Sea Level Rise

10
3. Future Reciprocal Consumption

• Recreational expenses

As the economic grows, people started to have a better financial condition and so

has their life style been changed. People started to pay more attention on their

recreational life besides earning their living. According to research, the percentage of

total personal consumption has increased from 5.6% to 8.7%. Total recreation

expenditure has increased from $17,700,000,000 in 1959 to $756,300,000,000 in 2005.

People do not only eat and drink just for basic physical needs. They start to intake

excessive amount of resources just for pleasure and then pay money for participating

activities where they can use up the extra calories they gain.

Fig.8: Recreational Activity 01 Fig.9: Recreational Activity 02

Fig.10: Recreational Activity 03 Fig.11: Recreational Activity 04

11
• Green Technology

The world has already foreseen the energy crisis and harm we might cause by

keeping the way we consume energy. Therefore, a lot of efforts have been put into the

development of green technology that can help us to obtain energy in cleaner and

environment-friendly ways.

For instance, we have developed technologies that can acquire energy from the

tide, sun, wind and current. Some of them have already reached the efficiency threshold

and been widely used in order to reduce the damage we have put on the planet.

Yet, some avant-garde technologies have also been developed to generate

power from heat difference, pressure or even from ions transportation during chemical

reactions. These new devices provide us even more possibilities to obtain cleaner

energy instead of greenhouse-gas-generating fuels.

Fig.12: Solar Technology Fig.13: Wind Technology Fig.14: Tidal Technology

12
Fig.15: Pressure Technology 01 Fig.16: Pressure Technology 02

Fig.17: Pressure Technology 03 Fig.18: Pee Technology

Fig.19: Heat Technology Fig.20: Water Technology

13
• Reciprocal Energy Resource

Given the fact that we have all these green technologies that can be applied to

our daily lives, the energy of movement and the physical metabolic wastes can be now

considered a sort of energy resource. We are now capable of reclaiming those we didn’t

think of as power sources and generate power out of them. Especially those produced

during recreational activities. If we can manage to turn the way we consume while doing

recreational activities into a reciprocal contribution, recreational events would become

relatively more of contributing actions rather than merely some environment-damaging

consumptions.

For example, we can turn human urine generated by excessive drinking at a bar

or club and the water people use to wash their hands after using restroom into power.

We can also turn the pressure people stepping on the floor of a disco or jogging path

into power. We can even the turn body heat and rise of interior temperature into power

as well by bring those new technologies into the space we live in.

According to the research on those innovative technologies, it is suggested that

the efficiency of urine power technology is 1,000 watt out of 1 liter urine. The heat

technology efficiency is 100 microwatt out of 1-2 degree in Fahrenheit difference. The

efficiency of the pressure technology is 5.5 watt out of 1 step on a 1 square-foot power

panel.

14
 Although the efficiency of these newly invented technologies seem to be slightly

lower than the standard that present architectural world would consider ideally feasible,

a new version of recreational complex can still be foreseen based on the past

experience of relatively short intervals between the debut of a new technology and the

time it is actually widely applied.

15
4. Design Approach

• Site

Wanting to apply the new technologies mentioned in the previous research, a

method is used in the site locating process. Starting in Manhattan, New York, one of the

biggest tourist attractions famous of its diverse night lives consisting of bars and clubs,

map out the suitable site for a recreational power plant using the distribution of bars in

New York as data base.

Fig.21: Mahattan, NY

The bar density is mapped in different scales to seek the most possible and

potentially efficient spot for the new version of recreational complex. The purpose of this

step is to trying to situate this recreational power plant in the area with a neighborhood

that would produce a lot of urine as the source for power generation so that the original

passive and wasting status of the potential energy source producing neighborhood can

be turned into an active power generating area that would benefit the immediate vicinity,

16
the surrounding area or even to the standard of powering a few districts when the

efficiency gets higher and higher along the time.

First, the density of bars in each district among the twelve is mapped and the top

six districts with the highest density are district 2, 5, 3, 6, 4 and 1 in order (see Fig.22).

The bar density of the top ranking, District 2, is 0.294 per acre.

Fig.22: Manhattan Bar Density

17
 Second, mapping out the bar density within District 2 around all the subway

stations to obtain the understanding of the accessibility and surrounding condition. Area

within a 10-minute-walk distance is used to calculate and compare the bar density of

each station (see Fig.23).

Fig.23: Bar Density of District 2 stations

18
• Program

• Digital Technique

• Outcome

19
List of illustration

Fig.1: World Population © Kai-Yu Yu

Fig.2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Hubbert_peak_oil_plot.svg

Fig.3: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/images/figure_12-lg.jpg

Fig.4: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/images/fig-2.jpg

Fig.5: images from WHITEEARTH.ORG

Fig.6: http://c1.planetsave.com/files/2007/12/two-meter-sea-level-rise.gif

Fig.7: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/153/367614554_e216e821a4.jpg?v=0

Fig.8: http://www.london-nitelife.co.uk/images/clubbing2.33362335_std.jpg

Fig.9: http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-

snc1/hs090.snc1/4647_114106911275_550411275_3284065_6722170_n.jpg

Fig.10: http://www.altchinesischekampfkunst.de/Tai%20Bo%20Sidekick.jpg

Fig.11: http://blog.itechtalk.com/wp-content/2009/04/gym.jpg

Fig.12:

http://media.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/MIL_Solar_Farm_Nellis_AFB_lg.jpg

Fig.13: http://www.sharonpavey.org/http://www.sharonpavey.org/wp-

content/uploads//2010/02/wind-turbine-2.jpg

20
Fig.14: http://solar.calfinder.com/assets/images/blog/tidal-farm.jpg

Fig.15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Tz9Wa798E

Fig.16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf5fihc2GOY

Fig.17: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Tz9Wa798E

Fig.18: http://news.mydrivers.com/img/20090719/S12140336.jpg

Fig.19: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt1BcxJRfmE&feature=fvw

Fig.20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImGaraPrEo8

Fig.21:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wKGNetZTKHo/TGqdZWR65EI/AAAAAAAAJyo/x59vFedwmE

E/s1600/Manhattan+Island.jpg

Fig.22: Manhattan Bar Density © Kai-Yu Yu

Fig.23: Bar Density of District 2 stations © Kai-Yu Yu

Fig.24:

Fig.25:

Fig.26:

Fig.27:

21
6. Bibliography

U.S. Census Brueau. “Historical Estimates of World Population.” U.S. Census Brueau.

Web. 20 MAY 2010. < http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html>

United Nations. “WORLD POPULATION TO 2300.” United Nations. Web. 20 MAY

2010.

<http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf>

King, M. Hubbert. “NUCLEAR ENERGY AND THE FOSSIL FUELS.” The Coming

Global Oil Crisis. 07 MAR 1956. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf>

World Energy Council. “2010 Survey of Energy Resources.” World Energy Council.

2010. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/ser_2010_report.pdf>

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “International Energy Outlook 2010.” U.S.

Energy Information Administration. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html>

22
NASA. “Global Warming.” NASA. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html>

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Global Greenhouse Gas Data.” U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html>

GREENPEACE. “Sea level rise.” GREENPEACE. Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-

change/impacts/sea_level_rise/ >

Reilly, Michael. “Warming Oceans May Shift Earth's Pole.” Discovery Channel. 24 AUG

2009. Web. 05 APR 2010. <http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/24/oceans-earth-

pole.html>

Amold, David. “Visual proofs of climate change/global warming.” WHITEEARTH.ORG.

Web. 05 APR 2010. <http://www.whiteearth.org/WhiteEarthScience.html>

23
AllCountries.org. “Personal Consumption Expenditures for Recreation.” AllCountries.org.

Web. 05 APR 2010.

<http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/418_personal_consumption_expenditures_for_re

creation.html>

Infoplease.com. “Personal Consumption Expenditures for Recreation: 1990–2005.”

infoplease.com. Web. 05 APR 2010. < http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922136.html>

24