No abstract

Short 'product lives' and disposable packaging result in premature disposal of valuable resources. Industrialisation, mass production and global supply chains have resulted in a disconnect between people, places, materials and design. Upcycling is reuse of discarded materials which results in an increase in 'value'. We discuss the potential for creative upcycling to reconnect people with materials and establish cultures and communities of making. The reaction of the public to creative reuse is explored by creating a café structure made entirely from recycled materials, and this provides the starting point to consider the contexts in which upcycling occurs, the motivations for (and barriers to) reuse and upcycling, the potential benefits of upcycling in the context of affluent Western 'consumer' societies, and the scope for designers to imbue objects with the potential for creative reuse. We argue that designing to enable creative upcycling allows the future lives of objects to be contingent on context and culture, rather than being prescribed by the designer, with potential for widespread social, economic and environmental benefits.

Accurate predictive modelling of the growth of microbial communities requires the credible representation of the interactions of biological, chemical and mechanical processes. However, although biological and chemical processes are represented in a number of Individual-based Models (IbMs) the interaction of growth and mechanics is limited. Conversely, there are mechanically sophisticated IbMs with only elementary biology and chemistry. This study focuses on addressing these limitations by developing a flexible IbM that can robustly combine the biological, chemical and physical processes that dictate the emergent properties of a wide range of bacterial communities. This IbM is developed by creating a microbiological adaptation of the open source Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS). This innovation should provide the basis for “bottom up” prediction of the emergent behaviour of entire microbial systems. In the model presented here, bacterial growth, division, decay, mechanical contact among bacterial cells, and adhesion between the bacteria and extracellular polymeric substances are incorporated. In addition, fluid-bacteria interaction is implemented to simulate biofilm deformation and erosion. The model predicts that the surface morphology of biofilms becomes smoother with increased nutrient concentration, which agrees well with previous literature. In addition, the results show that increased shear rate results in smoother and more compact biofilms. The model can also predict shear rate dependent biofilm deformation, erosion, streamer formation and breakup.

Coated woven fabrics have been used in state-of-the-art structures for over 40 years yet their design is not codified and relies heavily on experience and precedent. The mechanical behaviour of fabrics is non-linear and time dependent, with assumed or highly simplified material properties commonly used for analysis.The shape of a tensile fabric canopy is fundamental to its ability to resist all applied loads in tension. Increasingly Architects are moving away from conventional fabric forms, utilising lower levels of curvature and new materials. This paper considers the importance of material properties and structural geometry in the design and analysis of tensile fabric structures. Three typical tensile forms are examined: the conic, hyperbolic paraboloid ('hypar') and barrel vault. Whilst the barrel vault demonstrates the expected result that minimally curved structures are inefficient and highly sensitive to changes in materials properties, the hypar exhibits more complex behaviour with the structural action varying dramatically with changes in geometry, material properties and patterning (fabrication) direction. For conic structures the feasible geometries that can be attained using 'soap film' form-finding is established, which combined with checks for ponding provide a range of geometric parameters for the efficient design of conic structures.

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