STS Colloquium Joins with MIT’s Space, Policy and Society Research Group to present The UrbanSpaceStation - Natalie Jeremijenko :: March 12, 2008; 5:30 - 7:00 pm :: MIT, Building E15, Lower Level (Bartos Theater), Cambridge, MA.

The UrbanSpaceStation (USS) is a device designed to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions from buildings (which account for 80% carbon dioxide emissions in Manhattan and 35% of the national average) and return oxygen-enriched air to the building. It provides an intensive urban agriculture facility, coupling and reusing building waste streams locally, and potentially providing significant food. Called the USS because it appropriates materials, power generation and closed system engineering of space stations to significantly increase the environmental performance of urban buildings, it creates new urban space that can service a 10x building volume. The Trusset Space-frame and ETFE system is designed to be built and deployed as a barn raising, rather than through the traditional construction industry and pre-engineered to require no substantial structural modification of support building, circumvent permitting and perform in 100-year storm events; the USS nonetheless operates at a scale of small collectives (of students for instance) and in a DIY tradition. Maximizing participation in the deployment is an investment in the distributed capacity to improve, maintain and redesign these systems. The designs details are presented and discussed.

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko’s projects—which explore socio-technical change—have been exhibited by several museums and galleries, including the MASSMoCA, the Whitney, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. A 1999 Rockefeller Fellow, she was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine. Jeremijenko is the director of the environmental health clinic at NYU, assistant professor in Art, and affiliated with the Computer Science Dept.