Remember the Digital Water Pavilion I previewed last year? Devised by a bunch of MIT brainiacs, who described it as being rather like an inkjet printer controlling droplets of falling water, it was finally inaugurated last week at the Zaragoza World Expo in Spain. Although the video is only short you can see the brazilliant effects of the water. Most interesting, however, is what the pavilion needs to make it go.
The DWP consists of 3,000 digitally controlled solenoid valves, several dozen pumps, 12 hydraulic stainless steel pistons, and a digital control system that uses open source software. The roof, 400-mm thick, is the only solid part of the building, and it moves up and down on pistons, depending on the weather conditions.
This is the opening ceremony. Very son et lumière, doncha think? Despite the cameraman’s best efforts, you can see the time and effort put into the pavilion. I only wish I was still in Spain, then I could check it out for you all. [Building Design and YouTube]
Arran
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 1:46 PMNice waterfall but nothing new.
I was an R&D tech at a company called Crystal Fountains that made something like this about 12 years ago in Canada. They had a partnership with Walt Disney imagineering to create an interactive weater feature ala that mickey mouse movie with Mickey directs the waves. The plan was that stereo camera would track hand movement and allow people to create patterns in the waterfall by waving their hands about. The tricky part was creating a valve that didn’t drip even a single drop after being shut off. Any solenoid valve will leave to a couple of tiny dribbles which damage the effect so they developed a valve that was either squirting water out or sucking air in to catch droplets and it had no moving parts either which was just phenomenal. I left shortly after we demoed a prototype that was about 750mm wide, I always wondered if it got finished.