Crowd Powers City Lamp Posts

#95. Crowd Powers City Lamp Posts

© Crowd Farm, James Thomas and Thaddeus Jusczyk

Electricity

Energy-producing blocks embedded under public spaces such as train stations and plazas that convert pedestrian congestion into electric current. MIT students James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk integrated piezoelectric technology with studies of crowd movement to produce Crowd Farm. As a person steps on a block, it is compressed and generates electrical current.  Although the energy produced by an individual human step is small, the combined motions of a large crowd can produce significant amounts of current usable directly at the source: for example, the intensity of light in an area could be determined by the number of people moving through it. Crowd Farm is designed to be standardized and incorporated into the material palette of urban design as a common feature. Thaddeus Jusczyk and James Graham were graduate students at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Crowd Farm was awarded the 2007 Holcim Foundation Sustainable Construction Prize. 

Acteurs :

James Graham, Thaddeus Jusczyk; a crowd

Lieu : proposed for Turin, Italy, 2007

Outils : Piezoelectric tiles, plaza

Walking

Crowd Power