For the fifth consecutive year, more than 300 000 Syrians have lost their lives with the armed conflict. Throughout the five years of non-stop battles, several cities, sectors and neighborhoods ended up besieged by both of warring parties. The conditions in the areas can be described in three words: Deprivation, displacement and violence. Perhaps the most dangerous ways of deprivation is starvation, people living under siege were living in starvation conditions at least for 6 months. The United Nations is running a program of humanitarian aids distribution with two main methods adopted: truck convoys and air drops. Both methods are difficult to execute and goods weren’t safely delivered most of the times.
This research proposes a framework and an application for the entomophagy (human consumption of insects) as solution for food insufficiency associated with the drone technology to create a mobile insect farm that will insure necessary nutrients in order to survive. The workflow is comprised of scientific and nutrition research to be able to select the appropriate insect. This research was associated to farming technologies and challenges that has the most impact on the final design of the mobile farm.
In parallel, research is made on drone technologies and specifically aerodynamics as major parameter in mobile farm final design.
Silkworm, or Bombyx-Mori, is a “second product” insect. With its ability to produce high quality silk, this insect is a post-war, low cost investment. Silkworms are monophagous insects that are only fed on mulberry leaves, therefore seasons and rearing times are strategic. Nowadays, artificial feed or “chow” is easily prepared and kept for cold seasons. After many experiment on feed, silkworms were growing twice faster on natural leaves with higher concentration in proteins. Availability of natural leaves is preferable in critical conditions to guarantee faster growth.
Research was made on drone technologies and specifically aerodynamics as major parameter in mobile farm final design. Insect life cycle, environmental conditions and aerodynamics are the key design elements.
The workflow associates insect farming and silk production to aerodynamic and thermal conditions towards insect intelligent architecture.
(Bomb)yx-Mori is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
developed at master in Advanced Architecture in 2016-2017 by:
Student: Michel Azzi
Faculty: Vicente Guallart