Grow Your Own Buildings

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The simple wind generators cost $600 each, but our construction pioneer says that they could easily be duplicated by anyone handy with tools (using all new parts) for about $350 . . . and for a lot less cash if secondhand automobile alternators were used to generate the current.

An early Hilbertz-grown reef—set at the entrance to the Corpus Christi harbor—is holding up well . . . and so is another that shields an inlet at St. Croix. At present, as a matter of routine, Wolf also grows large panels (about an inch thick, uniform in density, and considerably stronger than reinforced concrete of the same thick ness) that are suitable for permanent, nonload-bearing walls. And he grows them in mere weeks . . . not months.

Furthermore, several of the latest suggested uses for Wolf's process are enough to boggle the mind. There's a possibility that his method may be employed to create sea anchors for the giant turbines a New Orleans group wants to place in deep water to tap the Gulf Stream for electricity, and he's talked to Puerto Ricans about forming an Ocean Thermal Energy Converter (OTEC) power plant by cutting a diagonal gully into the face of a deep-water cliff, then growing a shell over it . . . which should be easier to engineer than the huge pipe which would otherwise be necessary, and would not have to be moved into place.

The supply of raw materials for growing such structures is—unlike many resources—very abundant. It's been estimated that if the 60 quadrillion tons of minerals already in the seas (which cover more than 70°/a of the globe) could be extracted all at once and brought ashore, they'd form a crust—over the entire land mass—450 feet thick. In addition, the world's rivers and streams dump another three billion tons of fresh minerals into the oceans each year.

And here's a side benefit to Professor Hilbertz's building method: Early in his experiments the architect noted that—throughout the growth process—pure hydrogen gas bubbled up from the cathodes. Small-scale experiments suggest that it might be possible to collect the gas (which is a very versatile fuel), so that it could be tanked and piped ashore. (Since the sole by-product of burning hydrogen is pure water, many scientists see it as an important power source for the future.)

Last summer the professor grew his biggest structure so far: a tight cluster of cylinders of various heights (the tallest is 30 feet), which are permanently anchored underwater off St. Croix. The configuration had to be conceived as—and must be called—an abstract work of art, however ... a monument rather than an architectural engineering experiment because, when no one else would pay for the project, Wolf turned to the National Endowment for the Arts for financing. Actually, the structure probably is a fitting monument . . . to our civilization's resistance to new ideas.

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