Essay Competition Success

Congratulations to Duncan Wong and Rex Weber-Brown who recently won in their respective essay categories in The Minds Underground 2023 Competition. Rex competed in the Architecture category and Duncan in the Economics section. A special mention must also go to Thomas Evans-Alcantara who was highly commended in the economics category.

Both Duncan and Thomas chose to write about Euro’s fundamental problems. Duncan researched the IS-LM model and the Mundell-Fleming Impossible Trinity Theory. By comparing and contrasting Eurozone to the US’s Federal and States system, Duncan concluded that Euro’s success depends on further improvement in the free movement of factors of production, such as labour within the area as well as fiscal integration between Eurozone member states to sync their economic cycle.

Thomas, on the other hand, looked into the problem from the angle of game theory and discussed why, strategically, it was difficult for Eurozone countries to meet the fiscal union requirement under the theory of Optimum Currency Area. Impressively, he used the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis as a detailed case study to illustrate his ideas.

Rex’s essay question can be found below.

How Can Digital Design Interact with the Biological World to Create Sustainable Architecture?

“I started by looking at what inspiration and resources we can take and thus digitally design from the biological world, such as optimising the thermal dynamics of a shopping centre in Harare using Bentley 4D to reduce power consumption, all from biomimicry of a termite mound. I then flipped the question on its head and wrote about how we can give back to the biological world by protecting ourselves and the environment through digital twinning of the built environment, for example by using sensors and simulation software to create earthquake-proof buildings in Japan, and using big data processing in corporate buildings such as Intel’s PTK1 in Israel to reduce energy consumption and gas leaks. I finally spoke about how digital twinning can prevent the Silo Problem in national infrastructure, where the same road can be dug up for different utilities 8 times in a year, by enabling interoperability through dynamic knowledge graphs (eg CMCL) that allows companies to see each other’s plans and allows them to consider the environmental impact of them. I concluded by speaking about how the future of the creation of sustainable architecture shall be about creating synergy between the biological and built worlds, and how that shall only be achieved only if we continue to learn from nature.”