infrastructures / networks / environments
- Student Works: Transitional Landscapes
[Model of the the Highway 427 and 401 interchange. All models and drawings by Alice Wong.]Picking up on the intermittent series of student projects, here is a project by University of Toronto M.Arch graduate Alice Wong titled Transitional Landscapes. Alice began her research on the hypnotic optics of highway commuting. She selected the highway 427 and Highway 401 knuckle interchange in Toronto as a case study in new possibilities for occupying a smooth (transitional) space. Eventually finding a way to intervene in this hyper-logical, engineered context by inserting a secondary route of new programs and experiences.
[An analysis of the optics and experiences of the commuter.]Wong writes:
The research begins with observing changes in our transitory experience and analyzing them among varying types including converging/diverging transition, sectional transition, and directional transition. The site of interest is located by the interchange between Toronto’s provincial highways 427 and 401.
[Sense of speed is relative to sequence, rhythm, and pattern intensity.]
[A study of 'missed exit' re-routing in the knuckle identifies the possiblity of a secondary route connecting the loose ends.]The scale of this high-speed interchange, and the complex layers and depth of field, seemingly presents an inherent problem in its accessibility to adjacent landscapes due to extreme friction between the fast and the slow. Employing the formal language of the highway and the concept in speed-transition curves; this thesis embarks on creating a new system of speed deceleration loops along the gap between the road and the landscapes by forming a “Super Roundabout (power of 10)” for vehicles to circle within the interchanging moment.
[To connect these loose ends, a trefoil knot is a useful analogy to seamlessly stitch the three highways together using decelerating zones.]
[Injecting service programs into the trefoil loop, creating a 'super roundabout'.]The Roundabout(10) is design to serve for traffic calming and speed control, and allow for increased capacity and accessibility. The occupation potential in the loop system, on the other hand, will allow for servicing and designated programs for convenience, and also suggests the “mediating passage” as the ideal place to be part of a transitory experience.
[Aerial view looking west toward Pearson International Airport.]
[Studies on how to inject services along the roundabout loop.]
[Sketch models and out-takes.]
- Goodbye Global
[International Shipping Trade Routes] via UNEP/GRID-Arendal
A recent article by The New York Times and a report by CIBC World Markets suggest that rising oil prices are fundamentally changing the dynamics of international trade, as shipping costs rise. The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today.Sky-rocketing global transport costs have effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades. The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.
While this is certainly not the end of globalization, economists speculate that it may signal a return to more regional manufacturing and economies. Companies are increasingly seeking to limit global shipping costs. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible, in what is termed the “neighborhood effect”.
Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism points out that “the Wal-Mart model is fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars. That is leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, in terms of growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally.
All this suggests new patterns of international trade, and new regional economic, production and transportation hubs. Thomas Friedman’s world may well be unflattening. However, the recent economic crisis affecting the US and world markets suggests that for now, the world still contains a few bumps.
- Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS)
[A researcher deploys an Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure, or ARMS, in Lizard Island, Australia.]As the Census of Marine Life works towards its first comprehensive report in 2010, already a whopping 150 new species have been tallied. In a recent report, research along the Great Barrier Reef, and more specifically 3 islands, have resulted in the discovery of several new varieties of soft corals, amphipod crustaceans, and tanaids (shrimps).
[A luminescent ctenophore discovered off of Heron Island.]
[Sabellids, or fan worms, found at Heron Island.]
[A variety of green seaweed found Heron Island.]About 36 house-like plastic boxes have been positioned within the Lizard and Heron Island region to assist in monitoring species over the next decade and beyond. Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) will observe patterns and rates of recolonization of marine life over the duration of the census.
[The coral-skirted Heron Island.]
[The more mountainous Lizard Island.]
[Census of Marine Life map of 17 key project areas. The 3 Australian islands are within the CReefs expedition area.]
- Gongoozolers, Aqueducts, and Lifts
[The inland waterways of England and Wales is comprised of over 5,000 navigable kilometers.]Shipping just got a whole lot smarter. With the advent of software able to forecast the optimum shipping route and method for products still relying upon our globalized capital, suppliers and manufacturers are better able to soften the constricting power of rising fuel costs. The software is able to suggest when air, road, or sea transport is the most efficient, economic, or ecological. With this comes great anticipation for the revival of some of the worlds great inland waterway systems. Revival also fueled in part with the shores of inland waterways claimed as prime gongoozoling territory. Nowhere is the potential for a revived transport network more enticing than the British inland waterway system.
[The Pontcysyllte aqueduct completed in 1805 carries the Llangollen canal over the valley of River Dee in Wales. With its conversion to a leisure waterway, it is now a major tourist attraction.]Britain’s inland waterway system reached peak expansion in the late 1800s as it became the infrastructural catalyst for the industrial revolution. After falling short in matching the speed of rail and later roadway transport, the canals fell into decay. A 1967 plan positioned the systems conversion into a leisurely liquid network. Today, there are approximately 5,090 kms (3,160 miles) of fully navigable inland waterways in England and Wales. Now managed by British Waterways, the canals and the waterscape website invites holiday-goers to plan their canal adventures. With contemporary iconic engineering works such as the Falkirk Wheel modernizing regeneration of the waterway.
[The Falkirk Wheel completed in 2000 connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. A feat originally done through an 11 lock system.]
[British Waterways brochure pitching the idea that it is \'your local canal.\']
[Sites of restoration as part of the Waterways 2025 vision.]
[Waterscape Dynamic Mapping of a partial section of Birmingham\'s inland route complete with canal technicalities, facilities, and morrings.]
- The Toxicities of Fungiculture
[Mushroom Farm in Taichung, Taiwan.]Three employees of Farmers Fresh Mushrooms in Lagley, British Columbia died last week as a rush of compost fumes flooded a pump house at the mushroom farm. Fungiculture is centered around no light and robust soil - robust as in manure-laden robust. Thus the composting and thus the toxicity.
[Fresh manure bags awaiting mushrooom spores in Quindao, China agri-bunker.]
[Growing beds being assembled, with roof off.]
[Where spawn meets compost...]
- Rewiring (Tele)Geography
[Telegeography releases the 2008 edition of Global Submarine Cables. Map via telegeography.]The NY Times recently reported on the tendency of countries to redirect internet traffic away from the United States. Intelligence agencies have previously been gifted with the convenience of a large majority of international internet usage eventually finding its way through US cables. This trend has been reversing in the last 5-8 years, as the US falls woefully behind up-to-date submarine cable updates, and as increased intraregional networks offer an ability to keep terabytes more local.
[As submarine cables hit land, the optical signal is converted in a landing station into a terrestrial system.]Several regions have witnessed dramatic shifts in internet use that has put considerable economic pressure (and opportunism) on expansion. Latin America, Asia, and Africa have reduced their rerouting dependence on the US to 70%, 55%, and 5% respectively.
[Intraregional networks in Asia. Asia has 501 million of the 1.3 billion internet users and it is growing by 882% per year.]Probably most significant in that map is what is referred to as the SEA-ME-WE 4 (South East Asia, Middle East, Western Europe 4) cable route which is funneled through the Mediterranean, Suez, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. It creates a intraregional link from Marseilles to Singapore. January 30, 2008 saw the severing of the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG network, providing an opportune moment to upgrade the network.
[The SEA-ME-ME 4 cable route is the backbone of Europe and Asia internet connections.]
[Hot-wiring the seabed.]What appears initially as (invisible) lines on a global map suddenly can be read as the very modern day gates and thresholds that assert the power, economic vitality, cultural credentials driving competitive urbanism. Villages such as Tarifa, Spain, strategically positioned as a constricted data threshold between the Atlantic and Mediterranean hubs, become a key information harbor at the scale of the data intraregion.
- Dam Politics in the ‘Stans
[The Nurek Dam in Tajikistan forms this massive 10.5 km³ reservoir. Photo by Carolyn Drake for The New York Times.]After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many freshly independent Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, were dealt either a strong or poor hand with regard to land resources. Reading in the NYTimes on Sunday, Tajikistan hopes an abundance of water will leverage its lingering economic woes. The Tajiks were dealt few exploitable resources, i.e. oil / gas, but the productive combination of heavy winter precipitation and endless mountains, has produced a healthy abundance water. Throw in global warming, and you have a very full river. Along the Vakhsh River, Tajikistan, the Nurek Dam is an icon of 1960s Soviet infrastructure ingenuity. At 300 m (984 ft), the Nurek is the tallest Dam in the world. The massive reservoir fuels nine hydroelectric turbines producing 3.0 gigwatts, or 40% of Central Asia’s power needs and 98% of Tajikistan’s.
[Interior of Nurek Dam ... or central control.]Just up-river from Nurek is another dam project, Rogun, that has been in the works - and then stalled - for over 30 years. Rogun, the Sagrada Familia of dams is expected to reach 335m (1099 ft) when completed. In fact, Tajikistan pins its entire future on its ability to export power to neighboring energy poor countries such as Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Most affected downstream, Uzbekistan is unhappy with the Rogun project as it will disrupt water flow and therefore considerably effect an already fragile agriculture cycle.
[Irrigation infrastructure in Shartuz, where the cotton fields dried up in the early 1990s. Photo by Carolyn Drake for The New York Times.]
The Soviet-era balance of water usage meant partial stopping of the Tajik’s hydroelectric stations, the main source of energy during the winter season, to save water for the Uzbek irrigation season. This meant that Tajikistan bought much-needed energy and gas from Uzbekistan; this dynamic changed dramatically when Uzbekistan started raising prices, to the level of world prices, crippling the Tajiks and sending their energy debt soaring.
[The complex politics of water control in Central Asia. Map by UNEP.]To compensate for this, the Tajik’s sought energy independence through hydropower, which worked well. So well in fact that it is leveraging the exportability of its hydropower success against neighboring water poor states. This has now come back full circle as Tajikistan seeks to have water (hydropower) recognized as a tradable commodity, like the oil and gas it has had to purchase from Uzbekistan.
[A closer look at the politics of damming, runoff, and irrigation in the Ferghana Valley. Map by UNEP.]
- Student Works: Büroland(wirt)schaft
[Agro-office Parks with a nod to Andrea Branzi. All images by Tomer Diamant]Picking up on the intermittent series of student projects, included is a project by University of Toronto M.Arch graduate Tomer Diamant titled Büroland(wirt)schaft. Tomer began his research on speculative development and the hyper-efficiency of (spec) office buildings. Looking closer at the siting of office parks at outlying urban areas, he recognized an opportunity to capitalize on a stop-gap program of seasonal greenhouse agriculture.
[Vacant land opportunities along Highway 407 in north Toronto. Yellow dots indicate significant office locations, and the box at center is his designated site for the Bürolandwirtschaft case study.]He writes:
This project proposes a hybrid typology that combines office space with industrial greenhouse agriculture, revisiting the Buro Landschaft (office landscape) schemes proposed by the Quickborner Team in the 1960’s, filtered through the lens of current global concerns. Buro Landwirtschaft (office agriculture) could make use of the weakest terrains of contemporary urbanism, sites abutting utility corridors, regional infrastructure and light industry. Low land-values would allow for the financing of large footprint buildings composed of paddy-like cells that could be converted from office to agriculture and back, with the prevailing economic winds. The built-in sliding programme is intended to provide an economic damper in volatile market conditions, while affording a degree of spatial flexibility that is not available in normative spec buildings and leasing structures.
[Comparative inputs and outputs of greenhouse agro and typical office use.]
[Biomass v Datamass. The dirt on information...]The basic scheme inverts a normative concrete slab so that its upturned beams form discrete drainage cells. The beams are designed to accommodate service chases for each respective use. When in agricultural production mode, the cell is filled with irrigated soil. When in office mode, the cell becomes a pressurized plenum built from off-the-shelf raised floor technology. The slab is elevated, so as the cells are converted between office and greenhouse use, parking below can give way for additional head house space required by agricultural production. Head house and parking requirements are inversely proportional, allowing the programmatic adaptability to play out on both levels. Since air is only delivered through the office plenum floors, it is possible to imagine that positive pressure could mitigate humidity infiltration from the greenhouse, allowing for ephemeral internal partitions.
[Where greenhouse meets desks.]
[Axonometric outlining program (with its homegrown cafe, of course) and circulation. The undulating hexagonal roof panels suggest courtyards and entries.]In the final version, the project explores the layering of multiple structural and service geometries, with the ambition of creating internal spatial conditions that are not overburdened by the linear nature of a patent glass roof system. Parking is integrated into a diamond-shaped structural cell that is carried up to support a roof structure of vaulted hexagonal modules. Since the vaults are derived from toroidal geometry, the modules are planar and highly repetitive. Each full hexagon holds a pillow-like ETFE assembly, the opacity of which can be controlled using electro-chromatic technology. Along the vault ridges, half-panels provide computer-controlled operable ventilation. The structural dia-grid accommodates a secondary geometry of drainage cells within the elevated slab. The building is envisioned as a large-scale, elevated mat, in which the office programme is serviced through a central courtyard while the greenhouse is serviced from a perimeter ring. The office grows from the inside out and the greenhouse grows from the outside in. In this scheme, there are no corner offices and all outward views are filtered through the greenhouse spaces. Several smaller courtyards satisfy exit requirements while providing additional light below.
[Interior plan showing office plots. The plot pattern dovetails into a typical parking bay grid at grade.]
[Buroland(wirt)schaft at work.]
[View from access road.]If you would like to contact Tomer about his research and project, you can reach him here.
Previous Student Works: Vivian Chin’s Convergent Species
- Exotic Urbanism
[Monu Magazine issue #9 thumbnails]Just wanted to point out the excellent new issue (#9) of MONU is out now and has a contribution from Mason and Lola (aka Lateral aka Infranet Lab directors) on the Thawing Urbanism of the Arctic.
You can get a copy form the fine folks at BoARD and MONU for a paltry €10.
Here is the contents:
A City under the Influence by Vesta Nele Zareh
Cities of Girl by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix/ Map Office
Thawing Urbanisms in the Arctic by Mason White and Lola Sheppard
Living Facades - Green Urbanism and the Politics of Urban Offsetting by Owen Hatherley
Flying Grass Carpet by Joop de Boer
The ‘Great Comeback’ of The Chinese to Katendrecht by Els Vervloesem
Urbanism of the permanent Tourist by Deane Simpson
Plastic Wrapped History by Hannah Epstein
Golf Courses and Cultural Conventions of Nature by Jacqueline Schlossman
The Sky is not near enough by Shumon Basar
Defining the Exotic when Identity is Lost by Yasmine El Rashidi
Nondescript Exotism inside the Urban Tissue by Anne Seghers
Pseudo-Democracies and Pseudo-Commissions - Interview with Reinier de Graaf/ OMA
Elite Commune by Lei Liu
Re-fun by Yaowalak Baltisberger
Urbanism in a Minor Key by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
The Exotic and the Local - From Superhero to Supercity by Yehuda Greenfield - Gilat
- SuperCorridors
[Network of North American SuperCorridors. (Map by Infranet Lab.)]Canada, the US and Mexico have signed NAFTA agreements for a series of infrastructural or multi-modal Super-Corridors as part of the slightly ominous-sounding “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP). Supported by a coalition of political and corporate leaders, the intention of the network is to develop, over-time, a European-style Economic Union.
Maps and plans have already been initiated for the first of the super-corridors. Known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, the TTC is a superhighway system, four football-fields-wide, including tollways for passenger vehicles and trucks; lanes for commercial and freight trucks; tracks for commuter rail and high-speed freight rail; depots for all rail lines; pipelines for oil, water, and natural gas; and electrical towers and cabling for communication and telephone lines.
[View of multimodal corridor: dedicated truck lanes, water pipelines to the right, and rail lines far right]The corridors are tied into a North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN), that are “sites located away from traditional land, air and coastal borders with the vision to facilitate and process international trade through strategic investment in multi-modal transportation infrastructure and by promoting value-added services as goods move through the supply chain.”
One of the striking features of the proposed Super Highway and the Inland Port network is the proposed shift in borders. In the service of efficiency, trucks entering the US from Canada or Mexico would not be vetted at the border, but at an inland port hub. A joint U.S.-Mexico Customs facility called SmartPort is already under construction in Kansas City, Missouri, allowing Mexican trucks to enter the US on FAST lanes and be scanned by SENTRI technology, only officially crossing the border in Kansas.
In a nation obsessed with border security, the proposal raises interesting questions regarding control and access to these super-corridors. Politicians in the US are up-in arms, arguing that the corridor is a threat to security and national sovereignty, bringing in illegal goods and immigrants. One imagines an Orwellian system of surveillance, and electronic checks and balances behind the scenes.
Environmentalist, meanwhile, are sounding alarms, over the environmental impact of the corridors: the potential of a smog-filled highway, contaminating air and water and displacing ecosystems. Even more concerning is the presence of the water pipelines, which imply water is a commodity under NAFTA, rather than an essential need and public trust. There is ongoing political debate, in water-rich nations such as Canada, on limiting or extending bulk export of national water and its implications both on sovereignty, and regional ecologies.
The network reminds one of the radical urbanism of the 1960’s. Superstudio’s Continuous Monument, a gridded superstructure that would wrap around the world, eventually, covering the entire surface of the planet, leaving a physically and culturally frictionless suburban matrix. In this case, the supercorridors would shuttle goods, oil, gas, electricity, and people, in a futuristic hyper-network.
[Superstudio\'s Continuous Monument, a commentary on the rampant spread of globalization.]Watch for a Corridor coming to a neighborhood near you….
With a nod to Pruned’s post.
