infrastructures / networks / environments

• Terrestrial Discontinuities
  

  [In 2007, an ill-conceived 6,000 mile network of energy corridors in the US West represents the collective ambition of Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service. The project is called the West-wide Energy Corridor.]

  Following a trail from our Dust Bowl post last week, we read with great interest that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “plans to conduct sweeping ecological assessments of public lands across the West.” (via) More specifically:

  The BLM says it will study the Colorado Plateau, southern Californias Mojave desert and Nevadas central Great Basin desert. It announced Monday it would use the studies to decide how to make use of the public lands.

  In part this is likely based upon increasing interest in potential for energy transport corridors as per the Energy Policy Act of 2005. And funding for 2011 comes from a US$8 million increase to the BLMs annual budget for 2010. Federal land management has certainly been a little less than anything to be inspired about in the intervening decade. Whatever the regional equivalent of pothole filling would be the appropriate descriptor here. (Lets just say considerable money goes into a regular horse census.) So atention to these lands, however fractured and discontinuous it might be, is refreshing.

  To put this in context, the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for administering about 253 million acres of land, or about one-eighth of the total land mass of the United States. Repeat: one-eighth the land mass is public lands managed by BLM.

  

  [The BLM manages about 37,000 horses on its land, which is an considered 10,000 surplus over a sustained balance with other species and resources.]
  

  [Significant domain of the BLM at lands surface. Counting sub-surface, the BLM empire expands to one-eighth US land mass.]

  And they are in the hot seat from the proposal last year for the  not-so-popular West-wide energy Corridor, presented in 2007, which spawned a lawsuit from a hefty list of agencies invested in land protection, such as: Sierra Club; The Wilderness Society; Western Watersheds Project; the Center for Biological Diversity; Defenders of Wildlife; National Parks Conservation Association; National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The West-wide corridor cuts a 6,000 mile webbed-network figure through 11 states, covering some 3 million acres of public lands. The Energy Corridor is intended to deliver (combined) oil, gas, hydrogen pipelines, and electrical transmission lines.

  In a post last year, Power of Ecosystems / Ecosystems of Power, we noted Ryder and Rosas stunning documentation of power corridors, and their ability to create their own vectorial landscape. A landscape–with very little human intervention–of clear cut trees or branches, untended or cleared groundcover, and quite often human waste. This linear network, estimated at some 300,000 miles, supports an ecology that has flourished under these conditions. It seems the West-wide corridor system could begin to embrace that possibility as well. Recognizing its status as an infrastructure likely to be devoid of extensive human presence, these corridors range from 3,500 feet wide to upwards of 5 miles wide. With these widths, we could almost being to see these corridors as an ecology in and of themselves – rather as a ecology competing with National Parks. they could BECOME the New National Parks, infrastructural vectors, protected as natural reserves by virtue of their very danger to us.

  

  [Lots of anti-big government types like to show this comparison of BLM and associated agencies to various European countries. It is impressive.]

  The Guzzler is a useful resource on everything BLM that the BLM doesnt always want let out.

  Also, possibly related is the Landscapes of Quarantine opening next week at Storefront for Art and Archietcture. (If we had time to do so, this would have been an InfraNet Lab contribution to what looks to be a fantastic exhibition.)

  Posted on Mar 03.10 to Infrastructures, Networks, energy, environment, habitats, highway, oil / gas | No Comments »  

• G/I/S: Terrain, Speculation, Swarms
  

  [Nix Ex Machina. Having humbly set himself apart as one of lifes great thinkers, Tarko rejects the menial tasks offered to him by the job agency and quickly reaches the conclusion that selling snow to the Eskimos is well within his capabilities. Not put off by a few holes in his business plan–a complete lack of funds, no guaranteed supply of snow and not one hint of commercial interest from his intended market–he establishes snowbrokers.com, an online brokerage service to facilitate snow sales to the Inuit tribes of Alaska.]

  It was a pleasure to participate in the amazing cross-blog dialogue–or blogoquim, as we liked to call it–this week as part of the Glacier/Island/Storm studio. No doubt the conversation will continue to expand from here. We are now looking forward to seeing / reading the projects incubated in this context.

  In the meantime we leave you with InfraNet Labs 3 contributions, and a postscript.

  1. LandFab, or Manufacturing Terrain. Island Edition.

  2. Islands of Speculation, Speculation on Islands: Spray Ice. Glacier Edition.

  3. Particulate Swarms. Storm Edition.

  Postscript: please visit Snowbrokers: eCommerce for eSkimos. Especially recommended is their Short History of Snow Logistics.

  Snowbrokers.com was set up a few years ago to service the growing need of online snow sales for the Inuit community of Alaska. Although research had clearly indicated that there was in fact no need at all for such a service this meant that if even the remotest need was ever discovered then this was clear growth from a starting point of zero. And as no serious canvassing of Eskimo snow purchasing tastes had ever been carried out then the assumption that there was no need could be considered flakey.

  Posted on Feb 26.10 to Uncategorized | No Comments »  

• Particulate Swarms
  

  [Radar image of Sydney during the dust storm of September 2009 - its largest in 70 years.]

  Editors Note: File under Glacier / Island / Storm, a studio run by BLDGBLOG at Columbia University GSAPP. Storm edition.
  

  ———–

  “It is time  /  It is time for  /  It is time for stormy weather” – The Pixies

  Storms deal in simple materials: air, water (in various states), and other particulates, such as dirt or dust. Though, not unlike species swarming in nature (or microcosmic viruses for that matter), they assemble, grow, pulse, and respond to environmental conditions. All the while, luring other similar material into their agitated state. Storms move somewhat indifferently to us and often in spite of us. They are often predictable and just forecastable enough to tease those of us that want to know when, where, and how much. All of this is done through pattern play, and behavioral modeling at two-scales: the massive regional and continental airpsaces, and the molecular or particle-based scale. Storms work in cycles, some small seasonal cycles, some century long, and even some on significant larger timespans (quasi-periodic). We are looking here at three storms; all recurring, swirling, pulsing, and shifting–of various particulate matter: dust, water, nitrogen (air). This is through the filter of states of matter: solid, liquid, and gaseous.

  

  [Map showing plume expansion rate, dircetion and growth of the Australian dust storm of 2009. Image by Advanstra.]

  1. Solid Storm: Dust // Certainly as one of the most fantastically documented storms of our young century, the Australian Dust Storm of 2009, you have no doubt seen the surreal images of highly saturated red and orange airspace. For this event, air particulate readings were about 15,400 micrograms per cubic meter. A typical day registers at about 50 micrograms, and a bushfire registers around 500 micrograms per cubic meter. It was thick. What was interesting though when this 2-day event rapidly escalated was that its long-term effects were somehow overlooked in favor of the evocative photography of a Mars-like outback. Within two weeks after the flash storm, scientists realized that the event caused a massive shift of phosphates and nitrogen as 4000 tons of desert topsoil particulates were dumped in the Sydney Harbour. Beyond that, the estimates for materials dumped in the Tasman Sea were an astounding 3,000,000 tons. And, as if a massive simulation of ocean fertilization, it was believed that this spurned phytoplankton growth to triple. So, what was in limited supply–yet was needed to grow life–in the desert ocean is ironically abundant in desert land. Further estimates put the additional phytoplankton in the Sea at 2 million tons, and, more impressively, with that about 8 million tons of CO2 captured. Eight million tons; thats a full months of a coal-fired power plant CO2 emission. Estimates for the amount of fish spawned from the increased phytoplankton are not known, but one can only imagine. Storms spawn swarms. Ocean fertilization inadvertently simulated at a massive scale by nature itself. Should it still be called geo-engineering if, in fact, it already occurs naturally on a massive?

  

  [Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas. Dust bowl surveying in Texas, April 18, 1935. Courtersy of NOAA George E. Marsh Album.]

  A note should also be included on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, aka dirty thirties. The Dust Bowl phenomenon lasted during a drought in the Great Plains from 1930-36. After the dust had settled, it was shown that farming practices in the region were irresponsible with crop rotation, deep plowing, and erosion prevention. On numerous occasions during the dust clouds, the sky would turn black by day as far East as Washington DC. Dirt fell like snow in Chicago. The winter of 1934 red snow fell in the Northeast. And on April 24, 1935, the day became known as Black Sunday.

  Some believe the Dust Bowl was predictable. Here is a PBS video on the Dust Bowl years.

  Another interesting diversion on dust storms is the alkali storms found at Owens Lake and other salt flats. This is well documented by Barry Lehrman in The Infrastructural City. (Pruned has an excellent writeup on this here.)

  

  [Thermohaline circulation based on a "dolphins perspective" that is where the oceans are shown as a single body of water and the flux can be easier understood without cutting it anywhere. via Avsa.]
  
  2. Liquid Storm: Water // One of the major circulatory systems responsible for the movement of large masses of water (and their associated species) and stabilizing the global climate is the Thermohaline Circulation (THC). The Thermohaline is an underwater storm–a massive global current. Known as the Great Ocean Conveyor, the Thermohaline Circulation is a series of underwater oceanic currents that are informed by the density of water, which is a function of the water’s temperature and salin­ity. Warm salty water is rapidly cooled as it reaches northern latitudes and as it forms into ice, sheds much of its salt. This increases the salinity in the remaining unfrozen cold water, making it denser and causing it to drop to the ocean floor (known as the ‘North Atlantic Deep Water’). This denser water moves towards the equator where it gains heat and migrates upwards. Global warming is promoting increased melting of the polar ice caps, leading to a more consistent density of water and slowing the thermohaline cycle. This has large potential effects on the climates of northern Europe and North America as well as destabilizing the sea ice formation in the arctic (and their associated ecosystems).
  

  [Trend Velocities in North Atlantic in meters per second per decade from May 1992 to June 2002. vectors trace the following graphic of the subpolar circulation in reverse direction, which denotes a slowing gyre. Credit: Sirpa Hakkinen, NASA GSFC.]

  The seasonal movement of the ice shelf constitutes one of the largest annual transformations in the Arctic and is the basis for the arctic ecosystem. As the summer months thaw the ice shelf, causing it to migrate northwards, fresh water is released into the sea. This freshwater promotes a blanket of fertile phytoplankton that forms the foundation of the arctic ecological food chain. Ecosystems that migrate with the annual retreat of ice traverse the Arctic seasonally. In the last 30 years, however, the summer sea ice extent has reduced by approximately 15 – 20%, while its average thickness has decreased by 10 – 15%. Both of these rates continue to increase, decreas­ing the foundation of the food chain and consequently applying pressure on species higher in the food chain.

  Recent data points to something not-so-innocently called the Great Atlantic Shutdown. As increasing amounts of freshwater enter the THC water is more bouyant and less likely to sink, slowing or even stalling circulation.

  

  [The jet stream. The northern hemisphere polar jet stream is most commonly found between latitudes 30°N and 60°N, while the northern subtropical jet stream located close to latitude 30°N. AP Photo/NOAA.]

  3. Gaseous Storm: Jet Stream // Winds have names: Katabatic, Foehn, Mistral, Bora, Cers, Marin, Levant, Gregale, Khamaseen, Harmattan, Levantades, Sirocco, Leveche, and many others (all exhaustively documented here). But all pale in comparison to the steady circulations of the tropospheric jet stream. The jet stream is a shifting river of air about 9-14 km above sea level that guides storm systems and cool air around the globe. And when it moves away from a region, high pressure and clear skies predominate. The jet stream marks a thick shifting swirling line that separates airspace that warms with height and airspace that cools with height. In short, it is the jet stream(s) that creates weather – all kinds of weather, from the ordinary, uninteresting dull gray sky to the devastating life-changing weather phenomenon.

  The path of the jet typically has a meandering shape, and these meanders themselves propagate east, at lower speeds than that of the actual wind within the flow. Each large meander, or wave, within the jet stream is known as a Rossby wave. Rossby waves are caused by changes in the Coriolis effect with latitude, and propagate westward with respect to the flow in which they are embedded, which slows down the eastward migration of upper level troughs and ridges across the globe when compared to their embedded shortwave troughs.

  

  [The jet stream core region averages 160 km/h (100 mph) in winter and 80 km/h (50 mph) in summer. Those segments within the jet stream where winds attain their highest speeds are known as jet streaks.]

  When the jet stream fractions off an eddy, such a minor event at the scale of the stream generates an cyclone as it hits the ground. Thought to be weakening and moving poleward, the jet stream would produce less rain in the south and more storms in the north. Though in the meantime, there is considerable ongoing research on how to harness this steady streaming power.

  

  [A wind machine, floated into the jet stream, would transmit electricity on aluminum or copper cables--or through invisible microwave beams--down to power grids, where it would be distributed locally. via SFGate.]

  One study (above) shows a range of kites responding to the stream in a variety of ways and at different altitudes. The possibility of a series of kites–ladder, rotor, rotating, or turntable–hovering 1000 feet in the air generating anywhere from 50- 250 kilowatts is hard to refute. Afterall, they are just kites. Or maybe, to test this possibility, we just need to tap into all the already ongoing leisurely kite-flying practices–so that regular kites are no longer available, but instead streaming kites only. Streaming kites flying much higher, and of course bigger, and equipped with gear that helps store and harness energy. At the end of a pleasurable day flying a kite you have next weeks electricity in a black box to tote back home.

  Post inspired by: Star Archive, Storm Archive, Storm Control Authority, Meteorological Alchemy, Carcinogenic Storms, Life on Mars, Average Natures.

  Posted on Feb 26.10 to agriculture, environment, habitats, minerals, weather | 2 Comments »  

• Islands of Speculation/ Speculation on Islands: Spray Ice
  

  [Large Ships spraying Water to manufacture Ice Islands]

  Editors Note: File under Glacier / Island / Storm, a studio run by BLDGBLOG at Columbia University GSAPP. Glacier Edition.
  

  Islands fabricated from ice are becoming more prevalent as offshore oil speculation in the Arctic gains more interest.  Ice has been a strategic building material in the Arctic for the construction of roads, airstrips, housing, and, in the last few decades, as temporary drilling platforms to explore for oil.  Ice islands are formed by spraying ice into cold air (below 20 degrees F), and layering the ice until it reaches a thickened state.  These islands are either grounded at the bottom of the sea floor or are floating structures in deeper waters.  Fabricated in just two months, these islands provide enough stability to support exploratory drilling tools including the rig and attendant equipment.

  

  [Ice Island Fabrication Diagram via. U.S Patent 4699545, 1987]
  

  [Typical Section through an Ice Island, via US. Patent 3863456]

  Ice islands emerged from exploratory drilling in the Canadian and US Beaufort seas during the 1970s and 1980s.  Replacing artificial gravel islands, ice islands offered various unique benefits – namely cost and safety.  Typical drilling vessels are vulnerable to sea ice, which is also a concern for artificial ice islands.  As such, constructed ice islands are layered with a thicker outer barrier for protection, essentially creating defensive walls.  Because these islands use the readily available seawater and cool Arctic air, they are a fraction of the cost of gravel islands.

  

  [Ice Island Fabrication Diagram, construction of outer ring & section via. U.S Patent 4699545, 1987]

  The Sohio test island was the first ice island, built as a grounded spray island.  The mid-1980s witnessed four successful ice islands that were used as drilling platforms, the first being the Mars Ice Island.  Constructed in 1986 in the Western Harrison Bay in Alaska, it took 898 hours over a 46-day period with over 1 million cubic meters of pumped water to construct it.  The result was an island of 215-meter diameter and depth of 8 meters, grounding it into the seabed below. The downturn in the oil industry in the 1980s slowed the development of Ice Islands for almost two decades.

  

  [One of the few images of the Mars Ice Island]

  While the Arctic continues to break up and natural ice islands form from calving, we have no shortage of ice islands.  But manufactured ice islands have several benefits over natural islands – namely, the fact that we can place them where we need them and anchor them to the sea floor. Now that the oil industry has economically invested to develop such technology, are there other applications for ice islands?  One idea, posited as early as 1932, was for massive seadrome landing fields.  The October 1932 issue of Modern Mechanix revealed:
  “The German scientist Dr. Gerke of Waldenburg two years ago erected an ice island in Lake Zurich by artificial means, which endured six days after the refrigerating machinery was switched off. His proposal for a mid-Atlantic way station of ice involves the construction of a framework of hollow tubing which; when filled with liquid air manufactured in a refrigerating plant, freezes the water surrounding it into a solid mass.”
  The article goes on to state that these islands should also house buildings and offices as well as a landing strip.  Could ice islands be a new nodal infrastructure in the Arctic?  From military bases, to airports and distribution centers, ice islands could strategically be located to go where no land has gone before – sprayed into the air to freeze on the water.

  

  [Clipping from Modern Mechanix, Oct 1932 Issue via. blog.modernmechanix.com]

  The other obvious benefit of ice islands, say over traditional islands, is that they float, and therefore can be moved.  Let’s take from a different technology used by Arctic oil companies – this time in Hibernia.  Hibernia boasts a massive concrete gravity base to counter bergy bits and larger ice sheets.  Still, however, they monitor the surrounding waters and put a call out to ‘arctic cowboys’ to lasso the large ice islands out of the path of the gravity base.  A 3,600-foot long, eight-inch thick polypropylene rope is used to move the ice islands into a different trajectory; effectively keeping the waters clear around the oilrig.

  

  [Moving Ice Islands, via Hibernia Management & Development Co.]

  Technologies to both fabricate and transport ice islands open up a series of potential uses – far removed from drilling oil.  Can fabricated ice islands be used to house communal infrastructure that is mobile?  Can ice islands host new cities, or be tourist resorts?  Can we use the technologies in creating ice islands to harvest ice fields?  Can Ice Islands be used as large shipping platforms that are set into motion along various ocean currents?  Ice Islands could be a true soft infrastructure that may allow for ecological urbanization in the Arctic.

  Posted on Feb 24.10 to land fabrication, oil / gas, water | 10 Comments »  

• LandFab, or Manufacturing Terrain
  

  [Zealandia topography. Considered by many a lost continent (micro-continent), Zealandia sank after separation from Antarctica some 130 million years ago. Separated or future originary?]

  Editors Note: File under Glacier / Island / Storm, a studio run by BLDGBLOG at Columbia University GSAPP. Island Edition.
  

  ———–
  

  Gilles Deleuze, in “Desert Islands,” distinguishes between two types of islands, continental (separated) and oceanic (originary) islands. He writes, “Continental islands serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth. Oceanic islands that the earth is still there under the sea gathering its strength to punch through to the surface.” While certainly staying true to deep-time, geological phenomenon, he does overlook another obvious case of artificial islands, which are simultaneously originary—because they are often constructed from scratch—and separated—because they are often grown upon annexed foundational granular material. The previous century was witness to an abundance of innovative development energy in producing something solid amidst something entirely liquid. It most early cases of land fabrication, catalysts of the artificial, manufactured islands type are centered on volcanic heroism, political anomaly, or development opportunism.

  

  [The Federated States of Micronesia consists of 607 islands extending 1,800 miles and is divided into four states. Nan Madol is on the eastern state of Pohnpei.]

  1. NAN MADOL // What better place to start than volcanic heroism. The early occupants of The Federated States of Micronesia constructed Nan Madol, a series of 92 artificial rectangular islets, for nobility made of basalt prisms in about 1300. Megalithic land manufactured of columnar basalt formed seawalls stacked like logs, with coral rubble fill behind the seawalls. The basalt seawalls and breakwaters of Nan Madol have survived centuries of brutal Pacific conditions and have become symbiotic with the existing island coast.

  

  [Nan Madol map.]
  

  [Earths first prefabricated material, basalt prism columns are formed from the mathematics of cracking cooled lava.]

  Columnar basalt forms when flowing lava is spread think over a large area and cools simultaneously from the top (air cooling) and bottom (earth cooling). It contracts as it cools, but due to irregularity, the entire body does not contract. Instead, the contract is localized and cracks form, resulting in polygonal columns of basalt that are only a few feet wide. The early Pohnpeians of Nan Madol used these columns in a manner similar to log-cabin construction with alternating rows.

  

  [A portal marking the entry into the mortuary enclosure of Nandauwas of Nan Madol. Constructed entirely out of basalt prisms, est. 1200. Apologies for the tourist, but it is useful for scale.]

  Today, Nan Madol’s ruins, often called the Venice of the Pacific, are connected by a grid of shallow canals. (In fact, “Nan Madol” originates form the term “spaces between,” which carries a double meaning of between land / water and literally the canal-like spaces between its enclosures.) Again, Deleuze is useful here. From Desert Islands he writes: “Islands are either from before or for after humankind.” Islands are themselves a kind of geologic ruin—or in some way considered partial complete or partially eroded. How ideal then to have Nan Madol, artificial island, nestled within Micronesia, an originary island.

  

  [Deshima is a Dutch trading post setup in 1634 on artifically constructed land in Nagasaki Bay, so as to prevent foreigners from touching Japanese soil.]

  2. DEJIMA // Now for the case of political anomalous artificial land fabrication. The Japanese constructed Dejima, a man-made island in Nagasaki Bay in 1634. The island was constructed on the orders of the shogun to accommodate merchants, who were later expelled leaving only employees of the Dutch East Trading Company (also known as VOC) in 1641. At 120 meters by 75 meters wide, the fan-shaped island was administratively part of Nagasaki, but autonomous in many other ways. It housed residences for twenty Dutchmen, warehouses, and some accommodations for Japanese officials. With 150 interpreters deployed to Dejima, the island was heavily controlled to ensure that there remained room for economic benefit without political compromise.

  

  [Deshima Island, circa 1810.]

  The Dutch East India Company, arguably the first megacorporation, set the benchmark for trade in Asia. And cultivated a fleet of over 4000 ships to establish its monopoly–through political-spatial exceptions on trade islands throughout Asia. Dejima, because of the suspicion of of shogunate rule, was the most extreme with its own land serving as both port, trading post, resort, and geographic satellite. The Dutch flag was flown there from 1641 until 1857. For several years during the Napoleanic wars, Dejima was the only place that the Dutch flag stood firm.

  In many ways, Deshima was a foreshadowing of globalization, trade politics, free-trade zones, and other EEZs, 400 years in the making. The island form, especially that which is entirely artificial, served as a prophylactic throughout the trade exchange and contact between Asia and Europe. It was a mediator, neither authentically Japanese nor authentically European. Its fan-like shape provided an ideal lengthened edge towards the Bay for docking.

  

  [Construction of the Venetian Causeway in Miami (1925). From the Florida Photographic Collection, Rc21474.]

  3. VENETIAN ISLANDS // No, not the real Venice; Venice, Miami. Before the faux fronds of Dubai, there was the Venetian Causeway–a developers crap shoot. The 1920s saw a land boom in Florida. The team of John Collins, a farmer turned developer, and Carl Fisher, a promotional genius, responded by constructing a chain of capsule-shaped islands along a causeway linking Miami to what became know as Miami Beach. The project, known as the Venetian Islands, began by selling underwater plots, specifying that the buyer would receive land on an island that had been dredged, filled, and improved. There was no physical land for potential buyers to survey when buying; they were buying the idea of land and lifestyle convey through images and real-estate speak.

  

  [The perfect pill-shaped developments of Biscayne Island, San Marco Island, San Marino Island, Di Lido Island, Rivo Alto Island, and Belle Island. Constructed in the 1920s.]

  The Venetian Islands were tightly calibrated to dimensionally ensure as much beach property as possible. All the islands were bisected by the Venetian Causeway, a bridge linking across the Bay that provided infrastructure and access. Collins and Fishers development in the Bay is tied to a contentious legacy, initiated in the 1860s, of drainage and land reclamation in the Florida Everglades.

  

  [These concrete pillars are all that exists of the unfinished Isola di Lolando in Biscayne Bay, the Venetian Island under construction when the market crashed in 1929. Now, ironically, rather than an artifical island, it is an artifical reef.]

  The exuberance of the overall project finally stalled with the combined strike of hurricanes and a burst real-estate bubble (the first of its kind!) in 1929. The legacy of this can be seen in the massive outline island figure of Isola de Lolando and its concrete pilings rising some 5-10 feet out of the Bay.

  Intended simply as evidence of a more storied history of innovations in land fabrication, these case studies show the role of economic opportunism and exceptions to create something solid from nothing, or something inhabitable from the uninhabitable. How do politics and economics figure in the scale and magnitude of these geographic exceptions? Although single-minded in their intention, how can the techniques involved in their fabrication–socially, ecologically, economically–further their viability and relevance?

  Posted on Feb 22.10 to Geoengineering, Infrastructures, land fabrication, suburbs, water | 4 Comments »  

• Student Works: Thermarium
  Processing Water Overflow
  The Thermarium envisions a new beach typology for the Toronto Waterfront. Responding to the lack of swimming at Toronto’s new urban beaches and consistent CSO (combined sewage overflow) closures at surrounding swim areas, we offer new possibilities for water immersion and activity that are enabled, rather than prohibited, by the polluted run-off instigated by heavy rainstorms.
  On days when rainstorms force the city’s water flow to exceed the infrastructural limit, CSOs are dumped into Lake Ontario untreated. They cause high levels of pollutants and E.Coli, forcing beaches to post “No Swimming” signs. We use water to clean everything; from the dishes to our bodies, water is imperative to our notion of cleanliness and purity. However, the act of cleaning transforms uncontaminated
  water into dirty water. This project is enabled by dirty water. On the days when the weather overloads the infrastructure, the site and silo are put into action.
  Acting as a processor, the silo treats the dirty water as an input and productively reuses its by-products: sediment, heat, and clean water. These outputs are used to construct new ponds in which visitors can bathe, swim, and socialize. The ponds are heated by the cleansing process and filled with treated CSO water. As the number of overflows mount, the silo site continues to grow and the lattice-like structure of sedimentation accumulates. The program on the site is based on water immersion and experience. Acting as a new type of park, the site can be navigated from within or on top of the new formwork. Pools are distributed in varying sizes to accommodate an array of uses, group sizes, and atmos-pheric conditions—forming a new public space for the city while cleansing its water.
  

  [Thermarium Site Plan. All images c/o Daniel Rabin & Annie Ritz.]

  The Thermarium is a project by University of Toronto M.Arch Graduates Daniel Rabin and Annie Ritz, that examines how to process water overflow.  The Thermarium envisions a new beach typology for the Toronto Waterfront. Responding to the lack of swimming at Toronto’s new urban beaches and consistent CSO (combined sewage overflow) closures at surrounding swim areas, the Thermarium offers new possibilities for water immersion and activity that are enabled, rather than prohibited, by the polluted run-off instigated by heavy rainstorms.

  

  [Adapting the Silos into a processor.]
  

  [Site Processing.]

  On days when rainstorms force the city’s water flow to exceed the infrastructural limit, CSOs are dumped into Lake Ontario untreated. They cause high levels of pollutants and E.Coli, forcing beaches to post “No Swimming” signs. Ritz and Rabin state:

  “We use water to clean everything; from the dishes to our bodies, water is imperative to our notion of cleanliness and purity. However, the act of cleaning transforms uncontaminated water into dirty water. This project is enabled by dirty water. On the days when the weather overloads the infrastructure, the site and silo are put into action.”

  

  [Bubbles as a pressure-programme device.]
  

  [The (by)productive landscape of the Urban Beach created by rain overflow.]
  

  [Project plan shows accumulation and subtraction over time.]

  Acting as a processor, the silo treats the dirty water as an input and productively reuses its by-products: sediment, heat, and clean water. These outputs are used to construct new ponds in which visitors can bathe, swim, and socialize. The ponds are heated by the cleansing process and filled with treated CSO water. As the number of overflows mount, the silo site continues to grow and the lattice-like structure of sedimentation accumulates. The program on the site is based on water immersion and experience. Acting as a new type of park, the site can be navigated from within or on top of the new formwork. Pools are distributed in varying sizes to accommodate an array of uses, group sizes, and atmospheric conditions—forming a new public space for the city while cleansing its water.

  

  [Interior view of grotto-like spaces.]
  

  [Sectional perspective showing various pool typologies.]
  

  [Water cleanliness, temperature, and location determine its type and ecosystem.]
  

  [Atmospheric spaces initiated from rain overflow.]

  Thermarium is one of several ‘-arium’ projects featured in -arium: Weather + Architecture.  Click here for more information on the book launch, which will occur on Feb. 22nd, 2010 at the Univeristy of Toronto.  To purchase -arium online, click here.  We hope to see you at the launch.

  Posted on Feb 16.10 to student work, waste, water, weather | 1 Comment »  

• Snow Drift
  

  [First signs of the real stuff yesterday as truckloads of transfered snow still roll in to Cypress Mountain, Vancouver. Photo: Paul Chinn / Chronicle.]

  [Ed note: Inspired by the mounting concern over a dry unprecipitated Winter Olympics, an earlier version of this sat in our post-box for several weeks, though finding the time to complete it was elusive. In that time, places, mammoth, and BLDGBLOG all wrote excellent pieces on the ephemeral impact of snow on olympics, cities, and landscapes.]

  Much has now been written about the snow-starved Cypress Mountain in the impending leadup to 2010 Winter Olympics opening later this week. In fact, there was no snow accumulation in January, and February has only yielded rain. They cant even get graupel if they wanted it. According to Canada’s National Weather Service, this has been the warmest Vancouver winter on record since 1937.  (Blame most commonly rests on an El Niño weather phenomenon warming the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean. The typical weather anomaly scapegoat.) Just yesterday, as many organizers within VANOC had predicted, Cypress did see the beginning of a light dumping of the real thing.

  

  [Making moguls on Cypress Mountain, Vancouver. Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press.]

  Although not the first time there has been Olympic anxiety over an unseasonably warm January: Torino (2006) looked worryingly dry until just days before, Nagano (1998) had rain at the beginning, and Innsbruck (1964) famously moved 20,000 ice bricks for bobsled and luge events. So too, again 2010 Vancouver’s snowboarding and some skiing events are threatened. Every good party has a plan B, but how realistic or desirable is any plan B?

  

  [Trail map of Cypress Mountain.]

  When snow prospects at lower Cypress looked dim, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) unrolled the contingency plan to use snowcats, trucks, helicopters and a team of about 45 people to equitably redistribute snowfall. This led to two basic weather engineering practices: snow transfer and snow-base packing. Trucks and snowcats are moving snow from higher elevations, while helicopters are ferrying in bales of straw to bolster bases, walls and turns. Snow is being moved hastily – none of the ice brick techniques found at Innsbruck here – almost more as a cut-fill soil strategy. VANOC is trucking in about three dozen loads of snow a day from as far away as Manning Park, more than two hours drive east of Vancouver. That is over 300 truckloads and counting.

  VANOC has permits to use urea, commonly used in fertilizer, as a snow-hardening agent, but would do so only as a last resort. Other measures could include giant tarps to protect snowboard half-pipe walls between runs.

  

  [Trucking in crystalline water ice, aka snow, from higher elevations 90 miles away in a massive weather transfer effort.]
  

  [Keep on trucking.]

  In lieu of snow, VANOC has built halfpipes and other ski cross and snowboard cross course features from over 1,065 bales of straw, each weighing between 450 and 650 kilos. This is where snowboarding meets farming.

  

  [Helicoptering 500-kilo bales of hay.]
  

  [Unloading snow, er, bales of hay for snow packing foundation.]

  So if plan A was do nothing, let nature take its course,  plan B definitely went into effect. Though if we always planned with plan B, it could argued that Winter Olympics could be more a state of mind than necessarily a climatological condition. And I dont mean Dubai Ski here, but maybe the logistics of snow transfer or drift , if planned in advance could invite some other geographical candidates for Olympics. Certainly if the games were held in Washington DC this year, everything would be fine, except for the obvious topographical problem.

  If none of this works out for VANOC for tomorrow’s opening — and future Winter cities inconvenienced by El Nino take note! — next time we recommend IDE’s all-weather snowmaker.

  Posted on Feb 11.10 to Geoengineering, environment, land fabrication, water | 1 Comment »  

• The Spectatorium, 1893
  

  [Steele MacKaye's Spectatorium was intended to re-create the landing of Christopher Columbus, complete with mini-ocean, waves, and an island.]

  With seating for 10,000, an eight foot deep concrete tank under the entire stage complete with wave machine and wind machines, railroad ties to aid in the shifting of three dimensional scenery behind a “light curtain,” the Spectatorium was envisioned for the 1893 Chicago Exposition. Conceived by the engineer and dramatist Steele MacKaye (father of Benton MacKaye), the Spectatorium was intended as a “mechanical duplication of nature.” In fact the spectacle was intended to be so immersive that the play was written intentionally to contain no speaking parts.

  

  [A section through The Spectatorium, a twenty-five stage theatre designed to mount Steele Mackaye's play about Christopher Columbus for the Chicago Exposition of 1893, unbuilt.]

  

  Recommended reading: Pictorial Illusionism: The Theatre of Steele MacKaye by J.A. Sokalski.

  Posted on Feb 10.10 to environment, land fabrication, participation, weather | No Comments »  

• robonauts
  

  [Robonaut2 – or R2 for short – is the next generation dexterous robot, developed through a Space Act Agreement by NASA and General Motors. It is faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced than its predecessors and able to use its hands to do work beyond the scope of previously introduced humanoid robots. Image via NASA]

  Just eight months after filing for bankruptcy, General Motors has announced that it will be teaming up with NASA to develop new robots.  The opportunistic joint venture is part of the Space Act Agreement, and aims to build a safe ‘humanoid’ robot that is able to work alongside humans.  The development of the R2 robonaut – or what is being claimed as the most dexterous robot – is a result of several new technologies including leading edge control and sensor/ vision systems.  To achieve near human dexterity in an envelope of comparable size and shape to human hands and fingers, engineers looked to biomimicry to create tendon-like operators.  The R2 was built to replicate the human form from waist up and take over difficult, dangerous or repetitive tasks while increasing safety.

  

  [ NASA and General Motors have come together to develop the next generation dexterous humanoid robot. The robots – called Robonaut2 – were designed to use the same tools as humans, which allows them to work safely side-by-side humans on Earth and in space. Image via NASA]
  

  [ Robonaut2 surpasses previous dexterous humanoid robots in strength, yet it is safe enough to work side-by-side with humans. It is able to lift, not just hold, this 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body. Image via NASA]

  The massive expense of such a development encouraged partnership between what are now two government owned agencies.  While it is still to be decided if the robots will be remotely operated by human control devices or will have autonomously scripted actions, the aim for future robonauts is to be able to work free of human involvement.  The ramifications of such a development are endless – from changing production processes, to soldier robots, future robonauts could even be the first citizens of new planets that plant the first terraforming or geoengineering seeds.  Key to the future development and success of robonauts is how we can effectively reduce the gap between mechanical engineering and biology, or create a systemic symbiosis between the sciences.

  Posted on Feb 07.10 to work | 2 Comments »  

• Crisis of Solutions / Opportunity of Crisis
  

  [Crisis As Catalyst: The Annual Thesis Publication 2009, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design / University of Toronto.]

  The Thesis publication this year, ANNUAL, has raised the stakes again. Below is a short piece I submitted to it, which asked for responses to the provocation of “crisis as catalyst.”

  

  The Crisis of Solutions / The Opportunity of Crises -  (Mason White)

  There are so many proclamations of crises today – economic, climate, social, political, and apparently there is even a crisis of form – that the result is virtually numbing. In fact the greatest crisis is the crisis of indifference to crisis. (Insert story of boy who cried wolf.) Yet how do we, in any productive profession, react to such a call to action? Are these just snafus stalling an inevitable trajectory or larger paradigm shifts suggesting a new world? What role does a designer play here?

  “If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top.” – Buckminster Fuller

  The quote above from Buckminster Fuller’s Operational Manual for Spaceship Earth revolves around an argument that the piano top as a flotation device is an inadvertent solution to a problem that requires more adequate redress. While I agree that the piano top is not necessarily the most ideal life preserver, I disagree with Fuller’s propositioning that crisis management exclusively requires going back to reevaluate the design of life preservers. This overlooks the innovation and ingenuity of the user, and in many ways a piano top may be even more effective as a life preserver in its ability to offer a way to get out of the water, and a way to float more individuals than a single preserver on a shared surface. We could also make the argument that the piano top (if buoyant enough) can double as a water-born vehicle. But this does not mean that the life preserver should be designed in homage to the piano top, but rather that the piano top, in the right hands, can be rigged to be a life preserver. I would argue that the architect here is no longer the designer of the piano top nor the designer of a life preserver but the person – in this case the person in the water – that opportunistically addresses a crisis (of some magnitude) with this innovative programmatic or typological transformation. The architect is the person that hacks / rigs the piano top into a life preserver.

  In the face of myriad crises, I would propose a (paradigm?) shift from the binary of problem / solution toward challenges / opportunity. Design work is typically resigned to either a signature response to a brief (capital D-design) or a solution to a problem (lowercase d-design). However, both of these are reductive and both overlook the role of design to position itself as an opportunity. Opportunity locates design as a response addressing the problem but incorporates another unexpected possibility, namely a typological or programmatic innovation in response to a yet-unseen factor. Opportunities are solutions rigged to address future challenges and as yet unseen problems.

  

  More info on ANNUAL can be found here. Or try emailing The Annual theannual.daniels[at]gmail.com

  Posted on Feb 02.10 to infranetlab | 1 Comment »