Dive into the archives.
- Peak to Peak, or Parabolic Trajectories
[Trail map of Blackcomb (left) and Whistler (right).]
It is becoming commonplace to hear the superlatives coming out of the Middle East and China in terms of infrastructure, but not this time. In preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the two peaks at opposing ends to Fitzsimmions Valley, Whistler and Blackcomb will be linked. In the [...]
- Trash Vortex: sea-based landfilling?
08-12-03: Trash Vortex
The world’s largest garbage dump is located thousands of miles from land. Also known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Pacific Trash Vortex is an area of marine debris floating in the Pacific Ocean. This collection of trash is characterized as a plastic-soup due the high concentrations of suspended disposable plastics that [...]
- Farming the Atmosphere for Water
[Clouds in the Mojave Desert]
Beyond the astonishing bird’s nest featured at the recent Beijing Olympics was perhaps a more spectacular accomplishment: large-scaled cloud seeding. Chinese film and Olympic opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou cited rain as the largest threat to the opening ceremonies. To ensure a rain-free performance, 1104 rocket’s filled with silver [...]
- Little White Lies
[Keller Easterling's Some True Stories]
If you are within earshot of New York sometime before the remainder of the year, do not miss Keller Easterling’s “Some True Stories: researches in the field of flexible truth.” It runs from Nov 18 - Dec 23 2008 at the always reliable Storefront for Art and Architecture. Easterling and her [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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. [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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 [...]
- Student Works: Convergent Species
[A map of select territories which have been impacted by a complex collision on the natural and the industrial.]
We will regularly be publishing student projects and thesis research titled Student Works that is an extension of themes related to infrastructures and networks of habitats and resources. The first is a project by Vivian Chin, a [...]
