Editors Note: File under Feedback: Architecture’s New Territories, an InfraNet Lab seminar at Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design / University of Toronto. Guest post and images are by Matthew Spremulli. Matthew will be continuing this work in his MArch thesis, which will be blogged at the ever-expanding reField.

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Corn has unquestionably become the dominant crop farmed in the United States, which on average as a country produces in excess of 12.1 billion bushels/year. However, the story behind corn’s abundance at the large scale is actually a story of abundance on the extra small scale of the kernel itself, and that of a very specific corn-kernel type: Yellow Dent. Yellow Dent represents 99% of all Corn grown in the USA, grown principally for its amazing ability to yield a high amount of starch, yet none of which is able to be eaten directly off the cob by neither man nor animal! Thus, all of this “potentially” abundant food enters a long and varied chain of transportation and processing, to turn the inedible grain into something useful. Another way of looking at the story of corn is recognizing the vast amount of separate processing infrastructures.

[The Corn Belt accounts for more than half of the corn grown in the US.]

Most of this corn (approx 50%) is being grown in a very specific area in the US, called the Corn Belt (Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana), thanks to the very specific climate and soil types that exist there the Yellow Dent crop (originally from Southern Mexico) flourishes. The Corn Belt is also where most of the processing occurs.

US Corn has five major consumption uses:
1. Feed for livestock
2. Ethanol production
3. Exports
4. Food additives
5. Food products.

[Corn Input-Output.]

[Corn processing plant. From the Iowa-based Pine Lake Corn Processors LLC.]

However, one of the more interesting threads through this story of abundant starch is that of the energy inputs/outputs in the transformation processes and how that can be traced. The production of corn both exhausts a large amount of energy and imported material and leaves behind a massive amount of wastes and by-products. One of the first things to consider in re-wiring the system would be to tie together the outputs from one process and potentially use them for an input of another. After examining the energy input/output process of making ethanol (as found in PDF The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol), which represents one of the most energy intensive processes and also the most amount of useful by-products, there was potential to tie together points in the system and create closed-loop circuits. Another point to consider is how consumers never really get to experience any of these transformative corn-processes before it becomes an array of products on their store shelves.

[Existing corn embodied energy: production, processing + inputs/outputs.]

Thus, a proposed intervention is to exploit the existing main mode of transportation for corn, the train, and turn it into a system of a traveling processing plant, corn product store, waste recycler, and industrial museum. The train breathes in the outputs from corn sub-systems, such as the waste run-off from cattle farming and then turn it into a fermented fertilizer by the time it reaches the corn crops of the Corn Belt. The train mechanics would need to be redesigned in order to double as the large mechanical processing gears and drums found in the Dry and Wet Milling processing plants. The train would travel along a dedicated loop that would sync the cities that create the food demand and the landscapes capable of producing the abundance. City folk would have the chance to see the processing of the corn as it passes through its line, and each train car would be designed to both perform its part of the processing while becoming an interface for the consumers and users.

[Rail network synchronized to corn belt prodcution.]

[Proposed re-wiring of corn embodied energy: production, processing + inputs/outputs.]

Also from the Feedback seminar:
Re-Link: The Physical Network of Data, Ali Fard
Border Economies: the Maquiladora Export Landscape, Juan Robles
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, Fei-Ling Tseng

Festival season is starting. In particular, we are excited about a slew of films that are part of the Canadian International Documentary Festival, nicknamed HotDocs, that runs April 29 – May 9, 2010 here in Toronto. With so many fascinating accounts represented in this edition, we thought it best to profile them here, for safe keeping. The tales we have selected chronicle landfills, clean energy wars, and land use ambiguities.

Waste Land, directed Lucy Walker (UK / Brazil)

[Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, shows May 1 and May 5.]

Lucy tracks artist Vik Muniz and his work with pickers of recyclable materials in Brazil’s Jardim Gramacho, arguably the world’s largest landfill site.

Land, directed by Julian Pinder (Canada)

[Land, directed by Julian Pinder, shows May 2 and 9.]

Burnt-out baby-boomers, Sandinistas, and ex-lefty capitalist developers clash in a wild-west showdown over land in a bucolic Nicaraguan seaside town.

Gasland, directed by Josh Fox (USA)

[Gasland, directed by Josh Fox, shows April 30 and May 2.]

Flammable tap water, mysterious ailments, poisoned land and livestock, Sundance prize-winner Gasland exposes the environmental calamities and cover-ups caused by natural gas drilling.

Into Eternity, directed by Michael Madsen (Denmark, Sweden, Finland)

[Into Eternity, directed by Michael Madsen, shows May 5 and 7.]

The scientific minds behind Finland’s massive underground nuclear waste storage facility, Onkalo, where radioactive waste must sit untouched for at least 100,000 years to neutralize its potential danger, are probed in Into Eternity.

Wistful Wilderness, directed by Digna Sinke (Netherlands)

[Wistful Wilderness, directed by Digna Sinke, shows May and 8.]

The island of Tiengemeten is getting a makeover. Originally tamed to serve as agricultural land, its now being left to the elements to revert back to wilderness. Filmmaker Digna Sinke documents 15 years of transformation.

Tankograd, directed by Boris Bertram (Denmark)

[Tankograd, directed by Boris Bertram, shows May 4 and 7.]

Chelyabinsk, Russia, once the site of a top secret Cold War atomic bomb factory, is now the most radioactively polluted city in the world. Its residents live with the consequences of catastrophic leaks and dumped toxic waste as cancers, auto-immune diseases, and undrinkable water flow freely. But the city most foul sprouts a most unlikely growth—the vibrant, inspiring Chelyabinsk Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Dreamland, directed by Þorfinnur Guðnason (Iceland)

[Dreamland, directed by Þorfinnur Guðnason, shows May 2 and 4.]

With its hydroelectric and geothermal power surplus, Iceland’s clean energy initiatives have attracted heavy industries whose pollution decimates natural vegetation. A tale of sabotage from the frontlines of the green revolution.

I Bought a Rainforest, directed by Helena Nygren and Jacob Andren (Sweden)

[I Bought a Rainforest, directed by Helena Nygren and Jacob Andren, shows May 2 and 4.]

Jacob Andren, like over 400,000 other Swedish children, remembers raising money to help save a rainforest. Twenty years later, wondering if his efforts made any real impact, he visits Costa Rica to see whether this piece of land remains preserved.

They Come for the Gold, They Come for it All, directed by Pablo D’Alo Abba and Christian Harbarak (Argentina, Chile)

[They Come for teh Gold, They come for it All, directed by Pablo Abba and Cristian Harbaruk, shows May 6 and 8.]

In a small town on the border of Argentina and Chile, the residents of Esquel are conflicted over a lucrative bid from Canadian mining company Meridian Gold. On the one hand, the mine will provide much needed work for residents, half of whom live below the poverty line. On the other hand, the gold and silver extraction requires large amounts of water and cyanide.

You can access the complete listings–time, locations, details–here. Enjoy.

[Ed note: this work was produced in the Frozen Cities Liquid Networks studio.]

At 162,000 km (including the Arctic Archipelago), Canada is the country with the longest Arctic shoreline – ahead of its compatriots Russia, Norway, Greenland/Denmark, and the USA.  Arctic Nations have been racing to chart their respective under-water continental shelves, in order to claim the abundance of natural resources which lie beneath the sea bed.

Yet Canada has never been a nation known for its military might. Indeed at the moment, Canada has five icebreakers that guide foreign vessels through Canada’s Arctic waters and assist in harbour breakouts, routing, and northern resupply, but ironically, none that can operate all season. And the Canadian Forces Northern Area (CFNA), headquartered in Yellowknife, consists of 65 personnel, responsible for defending 4 million km2 of unforgiving territory.

Meanwhile, the Russians have been theatrically (and quite literally) planting flags in the arctic sea floor– claiming it as theirs. The CBC has a great documentary covering this arctic race.

[Unpacking the logistics of millitary control and oil extraction]

Aumanil, by Dan McTavish and Kevin Lisoy, of the University of Waterloo, takes as its premise that Canada needs to assert its military presence within the North West passage, for strategic and monitoring purposes. Yet the project also works under the assumption that Canada is unlikely to liberate the funds required for such an outpost anytime soon.

Aumanil opportunistically envisages the Canadian government  leveraging oil companies to create a new hybrid oil rig / military base.

[Aumanil: at the confluence of oil resources and global trade routes]

Lisoy and McTavish write: “the siting of Aumanil facilitates the direct collection, transfer, refinement and storage of crude oil extracted from the largest projected oil reserve in the North. The site also facilitates the active management, control and assertion of sovereignty by Canada of the resources and routes of the North.”

A permanently moored city replete with social, military and port infrastructure, Aumanil envisages a new Arctic settlement or Port-City, that shifts its programmatic weight from oil extraction and refining in its early phases, to military and port intensive use in a post-peak oil scenario.

Rig components

[Re-rig: from oil extraction to millitary port-city]

The project takes the basic components of the oil rig and reconfigures them to allow future flexibility, allowing Aumanil to remain economically viable. “As the oil functions leave the modules public amenities are introduced into the system. Food production, water desalination, energy management and collection become the new processes of the rig.

[From oil storage to green energy]

Both the industrial and social qualities of the rig have the capacity to change with external influences (Oil exploration, depletion of specific resources, the opening of the Northwest Passage), but as well with changing internal conditions ( ie. inclusion of families on the rig and a shift from temporal occupancy to more permanent habitation).

[Co-habitation: oil production and living units]

[Accommodations are modular so internal configurations may be reworked as social conditions change]

Lisoy and McTavish write: “Aumanil is an infrastructure in the macro and micro sense. The project is a projection screen, making legible the changing landscape of Canadian sovereignty, resource extraction and dwelling in the Canadian North.”

[Oil rig as Banhamian mega-structure]

Canada will surely need to partner with a global power to maintain some semblance of sovereignty in the Canadian North. A likely candidate is the United States, but in an era of sky-rocketing national debts and increased Public-Private Partnerships, military and oil companies might not make such strange bed-fellows.

This work was completed in the InfraNet Lab run studio Frozen Cities Liquid Networks at the University of Waterloo. (All images, unless otherwise noted, are by Dan McTavish and Kevin Lisoy.)

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.)

Is Weather the last vestige of nature in the City?
Do the forces in Weather systems hold the key to the energy crisis?
Is instability and disorder something that can be designed?
Is Weather the nemesis of Architecture or its best friend?
Is Weather becoming the last form of cultural specificity?
Does it all come down to the “Green”?

The dynamic, turbulent and unpredictable forces that comprise the weather are shared by economic cycles of production and consumption.  We are at the cusp of an intriguing moment wherein the cycles of economics and weather have collided to instigate a new green economy.  The consumptive aspects of 'green' have granted architecture a moment to explore its nemesis – instability and disorder – the key characteristics of weather.

-arium: Weather + Architecture is a research investigation carried out during the 2008 Gehry Chair studio at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design under the direction of Jürgen Mayer H. and Neeraj Bhatia that centers upon how to renegotiate the relationship between architecture and weather.  Composed of three sections – The Weather Report, The Weather Forecast, and The Weather Outlook – that respectively, research, design and theorize on weather and architecture, -arium offers a guide for both architectural designer and critics. The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design invites you to join celebrating the launch of –arium: Weather + Architecture. Hard copies will be available for purchase during the reception or can be purchased online.

Project Team:

Editors:
Jürgen Mayer H. & Neeraj Bhatia

Graphic Design:
Eric Bury, Visuals Etcetera

Student Researchers:
Tomek Bartzak, Johanna Bollozos, Dan Briker, Piers Cunnington, Andrea Losier, Renee Leung, Daniel Rabin, Dennis Rijkhoff, Annie Ritz, Lisa Spensieri, Andrea Traverso, Geoffrey Turnbull & Marnie Williams

Articles by:
George Baird (Daniels), Neeraj Bhatia (InfraNet Lab/ The Open Workshop/ Daniels), Rodolphe el-Khoury (KLF/ Daniels), Robert Levit (KLF/ Daniels), Filiz Klassen (Ryerson University), Dirk Hebel (DRKH Architects/ ETHZ), Jürgen Mayer H. (J. MAYER H. Architects), Jörg Stollmann (URBANINFORM), Henry Urbach (SFMOMA), Matthais Hollwich (HWKN, UPenn, Architizer), Marc Kushner (HWKN/ Columbia, Architizer), & Mason White (InfraNet Lab/ Lateral Office/ Daniels)

[The Canary Islands as an eddy-creating obstacle via GSFC/NASA.]

Vortex streets emerge when the right wind and cloud formation encounters the right kind of obstacle. Theodore von Kármán, a fluid dynamicist, observed and documented this phenomenon. Swirling rings sequence along a street-like corridor trail beyond the obstacle. Each ring stems from an air pockets are released in a series of vortices alternating parallel to wind direction. This condition can happen at any scale if the proportion of energies and obstacles is present.

[Another set of vortices southeast of the Ilha da Madeira (Madeira Island) via GSFC/NASA December 1, 2002.]

With almost 30 projects and proposals addressing the opportunities and challenges of water in/around/under/through the city, we are excited to announce the HYDROCity exhibition opening tonight at the Toronto Free Gallery (1277 Bloor St W).

HYDROCity  features the work of these architects, landscapes architects, and urbanists:
Andrea Abita
Bureau E.A.S.T.
Fletcher Studio
Futura Desarrollo Urbano, S.C.
Chris Hardwicke
Elijah Huge
Ghazal Jafari
Marta Jakuć
Sara Kamalvand
Lateral Office
Loomis McAfee Architects
Cara McKibbin
Brett Milligan
Shahrzad Nezafati
OMA
OSA + WIT + PROAP
P-REX
Paisajes Emergentes
RVTR
Jason Sowell, Nichole Wiedemann
University of Toronto Landscape Studio Spring 2009
Washington University Architecture Studio Spring 2009
Waterstudio
Emily Williamson

And the work is sited in such divergent locations as: Vietnam, The Netherlands, USA, Italy, Canada, Ecuador, Iran, Morocco, United Kingdom, Mexico, Ghana, Cuba, among others.

We will be featuring a few of these projects in greater detail over the coming weeks, since the show is up until Jan 5, 2010.

One of my favorite films from this year’s TIFF has to be Peter Mettler’s Petrolis.  Mettler, who was the cinematographer for Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes, takes on a directorial role on Petropolis, which visually documents the Alberta Tar Sands.  Given the massive scale of the project, the infrastructures, and the process, Mettler had few choices but to document the project from an aerial perspective.

[Water taken from the local watershed ends up in toxic lakes called tailings ponds. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[A giant earth mover transports earth mined at an open pit for processing to separate the bitumen. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[Open mine pits in the tar sands are often 50 metres deep. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[An unnatural landscape is characteristic of tar sands development like this tailings pond. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[Air emissions from the tar sands include 300 tonnes of sulphur a day.© Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[The shape of the sulphur deposits – a by-product of tar sands processing – suggests a pyramid. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

[A pipeline dumps toxic wastewater into a tailings pond. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

The output of MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) continues to impress, and with issue #11, Bernd Upmeyer and company raise the bar. This issue is dedicated to clean urbanism and a range of responses, mostly antagonizing or shoring up sustainability and its discontents, come pouring in. An initial browse reminds me of Dominique Laporte's oft overlooked theory/survey Histoire de la Merde (trans: History of Shit) in which he charts myriad devices, urban modifications, and codes that cleaned up the contemporary city. Laporte suggests that our very identity as modern societies is intimately wrapped up within the complex management of our own waste – from language to justice to urbanism.

[The Grass is Greener by TomorrowsThoughtsToday shows a series of postcard narratives of a group of Londoners willingly separated from the rest of city inadvertently serving as a carbon sink for the rest of the inhabitants.]

Also, appropriately enough, clean urbanism can be seen as being pleasantly complemented by dirty realism. It is the systematic marginalization of shit, literally, into the hidden pockets of the city, out of view, that maintain a clean front – from buried sewer mains to sex- and drug-trades, to offshoring. One could almost argue that our urban environments are not necessarily any cleaner just better managed and with more crap out of sight. If fact, it is likely that our cities are dirtier, if calculated in aggregate with waste that has been dispersed, traded, or sunk.

[Bio-Port: Free Energy City.]

Clean Urbanism swings across of the gamut of the recent preoccupation with eco-cities, efficiency, and landscapes of power.

Here are the complete contents:
Sci-fi Greenery …or just Responsibility? – Samo Pedersen
Clean Cities – Dirty People – Matteo Muggianu
Dirty Consumerism – Nikonus Pappas
Coming Clean – Randall Teal
Domes over Manhattan – Interview with Gerd Hauser by Bernd Upmeyer
Rendering the Clean – Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (WAI)
The Mobile Library Unit – John Southern
Where the Grass Is Greener – Tomorrow’sThoughtsToday
Clean around the Edges – Lee Altman
Bio-Port – Greg Keeffe and Simon Swietochowski
Zeekracht – The North Sea Masterplan – OMA
Scarcity: Bipolar Urbanism in the Sonoran Desert – Felipe Correa
Regenerative Ecologies – Claudio Astudillo Barra
Clean Energy is Dirty Business – Aleksander Tokarz
Dystopic Verdure – Jacob Ross Boswell
How to Win Poetic Praise and Influence Architects – Amanda Webb
The Cooperative City – Rogier van den Berg
Mania – Bryan Norwood and the Jackson Community Design Center

[OMA, Zeekracht, and the North Sea's perfect storm.]

You may browse the entire issue here:

And you may purchase it as well as back issues here.

This past October 25, 2008, The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design hosted a symposium organized and curated by Prof. Pierre Bélanger, recently swiped up by appointed by Harvard GSD, titled Landscape Infrastructures. Bélanger rightly marks our time as witness to a unique convergence of infrastructure and landscape. The urgency and opportunities of this embrace engineering of landscapes.

[Screen grabs from the DVD. George Baird (top left), Stan Allen (top right and bottom left, Jane Wolff (bottom right).]

Guest speakers included:
Stan Allen, Princeton University / George Baird, University of Toronto / Pierre Bélanger, University of Toronto / Julia Czerniak, Syracuse University / Herbert Dreiseitl, Atelier Dreiseitl / Kristina Hill, University of Virginia / Michael Jakob, Université de Genève / Nina-Marie Lister, Ryerson University / Kate Orff, Columbia University, SCAPE / Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

The proceedings of the symposium is now available in DVD format. Contact Pierre at belanger[at]harvard[dot]edu if you would like additional information.

[Mobility conduit, or landscape infrastructure par exellence.]