Excess typically implies in addition to what is required, a by-product, or residue.  The continual growth model of our economic system produces a vast amount of excess.  Could excess become part of a larger productive system if it was put to work?  This meaning, is there an ecology of excess?

This notion of Ecologies of Excess was the premise of an intriguing studio taught by Eva Franch Gilabert at Rice University, that I had the pleasure of reviewing last week.  According to Franch, the ideological succession of machine for living by organism for living perpetuated the same social, political and environmental dilemmas of the previous century.  Franch envisions a new movement, Ecologies of Excess, during the 22nd century that "provide us with a guide to thinking, designing and building based on what we, human beings, produce without measure: endless amounts of energy in social [crowds], political [wars], and environmental terms [pollution].  In sum: Excess"

Set in the year 2101, the studio centered on the design of a Worlds Fair Exhibition Pavilion, deemed "Great Exhibition of the Works of Excess of All Nations".  Each studio participant was to site their project in a different country and analyze the productive aspects of excess.  The studio produced fascinating results, two projects of which are highlighted below.

[Top: The floating, tangled settlements of trash facilitate the spread of invasive species (like mussels, barnacles, invertebrates, and pelagic crabs) across the ocean. Middle: Invasive species often attach to floating plastic settlements, affecting the oceans oxygen, phytoplankton, and zooplankton production, to the detriment of native ecosystems. Bottom: The average cubic centimeter of ocean water holds about one million phytoplankton-producing-bacteria; however, if this bacteria attaches to plastic, it creates biofilm colonies on the surface of the ocean, depriving lower depths of an even distribution ocean nutrient cycling. Images Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

Polymergy Waterscapes by: Igraine Perkinson

Polymergy Waterscapes looks at the garbage gyre written about by InfraNet Lab last year.  The great pacific garbage patch is comprised of floating plastics that swirl within slow winds and ocean currents.  Entitled Polymergy Waterscapes, Igraine envisions a future typology that builds upon and with this trash.  Igraine states:

Whereas traditional patterns of urbanity sought to settle away from trash, Polymergy Waterscapes creates a floating aquatic society that inverses this relationship, using garbage as a generative device for new urbanism. The pavilion adopts a labyrinthine open system of channels that brings the trash to its proximity by disrupting the clockwise currents of the gyre. These systems grow by means of compaction, reducing debris by a factor of ten.

[Siting Strategy. Top: The gyre occupies an area of slow wind currents; as a result, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through it—hence, a lack of awareness of its presence. Middle: Warm water from the south crashes into cooler water from the north, creating a spiraling current that collects the floating garbage. Bottom: Each season affects ocean water temperatures, pushing the location of the gyre about 1000 miles north and south every time. Images Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

Sited at an opportune location for gathering garbage – where winds and currents are slowest – Polymergy Waterscapes not only raises awareness of this emerging continent of garbage, but also incorporates programmes that can take advantage of garbage – spas (heat generated by recycling process), research labs, and various recreational activities of play.  The accumulation or densification of the island over time slowly clears the larger mass of water.  Here, garbage is the unit of growth and the subject for occupation.

[A labyrinthine strategy of open water channels collects trash by disrupting the clockwise currents of the gyre, following a specific path typology that relates to process and program. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

[Accumulation Legs, View of Model. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

[Each program zone architecturalizes collected garbage uniquely (zone1 ex: accumulation wall, soft square, synthetic dunes, garbage whirlpool) constructing collective aspirations that result from the design process. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

[Sections. Top: Other water channels empty debris into the collection ponds and topography terraces of Plastic Laboratories, which can then be closed off and left to dry in order to store contents for energy or research. Bottom: Polymergy Spa is an underwater refinery that melts plastic and converts it into energy, releasing mist as a result of the process, and adding a layer of privacy for each user—the relaxation seeker. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]

Species Indetermina by: Ashley Johnson
Species Indetermina tackles the issue of species migration in ballast water.  As globalized markets put increasing pressure on shipping, ballast water becomes a large issue.  This water is typically polluted (with the residue of the cargo) and often contains alien species, which are dumped in ports far from their origin.  These alien species often alter and eliminate parts of the local ecosystem.  Ashley Johnson takes advantage of these alien species in her project, Species Indetermina, by containing the ballast water and creating core samples of wildlife and landscape from different parts of the globe.  These contained ecosystem core samples essentially create a new zoo typology that is curated by shipping routes and alien ballast water.  Johnson sites her project in New Zealand, where she notes,  "in 2010 twenty new species of algae were discovered from samples taken in Auckland Harbour labeled species indetermina".

[Placement of a single port outside of Auckland Harbour where Ballast Water is typically dumped. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]

[Plan of Port at low tide. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]

Her containment port located outside the harbor would allow "The people of New Zealand to sail five minutes off their own coast and enter exotic new environments, on sea level with the new life, as well as up above in restaurants and observation decks." What is interesting about this scheme is that while sited in New Zealand, it could provide a prototype for dealing with ballast water at all international shipping ports across the globe.  A travelling network of contained (and contaminated) ecosystems, which introduce the public to new exotic worlds.

[Proliferation of exotic life. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]

[Exploded Axonometric showing public layers hovering above container. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]

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.

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?

[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.

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.

Juergen Bergbauer's series Jardin a la francaise oscillates between a masked-cropped photo and a model-space future nostalgia. Bergbauer speculates that this is how André Le Nôtre might represent designs for castle gardens or elaborate hedgework – as 3d-modeled perspectival figures on a beige canvas – were he at work today. Each image operates from an ideal height (of roughly 3.5 meters) as though ready for pan, tilt, rotation, and zoom. Landscape fabrication, scripting, and the modeling of environments somehow seem increasingly less distinct, or new for that matter.

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) (Detail) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (orangerie II) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

Juergen, might we suggest Longleat next?

related: see Habitat Interlocks

Quantifying the impact of human habitats on animal habitats is complex and ever-shifting. Only when a freak incident of a bear, or wolf, or deer wander into our developed environment – and a strange tussle between fumbling law enforcement officers and a primal instinct-driven beast ensues – are we reminded on our habitat overlaps. Urban wildlife (rats, pigeons, squirrels, etc.) is one version of adapted coexistence, though more frequently wildlife ends up inadvertently quarantined or cornered. Josh Keyes' paintings simultaneously acknowledge this conflict and propose terraced territories of frictionless micro-habitats.

[Josh Keyes, Interlock #1 (2006)]

As reportage continues on the GGADO, or Great Global Amphibian Die-Off, it is difficult to speculate on the outcome of such an extreme loss within one branch of species, such as amphibians. To put this in perspective, 12 percent of all bird species and 23 percent of mammal species are threatened with extinction compared to 35-50 percent of the world’s 6,300 amphibian species. About 100 amphibian species have disappeared since 1980. For comparison, a single species of amphibians would naturally go extinct after about 250 years.

This is primarily driven by the successful spread of the chytrid fungus, climate change, and environment disruption. In response, a proposal for an Amphibian Ark, similar to the Arctic seed vault, is gaining momentum. This would entail regional "biobanks" affiliated with the conservation departments within zoos and other related organizations. A kind of 21st century cabinet of curiosities  – in this case housing frog sperm.

[Josh Keyes, Hoop (2006)]

Our contrasting habitats are interlocked in a nebulous way, with the borders redrawn each morning; Animal habitats often in a perpetual defensive retreat, or just confused and surrounded by an overnight track development. The fringes of this contested border usually mediated by controlled programs such as reserves, zoos, and wildlife parks.

[Josh Keyes, Interlock #2 (2006)]

Josh Keyes discovered viaBryan Boyer's Reader

Related Post: Convergent Species