[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.)

For Palestine and Israel, and undoubtedly for the rest of the world, the year 1999 was one of hope. A huge step towards a peaceful future in the Middle East was made in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, when the Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the so-called “The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum”. It was overseen by the United States (represented by the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) and co-signed by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan. Beyond political issues it contained the following physical (and potentially architectural) implications:

1) A stable and safe Gaza – West Bank Passage
2) The construction of a Seaport in Gaza to connect Palestine to the global economy
3) A Free Trade Zone shared by Israel and Palestine to foster stability
4) Solutions for the pressing water problems and the damaged Dead Sea area

This was all in 1999, ten years ago. Just one year later, in 2000, the promising situation was overshadowed by the start of the Second Intifada, halting the progress to the goals presented in “The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum”. It seems that the window of opportunity is almost now closed.

The following 'student works' critically re-examines the memorandum while addressing the current political situation and necessities.  Designed by Christoph Hesse for his Masters of Architecture and Urban Design Thesis (2007) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design,  the project highlights the potential of architecture, urban, and infrastructural design to go beyond political strategies (that often lack the strength to alter a given situation), to create a new reality, formulate new ecologies, and produce new economies.

Hesse states:

Especially in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we have to overcome the domination of political approaches which usually end in military actions that capture a whole region under a ‘permanent temporarily’ of physical underdevelopment, fear and desperation. Maybe the project started as a dream, but so did peace in the Middle East.

[A stable and safe Gaza - West Bank Infrastructural Link]

[Water connection and elevation difference between the Mediterranean Sea and shrinking Dead Sea]

[Port Connection: A New civic center for Gaza, Image: C.Hesse]

The project proposes an inner harbor as a new seaport for Gaza – benefiting trade on the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Israel.  The origin of the water connection between the Mediterranean and Dead Sea would remain open as a canal to allow containerships to reach a distribution center in the hinterland of Gaza. Along the canal urban programs such as a linear park, housing and commercial areas would couple the infrastructure with other functions that are linked in a symbiotic relationship.

[Sectional Perspective. Urbanization of the new canal and the inner harbor of Gaza. Image: C.Hesse]

[Free trade zone shared by Israel and Palestine. Image: C.Hesse]

The infrastructural form of the Gaza – West Bank connection is comparable to the shape of a boa. At two distinct points, the passage, which contains a four-lane road and railway connection, widens into a space for potential exchange between Israel and Palestine. The program of these critical sites are embedded into a free trade agreement to ease cooperation. Similar free trade zones exist between Israel and Jordan.

[Water storage reservoir with hotel and public functions. Image: C.Hesse]

The end of the infrastructural connection occurs where the water tunnel reaches the Dead Sea.  Here, the water is held in an upper storage reservoir. Similar to the so-called urban attachments along the open canal in Gaza, a hotel is embedded in and around the dam that underlines the symbolic value of this place. Since the Dead Sea is located 418 meters below sea level, the drop between the upper reservoir and the Sea is ideal to produce fresh water and energy for the tourist industry and 250,000 households in Israel, Jordan and Palestine.  While doing so, the water replenishes and gives new life the shrinking dead sea.

[Fresh water for the shrinking Dead Sea and electric energy for the whole region]

Currently based out of Germany and Switzerland, You can view the current work of Christoph Hesse Architects & Lorenz Kocher Engineers  here.

Caught somewhere between No-Stop City and an Everyday Virilio-ism, Tom Vigar's Master of Architecture thesis "Subtopian Dreams" at Sheffield University posits a shared economy (and landscape) of suburbia and military sites. Arguing the inevitable links and interdependence of one with the other, they could share the same territory in a cyclical symbiosis. Suburbia thrives on the technology transfer offered by the military, while the military conveniently hides behind the false front of oh-so-innocent suburbia.

[The shared infrastructures and economies of suburbia (top layer) with manufacturing (middle) and the military (bottom).]

Vigar writes:

The suburbanite is in a state of constant warfare against their neighbours, nature and terrorism. Luckily at the suburbanites command is a whole host of military developed technologies to help them rid all their work surfaces of 99.99% bacteria & maintain a sterile home whilst inadvertently helping to keep the war industries in business. Somehow we have confused the strict military ordering of things with the act of living!

[The 3 layers stacked into a hypothetical configuration called Suburbia 451.]

Seeking an optimal performing suburban pattern for the top layer, various network configurations are evaluated on the basis of defense and access. A combination of types becomes the chosen condition that is then mirrored and repeated. Meanwhile, below that cleansers and domestic technologies are being manufactured for consumption. And, yet again, meanwhile below that troops are training in subterranean bunkers for the next call-up. The military-industrial complex and the suburban-industrial complex unified in marital bliss.

[A suburban pattern language guaged by defensibility.]

[Typical section through Subtopia 451 with manufacturing, bunkers, missile silos.]

[After total war can come total living.]

Get in touch with him at t.vigar[at]gmail[dot]com.
And for more on defense infrastructures, we defer to our blog-colleague at Subtopia.

A playground for military and urban search-and-rescue teams called Disaster City® is located in College Station, Texas. At 52 acres, the mock community contains full-scale, collapsible structures designed to simulate various levels of disaster and wreckage which can be customized for specific training needs.
It is "a place where tragedy and training meet."

[A faux train derailment in Disaster City.]

[A generic (big) box building for terror simulations.]

The Texas Task Force 1 is a principal user of Disaster City which contains sections for mock emergency events, such as building collapse and passenger train derailment.

[Terror Town in Playas, NM]

The entire village of Playas, New Mexico, was purchased by New Mexico Tech and coverted into a training facility for anti-terrorism training. Known now as Terror Town, it is mostly fenced-off. Visitors must check in at a main gate. From there, only the residential area, a conference center and the business park are accessible to outsiders, and only with an escort.

[Aerial of Playas, New Mexico.]

Rows of suburban-style homes make up other parts of town, which are designated for scenarios involving explosives, and chemical or biological training. Red lights flash atop locked gates, and a siren wails just before training sessions start. One section of town has video cameras mounted on street poles and inside every room in every house.

[Copehill Down, Wiltshire UK]

In Copehill Down, Wiltshire (UK), 11 teams of robots will compete to locate and identify four different threats hidden around a simulated East German village used for urban warfare training. The Ministry of Defense's challenge is designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas.

[\

Some of the selected participating teams include Silicone Valley, Swarm Systems, and Stellar Consortium. Teams have elected to incorporate ground- and aerial-based robots. The event exists somewhere between a 1:1 live video game complete with points and a technology accelerator.