Dive into the archives.
- Ecologies of Excess
[Ecologies of Excess - The Research/ Designers. Poster by: Eva Franch Gilabert]
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 [...]
- Border Economies: the Maquiladora Export Landscape
[An aerial view of a maquiladora park in Tijuana, Baja California del Norte; Mexico]
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 Juan Robles.
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The ongoing processes of trade and communication that now integrate the [...]
- InfraNet does HotDocs
[Chelyabinsk, Russia, a nuclear dumping site for decades, is the subject of the film Tankograd.]
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 [...]
- Stored Potential
[The 62-interlocked concrete silos as seen from I-80, Omaha, Nebraska. Courtesy flickr user bnmelvin.]
It is a typical North American scene: the hulking iconic residue of 20th-century industrial farming sitting there mocking any would-be re-user. Demolition costs are considerable enough that across North America, these monoliths have sat there vacant, unused, and on very few occassions [...]
- Frozen Cities / Liquid Networks. (air)port & Infrastructural Autonomy
[Air/Port, a new infrastructure for Igloolik. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]
The melting of the polar caps will not only open up new shipping routes such as the North-West and Northern Passage, it has the potential to connect existing communities in the Arctic to a larger network of distribution. Presently, most Arctic communities depend [...]
- Frozen Cities Liquid Networks: Landjacking the Mackenzie
[The amphibious landscape of Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories]
At 4,200 kilometres in length, the Mackenzie River in North-western Canada is one of the longest rivers in the world (11th). Its watershed, 1.8 million square kilometres in size, drains one-fifth of the country. The River, whose headwaters begin in the Peace and Athabasca rivers, [...]
- Hygeia: A City of Health, 1876
[Hygeia: A City of Health Re-Imagination of the 20th Century by Joshua Arnold, completed under Norman Klein while at SciArc, 2005.]
Dr. Benjamin Richardson conceived of a city of health called Hygeia in 1876. Dr Richardson is an M.D., and he calculated a death rate for Hygeia of 8 per 1,000 in the first generation and [...]
- Inverted Infrastructural Monuments, pt. 3
[The Escondida Mine in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Image courtesy NASA GSFC, MITI, ERSDAC, JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.]
The nationalization of the Chilean copper mines, originally pioneered in the 1950s, was built around the considerable dependence of the Chilean economy on copper exports–some 60 to 75% of the Chilean GDP comes from copper exports. [...]
- Oil + Water
[Oil+Water Conference April 8-10, 2010.]
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC-SB is presenting a series of fantastic events this year on the theme Oil+Water. With this event they turn to their own backyard: the case of Southern California. Oil + Water commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill, and provides an opportunity to [...]
- Frozen Cities Liquid Networks: Re-rigging Aumanil
[Arctic nations, continental shelves and territorial limits]
[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 [...]

