Increasingly, carbon emission issues will need to be addressed at a very large, even regional and urban, scale to offset a downward spiral. And nowhere is this more pressing than in parts of rapidly-developing China. London Metropolitan University’s Unit 8, led by CHORA (Raoul Bunschoten) and Tomaz Pipan is exploring just such an initiative in a studio titled “Urban Incubators.” They write that “Energy is the city’s new design force.” Unit 8 investigated this by inviting students to develop a energy map of an area of Xiamen, documenting it as a “cohabitation of processes.” Index maps and scenario-modeling, techniques and methods well demonstrated in much of CHORA’s work, provides a catalyst for a prototypical urban approach. Each proposal was held accountable to 4 criteria: branding, earth (site prototype), flow (processes and exchanges), and incorporation (development strategy). The scale of thinking is powerful and ambitious.

There are many fantastic provocative projects that emerged from the studio – though we thought to only highlight a few here, as the website itself is very effective. Proposals range in terms of implementability, scale, and degrees of publicness. Below is Patrick Fryer’s “Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure.” This project strategically inserts a vein-like network organization of agriculture in a site of expanding industrial lands. Aquaponic greenhouses form the primary agent in site, with a complementary matrix of composting and other ground-based agro-processes. The center spine is host to an intensive nutrient flow system, integrating the greenhouses. Intermittently strung along the spine are public programs including housing and schools.

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Branding, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Earth, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Flow, by Patrick Fryer.]

[Peri-Urban Aquaponic Infrastructure - Incorporation, by Patrick Fryer.]

Another provocative project is “Algal Economies” by Tom Down. This project recognized that much of China’s “urban villages” have limited access to land and have struggled to find agency other than as a overcrowded hub for transient populations. Instead, this proposal offers biofuel, specifically algae harvesting, as a new economy for the residents. Scaffolding-like structured farms are integrated into the village architecture in semi-public and semi-private spaces, such as roofs, patios, and courtyards. Banks of algae production line these structures, offering a new produce for the new city: renewable energy.

[Algal Economies - Earth, by Tom Down.]

[Algal Economies - Flow, by Tom Down.]

A third project is “Bamboo Components” by Benjamin Walton. This proposal capitalizes on the wasted land that has emerged through the combination of rapid development and land ownership laws of Xiamen. These sites are then tested for intense bamboo farming.  Bamboo is harvested for engineered timber construction in newly constructed production towers.

[Xiamen Bamboo Components - Earth, by Benjamin Walton.]

[Xiamen Bamboo Components - Flow, by Benjamin Walton.]

By now we all know that the slowing global economy is affecting numerous markets and industries. Automotive, real estate, export markets, and financial services are all in heaps of trouble. Among the biggest losers, somewhat surprisingly, are exporters focused on providing China with recyclable materials . In fact, as described in Matt Richtel and Kate Galbraith's piece "Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up" (New York Times, December 8, 2008), "Trash has crashed"!

Crash it has.  The value of recyclable waste has tumbled at an unprecedented rate.  It has been reported that mixed paper is now selling at $25 per tonne, down from $105/tonne in October (Official Board Markets).  Other notable drops are in specific metals — tin is now selling for $5 per tonne (vs. $327 earlier this year).

This shift is leaving marks on the ground.  Many large recyclers have been forced to start to stockpiling and warehousing tonnes and tonnes of material.  Some of these material dealers are stuck in contracts with large cities where the cardboard, plastic, paper and metals is simply continuing to stream in.  Alternatively, some are hoping that the market will bounce back and are holding on to the material in order to sell-high.

Recent recycling trends have compounded these effects further.  The switch away from source-separated systems towards commingled recycling programs worked well when the value was high. Now, the additional processing costs embedded in the unsorted waste streams make the material even harder to move.  The city of Toronto has recently switched to a commingled system and as a result, may have its own stock piles to deal with when current contracts expire.

No Market for Rubbish: Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

This downturn has shed some light on the capitalistic realities that have sparked recycling booms across most urban centers. The material has to end up somewhere — if it's not possible to sell it (without a financial loss) it will undoubtedly end up in a landfill.  While the feel-good effect transferred to dedicated recyclers is worth noting, it is the re-sale value of these materials that allows all of us to feel a little green.

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 have been trapped by the spiraling currents of the North Pacific Gyre.

08-12-03: Trash Vortex: global gyre locations

The rotational pattern described by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from the extremities of the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material circulates in the current, the centripetal tendency gradually moves floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the circumscribed oceanic region. This action has produced unusually high levels of marine debris in the area.

08-12-03: Trash Vortex: The Independent

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer, discovered the trash vortex in 1997.  While taking a short cut home from a yacht race, Moore cut across the North Pacific Gyre, usually avoid by sea-vessels, and spent the following week swimming through the vortex’s trash-filled territory.

Like other areas of concentrated marine debris in the world's oceans, the Pacific Trash Vortex has formed gradually over the last decades as a result of higher levels of marine pollution and the action of prevailing oceanic currents.

08-12-03: Trash Vortex Global Currents

The size of the affected region is unknown, but estimates range from 700,000 km2 to more than 15 million km2, (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean). It is estimated that 80% of the material trapped in the vortex comes from land-based sources and the remaining 20% are sea-based sources such as ships and oil rigs.  Moore estimates that oceanic currents carry debris from the east coast of Asia to the center of the gyre in a year or less. Debris from the west coast of North America arrives at the gyre’s centre after approximately five years.

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 recent M.Arch graduate at University of Toronto, whose research "Convergent Species" is a study on territorial boundaries of animal and human occupation.

She distinguished between convergences that are constructive, and therefore have a political motivation, and convergences that are inadvertent, and therefore have an environmental impact.

Vivian writes:

The expansion of human territories has dramatically overlapped with animal boundaries and activities, allowing geographic, socio-economic, and cultural forces to effect mutations in behaviour. These overlaps generate two kinds of boundaries; inadvertent, and constructive. Animals that augment their habitation through symbiotic relationships with human activities exist in inadvertent boundaries. Constructive boundaries such as national borders, or conflict, generate habitations due to marginalization and opportunism. Animals which inhabit these boundaries should neither be considered domestic nor wild, but a new group which is defined by their contingency to both human and natural environment. This thesis seeks to respond to these inadvertent and constructive boundaries and question the potential of adaptation, mutualism, and co-habitation.

Territory #6: CHERNOBYL, ZONE OF EXCLUSION ("THE ZONE")
Radiation is absorbed by soil, vegetation, and water but is not retained by asphalt. With the concept of adaptation, asphalt as a building material suggested in the Chernobyl studies.

[A proposal for asphalt buildings and other amenities supporting new wildlife. For example, Przewalskis Horses were released in the Zone as a mutual preservation rehablitation program. The Zone of Exclusion was established shortly after 1986\'s Chernobyl disaster.]

[A proposal for an immersive observation infrastructure that avoids the minefield littered ground in the Falkland Islands.]

[A proposal for an infrastructure serving as a wildlife bridge as South and North Korea reoccupy the DMZ.]

[Swim with the local megafauna.]

[Public beach.]

[Channeling the water processes of the existing power plant for use in the newbuildings.]

If you would like to contact Vivian about her research and project, you can reach her here.