Dive into the archives.
- Postcards from a Future
[Scenario: The iconic City office tower is now high-rise housing. Originally converted into luxury flats, the block soon slid down the social scale to become a high-density, multi-occupation tower block. The Gherkin now worries the authorities as a potential slum. Refugees from equatorial lands have moved north in search of food. They make their [...]
- Urban Incubators: Xiamen
[Xiamen, China: London Met, Unit 8-CHORA’s site of enquiry on large-scale carbon emission reduction.]
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 [...]
- Carp: Invasive Species and Waterway Augments
[Here, and then gone. Recently, no Asian Carp were found among the more than 100,000 pounds of fish collected during a week-long fish kill on the Little Calumet River. Where are they now?]
Editors Note: File under Feedback: Architecture’s New Territories, an InfraNet Lab seminar at Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design / University of [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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 [...]
- Islands of Speculation/ Speculation on Islands: Spray Ice
[Large Ships spraying Water to manufacture Ice Islands]
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 [...]
