Our Friends at Animal Architecture are launching the inaugural Animal Architecture Awards.  The competition seeks "exciting projects that engage the lives, minds and behaviors of our alternate, sometimes familiar companion species — insects, birds, mammals, fish and microorganisms – each one with unique ways of world-making. As our society re-examines its place in the global ecology Animal Architecture invites your critical and unpublished essays and projects to address how architecture can mediate and encourage multiple new ways of species learning and benefiting from each other – or as we say it here: to illustrate cospecies coshaping."

Cospecies coshaping is an intriguing ecological principle that has the potential to integrate the "human" world with the "animal" world, so in fact we can eliminate these "terms" altogether.  What interests me most is that architecture is sought as the mediator to bridge these two worlds (not just human but any species).  I am very curious to see the projects from the competition and happy that it will expand our knowledge on the relationship between form and symbiosis.  If you are interested in applying, the deadline is May 15th, and all information can be found here.

[Bat Tower Project by Jury Member Joyce Hwang]

A current exhibition at the Museum of London entitled ‘Postcards from the Future’ attempts to imagine how climate change will affect London.  The illustrators, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones touch on issues such as the food crisis, rising sea levels, informal housing, etc. to give a vision for types of adaptation.

[Scenario: As the Gulf Stream slows a mini ice-age brings temporary relief to heat-weary Londoners. Winter skating becomes London’s most popular sport and Tower Bridge is a favourite spot. The scene harks back to the 17th century when artists loved to paint London’s Frost Fairs. Then, the Thames froze over because the river flowed sluggishly. Now, the river flows quickly but every winter the temperature falls to new lows. Image © Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones. Background photography © Jason Hawkes]

There are a few observations that can be deduced upon examination of the postcards. Firstly, the city will be succeeded by ‘nature’, further blurring the boundaries of the contemporary metropolis.  Secondly, infrastructure and (select) monuments will be some of the last remaining elements in such a metropolis; and thirdly, that housing will take the form of dense informal settlements or ‘slums’.  If one were to use these postcards as warnings, they would suggest more current design emphasis on infrastructural deployment, housing, and incorporating productive nature into the city.  More importantly, the extreme visions reveal a lack of resilience in the city.

[Scenario: Buckingham Palace shanty town. The climate refugee crisis reaches epic proportions. The vast shanty town that stretches across London’s centre leaves historic buildings marooned, including Buckingham Palace. The Royal family is surrounded in their London home. Everybody is on the move and the flooded city centre is now uninhabitable and empty – apart from the thousands of shanty-dwellers. But should empty buildings and land be opened up to climate refugees? Image © Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones. Background photography © Jason Hawkes]

While these images are certainly provocative, they give little evidence of actual researched scenarios of climate change.  The two typical depictions of such crises often are utterly utopian or dystopian (think archigram vs. archizoom), both of which are problematic.  It is difficult for all to understand the exact ramifications of climate change, and that being said, I am interested on the role of nature and infrastructure depicted within these images.  ‘Nature’ is presented as a violent force (ice, floods) or a productive element (the rice paddies, tidal energy), both of which co-exist within dense urbanity. Infrastructure is rendered as a centralized point condition (Kew Nuclear Power Station) or as a distributed field (Tidal/ Wind) in the absence of people (through the photomontages).  These various depictions of both nature and infrastructure not only exist today but also are fairly traditional. Some of the more innovative postcards examine the merging of nature, infrastructure and the public in new ways.  In this regard, the distributed field of infrastructure and the productive use of nature are interesting because they both embrace a larger surface condition, and therefore a notion of landscape.  But this isn’t a picturesque or formal landscape of the English or French Gardens; it is a multivalent condition that could provide more resilience to the future metropolis.

[Scenario: Thames Tidal Power. The river remains a focus of power generation, just as it was for the great coal-powered power stations of old. Around the old Thames Barrier a number of new tidal power stations are using the tidal flows up and down the Thames to generate electricity for thousands of London businesses and homes. Image © Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones. Background photography © Jason Hawkes]

The provocative images are on display from October 2010 to March 2011.

[Scenario: Parliament Square rice paddies. This view across Parliament Square shows paddy fields running up to the walls of the Palace of Westminster. The land that once housed political protest is now part of the city’s food production effort. In this scenario London has adapted to rising water tables in radical ways. Managed flooding is now the name of the game, as is self-sufficiency in food. Central London is a network of rice paddies – and Londoners’ diet is largely rice-based. Image © Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones.]

Coming off the contagious energy of the Foodprint.TO event last weekend, and the whirlwind of conversations (now thankfully on video) on Toronto’s food infrastructures, it was a pleasure to see the finalists of the ONE Prize competition included an agro-centered proposal by students – Drew Adams, Fadi Masoud, Denise Pinto, Karen May, and Jameson Skaife – from the University of Toronto.

The ONE Prize competition had asked for proposals of productive landscape strategies  in urban contexts. This team’s proposal re-considered the extensive network of publicly-owned hydroelectricity corridors cutting through urban infrastructures. They identified its potential as a food line – turning a land-use detractor (powerlines) into a land-use amenity (agriculture). Here is an accurate portrayal of a typical hydroelectric corridor from Toronto’s resident flaneur.

[Intersections of the proposed Hydro Fields at various sites along the corridor.]

The Hydro Field design team writes that:

Within a 125 mile radius of downtown Toronto, there is approximately 8,145 acres of space to grow within Greater Toronto’s Hydro Corridors. This is the equivalent of 51 full 160-acre commercial farms, or 294 28-acre urban farms, or 58,500 0.14-acre community gardens. Such vast amounts of arable land suggest not only considerable feasibility but significant potential for a reduction in imported produce.

[Toronto’s hydroelectric network carves green lines through the city’s grid.]

[World crop import dependence and seasonality for produce into Toronto.]

The team suggests the origanization of a body called FeedToronto (similar to BuildToronto and InvestToronto) will modulate seeding, harvest and distribution. Though the current land is owned by the hydroelectric company, the team proposes a provocative solution of a split ownership of ground rights (for cultivation) and air rights (for electrical transfer).

[Land-use typologies for Hydro Fields.]

[Typology deployment along Hydro corridors and in relationship to existing transportation networks.]

Converting the corridor into an (economic) amenity will dramatically affect adjacent land uses. Toward this, the team offers a range of types to demonstrate various Hydro-field edge developments – residential, institutional, commercial, and light industrial. You can imagine the possibility of harvest time cruising down a corridor in a Gleaner combine harvester in a single, continuous line, experiencing the field as an urban section through the city’s back hydro-electric (agro-)avenue.

[Nutrition facts!]

For more on corridors, see Terrestrial Discontinuities and Power of Ecosystems / Ecosystems of Power.

We were excited to catch word a while back now that the fine folks that cooked up Foodprint NYC – Nicola Twillley and Sarah Rich – were exploring future locales to extend the foodprint series. Thankfully, Toronto has proven productive enough territory in which to host the second edition. And even better is that it is now less than 48 hours upon us – starting promptly at 12:30pm on Saturday, July 31.

Foodprint Toronto is hosted at the Wychwood Artscape Barns (601 Christie Street, Toronto). For background, there are two great interviews of the organizers and their intentions over at Pruned and another at Azure.

The foodprinters continue their themes cultivated at the first edition including: zoning diet; culinary cartography; edible archaeology; feast, famine, and other scenarios. Though of course now it is applied to the Toronto / Canadian agro-context and food climate. So many possible discussions and conversations: How does the most multicultural city in the world respond to the challenges of food and diversity? How do food imports compare to other North American cities? With Ontario as the bread-basket of Canada, how does food movement infrastructure operate? What policies are in place to support the scope of that movement? Simply to understand a comparative geo-food pulse between NYC and TO would be fantastic.

Lola Sheppard will be on a panel, as well as several good friends and colleagues: Robert Wright (Associate Professor of Landscape, University of Toronto), Chris Hardwicke (urbanism.org), John Knechtel (Alphabet City), Shawn Micallef (Spacing / murmur)… in any case, here is the fantastic lineup of panels and speakers.

Below are some teaser images from a studio at University of Waterloo on the Toronto Greenbelt, called Productive Territories: Grey, White, Green Belts. The studio brief states:

In 2005, Ontario passed its Greenbelt Act, which protected 1.8 million acres of farmland and green space, with the intention of limiting sprawl, the destruction of green space and prime agricultural land. In the same year, the Places to Grow Act was passed, which identified 25 urban regions which must to achieve certain densification targets. In the context of the Places to Grow Act, one might read within the Greenbelt Act a somewhat nostalgic vision of the relationship of city and nature, the former threatens the latter. Nature is seen as something to be preserved, while the city evolves.

[Agriculture / Livestock locative and quantitative map from University of Waterloo, Greenbelt studio.]

There is no doubt that the Greenbelt Act was crucial, and that it has indeed been identified as one of the most successful Greenbelts in the world, both because of its scope and the because of the quality of lands it protects. And, there can be little doubt that Toronto’s suburban sprawl indeed continues to threaten our open landscapes, and in this regard is socially, economically, and infrastructurally unsustainable. The question arises, however, is any development in, or at the margins of the greenbelt, conceivable? Most significantly, many of the cities targeted in the Places to Grow Act contain what is known as the White-belt, rural lands within each community’s jurisdictional boundaries, that are not protected. Most of the cities have slated these lands for development, with the exception of a few such as Markham, which have declared the desire to protect a large percentage of these lands to maintain a food-belt. The studio’s investigations will position themselves precisely at these boundaries, between urban and rural, between domesticated landscape and one less so – between the grey, white and green-belts. The studio attributes new roles to the architect – not simply problem solver, but cultural, environmental and spatial detective, bringing to light the forces (economic, cultural and environmental) at work within a given geography, and the physical networks at the service of these forces.

[Hydrology of the Greenbelt, from University of Waterloo, Greenbelt studio.]

[Soils and soil transfers, from University of Waterloo, Greenbelt studio.]

[Other Greenbelt characters: Quarries and Gravel pits, from University of Waterloo, Greenbelt studio.]

And here is a great map made by Ingmar Mak in a 2007 studio we ran (click for larger size):

[Subway map replacing stops with primary food items in that area, by Ingmar Mak.]

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.]

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 Matthew Spremulli. Matthew will be continuing this work in his MArch thesis, which will be blogged at the ever-expanding reField.

———–

Corn has unquestionably become the dominant crop farmed in the United States, which on average as a country produces in excess of 12.1 billion bushels/year. However, the story behind corn’s abundance at the large scale is actually a story of abundance on the extra small scale of the kernel itself, and that of a very specific corn-kernel type: Yellow Dent. Yellow Dent represents 99% of all Corn grown in the USA, grown principally for its amazing ability to yield a high amount of starch, yet none of which is able to be eaten directly off the cob by neither man nor animal! Thus, all of this “potentially” abundant food enters a long and varied chain of transportation and processing, to turn the inedible grain into something useful. Another way of looking at the story of corn is recognizing the vast amount of separate processing infrastructures.

[The Corn Belt accounts for more than half of the corn grown in the US.]

Most of this corn (approx 50%) is being grown in a very specific area in the US, called the Corn Belt (Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana), thanks to the very specific climate and soil types that exist there the Yellow Dent crop (originally from Southern Mexico) flourishes. The Corn Belt is also where most of the processing occurs.

US Corn has five major consumption uses:
1. Feed for livestock
2. Ethanol production
3. Exports
4. Food additives
5. Food products.

[Corn Input-Output.]

[Corn processing plant. From the Iowa-based Pine Lake Corn Processors LLC.]

However, one of the more interesting threads through this story of abundant starch is that of the energy inputs/outputs in the transformation processes and how that can be traced. The production of corn both exhausts a large amount of energy and imported material and leaves behind a massive amount of wastes and by-products. One of the first things to consider in re-wiring the system would be to tie together the outputs from one process and potentially use them for an input of another. After examining the energy input/output process of making ethanol (as found in PDF The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol), which represents one of the most energy intensive processes and also the most amount of useful by-products, there was potential to tie together points in the system and create closed-loop circuits. Another point to consider is how consumers never really get to experience any of these transformative corn-processes before it becomes an array of products on their store shelves.

[Existing corn embodied energy: production, processing + inputs/outputs.]

Thus, a proposed intervention is to exploit the existing main mode of transportation for corn, the train, and turn it into a system of a traveling processing plant, corn product store, waste recycler, and industrial museum. The train breathes in the outputs from corn sub-systems, such as the waste run-off from cattle farming and then turn it into a fermented fertilizer by the time it reaches the corn crops of the Corn Belt. The train mechanics would need to be redesigned in order to double as the large mechanical processing gears and drums found in the Dry and Wet Milling processing plants. The train would travel along a dedicated loop that would sync the cities that create the food demand and the landscapes capable of producing the abundance. City folk would have the chance to see the processing of the corn as it passes through its line, and each train car would be designed to both perform its part of the processing while becoming an interface for the consumers and users.

[Rail network synchronized to corn belt prodcution.]

[Proposed re-wiring of corn embodied energy: production, processing + inputs/outputs.]

Also from the Feedback seminar:
Re-Link: The Physical Network of Data, Ali Fard
Border Economies: the Maquiladora Export Landscape, Juan Robles
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, Fei-Ling Tseng

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 Fei-Ling Tseng.

———–

The Flower Trade is a highly sophisticated market with an infrastructure optimally tuned to the preferences of both the supply and demand side. The world knows three North-South flower markets: America, Europe/Middle-East/Africa and Asia.

[World Flower Markets.]

These markets interact little with each other due to the logistic constraints of cut flowers. As opposed to many markets that utilize multiple middle men to get a product from its supply to its end destination, the flower market has reduced number of middle men (and therefore also costs) by making sure that most trade happens as directly as possible: between growers and wholesale buyers/exporters by means of Dutch auctioning.

[Screenshot: kweker > veiling > verkoper.]

In the Netherlands, flower auctions are run by co-operatives formed by the growers. Auctions require membership from both the supply and demand side of trade, which in turn ensures optimal coordination during all stages of the transaction process. The fact that a Dutch auction clock counts down the price instead of up, ensures the best price for farmers, and the best quality produce for what buyers are willing to pay.

The result of this system is that the first buyer sets the rough market price by bidding. Subsequential buyers often purchase within the range of the first bidder. Quite often the first bidder gets the best price because, as product availability decreases, the risk of missing out increases, and so does the price. [via flowerauction]

[The Flower Market embraces the logic of an auction clock in which the price counts down instead of up.]

FloraHolland is the largest flower auction co-operative in the Netherlands–and likely the world. Specifically for the cut flower sector, it is responsible for the trade of 97% of all flowers within the Netherlands and 60% of worldwide trade. (via USDA PDF)

[Import / Export flows through Aalsmeet Auction.]

Though FloraHolland has six auction locations in the Netherlands, their Aalsmeer location (called Vereniging van de Bloemenveiling in Aalsmeer prior to the merger in 2008) deals primarily with the auctioning of cut flowers for export. Located strategically close to Schiphol Airport and many major highways, flowers arrive both globally and locally within 12 hours before the auctions starts at 6:00AM. They are stored in cooling rooms with varying temperatures–each type of flower having their own ideal temperature to be kept in stasis. Around 4:30AM, the auction trolleys (Dutch: stapelwagens) that fit 27 buckets (Dutch: fust) of flowers per trolley, are neatly lined up and hooked to a complex internal rail system.

[The unique tools of he flower auction: the auction trolleys and flower buckets, or stapelwagens and fust.]

Everyday, this rail system guides 21 million flowers and plants through any one of the five auction rooms (four for cut flowers, one for potted plants). These flowers and plants are traded between grower and buyer typically within 4 hours (6:00AM to 10:00AM), through 55,000 individual transactions on average. In other words, on each of the 13 auction clocks that Aalsmeer Bloemenveiling possesses, a new transaction is made every five seconds or less.

[The Aalsmeer auction hall opens at 6:00am and closes four hours later.]

After the transaction has been made and the flowers roll out of the auction halls, they enter a distribution hall where employers of the auction buzz around on electric trucks (Dutch: electrotrekker), grabbing one auction trolley at the time and distributing the individual buckets of flowers to empty auction trolleys that belong to their new owners.

[Electrotrekkers!]

[Distribution hall.]

As all the morning trolleys have been emptied onto the new trolleys, the flowers are re-packaged by their new owners for transport to their end destination. This takes about two hours, at which point–around noon–the flowers would be on the road again headed towards their new destination. Flowers usually hit the storefront the next day following the auction. All in all, it takes about 36-42 hours for flowers to get cut until they reach their storefront end destination.

For more information about flower auctions:

There is a video that describes the internal workings of auction halls, but it only exists in Dutch.

A bit off-topic but still infinitely fascinating is how technology has transformed productivity in greenhouses. Here is a video of the walking-plant-system.

Watch as the auction trolleys move like zombies across the distribution halls to their end stations where they are individually fetched and redistributed by the electric trucks.

The New York Times wrote a nice piece about Aalsmeer back in 1993 that is available online here.

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 adapted and appropriated. And here is an opportunity for just such an occasion. Emerging Terrain, an organization founded by landscape architect Anne Trumble, is taking on just such a case. At the intersection of I-80 and I-480, a series of 62 sequential interlocked concrete silos forms a massive wall (gate?) at the east end of Omaha. At 180 feet tall, the assembly has undeniable presence, and forms a wall to the some 76,000 cars on I-80 daily.

[New silo skins as represented by Min|Day Architects.]

The Stored Potential competition is seeking proposals for gimongous 20 foot by 80 foot images to reclad the silos rippled surface. The potential for this to trigger development, reuse, and launch a new life for this massive form is potent. Proposals are due May 15. Images will be selected through an open call for submissions, printed to the scale of the enormous structure, hung to wrap the concrete cylinders, and celebrated with a giant dinner on-site at a table for the length of the elevator. If your image is selected, "after residing on the Omaha elevator for 3-4 months, the banners will travel to three other prominent vacant elevators throughout the state." Not a bad way to provoke visionary development and reuse. Get the competition brief PDF here [900k].

I am reminded here of Reyner Banhams homage to these hyper-functional (though mono-functional) masterpieces in his 1989 book A Concrete Atlantis. Banham argues the inherent comparisons between  North American industrial building and the classic modernist architecture of the International Style in Europe. (MIT Press generously offers a sample PDF here. [5.15 MB])

What would you do with curving skin of a silo? How can your idea be both 2D and 3D? How will the massive scale of the image perform and communicate and to whom? How do you look backward to the history of these efficient farming monuments and yet forward to their inevitable new future use? Will they ever represent anything other than nostalgia?

Looking forward to seeing the entries in May!

[NL Architects, proposed reuse of the silos on Zeeburgereiland, Netherlands. via Bustler.]

[NL Architects, Zeeburg silos interior void is used as a faceted climbing tower. via Bustler.]

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 heavily on imported goods which are largely distributed via air.   As shipping routes emerge, local economies are enabled by producing and distributing goods both locally and regionally.  The following project, developed by Amrit Phull and Claire Lubell, in the Frozen Cities/ Liquid Networks studio at the University of Waterloo, examines how new infrastructure can be produced in the Arctic that allows for the transference from air to shipping logistics and, while doing so, addresses the issue of food production and coastal erosion in the Arctic.  It questions how remote coastal communities throughout Canada’s Arctic can establish self-sufficiency in anticipation of economic and environmental fluctuations.  As stated by Lubell and Phull:

The proposal seeks to provide a hard infrastructure which responds to the  immediate needs of the community, but is also the root of growth in a context where change in landscape, resources and community occurs at varying speeds. In particular the project examines the potential development of Port Churchill as well as a major international port in the Northwest Passage and how this can create a network of small ports, at existing communities, along the west coast of Hudson’s Bay.

[Systems Diagram showing the relationship created between the new infrastructure and community, cultural programmes, food production and energy. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[Permafrost - current and projected showing areas of predicted coastal erosion. Freeze/ Thaw maps outlining new transportation routes. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull].

Many Arctic communities are currently serviced weekly by combi and turboprop aircraft, which are expected to be obsolete in the next decades.  These communities also rely on seasonal service by Sealift operations from Churchill and Montreal.  Many families eagerly await their seasonal shipping container of goods – whether food, clothing or cars.  The proposal by Lubell and Phull focuses on the community of Igloolik, situated at the opening of the Fury and Hecla Strait.  Igloolik is poised to be an ideal regional port that is opportunistically sited between the NW Passage (and its associated future international shipping ports) as well as local ports along the western edge of the Hudson Bay.  Igloolik currently has a populace of 1600, and home to centres of research and cultural programmes such as film and circus production companies.  Over the next five years, Igloolik has a projected population growth of 6800 – requiring vast amounts of resources for the increasing population.  The project is more specifically sited on the Northern shores of Igloolik, to reduce the coastal erosion in this vulnerable area.

[Ideal Siting of Igloolik to be a regional port that interfaces with an International and Local Ports. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull.]

[The difficulty and problems of imported food in the Arctic. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull].

[Typical Logistical Process for Food in the Arctic. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[Delivery Process of Food. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[The delivery process of food - Detail. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

Paved airstrips are an immediate necessity to service these remote settlements, while port facilities will address the future changes in the Arctic – longer shipping seasons coupled with rapid population growth and their associated servicing.  In fact, as the melting ice sheds infrastructural isolation of these communities, air servicing will no longer be practical.  Phull and Lubell begin by designing an airstrip with a planned second life.  They ask:

How can the airstrip, a mark of every arctic community, become a highly integrated meeting place for different avenues of infrastructure? How can it provide the necessary framework to grow as a port and eventually be absorbed into a spreading community?

[Phasing Diagrams. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

Phase 1 – 2010 to 2015

Building of pneumatic silos, piles and airstrip deck of 1100 meters in length accommodates current ATR combi aircraft. Sealift vessels can dock and unload cargo onto the deck using their own cranes and cargo can be driven back to the community.

Phase 2- 2015 to 2020

Second deck is built in two stages: first the community warehouse and marina then the barge docks, large cargo dock, and under water research center / film and circus school. Barge docks can be used as ice fishing platforms in the winter. The airstrip deck still accommodates atr combi as sealift operations are still infrequent but ATR’s are aging (they were built in the 1960s)

Phase 3 – 2020 to 2040

ATR combi aircraft are reaching obsolescence, therefore only 600 meters of airstrip is required to accommodate small passenger aircraft. At the same time as phasing out food mail deliveries by air, food production connected to the barge docks and heat pump is phased in. The hydroponic greenhouse consists of a permanent portion and expands in the summer in both directions to include a community greenhouse. These expansions are appropriated for hockey, an indoor market, and extra port warehousing during the winter.

Phase 4- 2040 to 2100

Once aircraft are completely phased out other silos are built up to house formal community programs such as health care, library, and museum/archives, while smaller ones serve as general warm spaces in an open field. Paint markings on the airstrip tarmac encourage informal activities such as outdoor markets, a drive-in theatre, small recreational areas attached to the warm nodes, etc. The airstrip becomes an open public space with a few grounding amenities as the community grows towards it.

[Exploded Axonometric showing programmatic, energy and infrastructural assembly. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull].

This cohesive infrastructural typology could be emulated in similar communities and takes the form of a permanent intervention bridging between land and water as well as local and regional communities and products.  The port integrates all scales of marine traffic (cargo, container, cruise, barge, ferry, fishing) with various programmes focused on promoting self sufficiency within the community, including food production.

[Plans/ Sections of the various layers of the project. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[Plan and Section Detail. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[Transverse Section showing layering of infrastructure, energy and food production with Community Programmes. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

[Rendering of New Infrastructure Typology. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

The current relationship between community and the goods they rely on is faceless, and with the decline of subsistence hunting due to changing migration patterns, the connection to food is disappearing.  The project emphasizes this connection through on site food production which promotes trade between communities, not to mention decreasing reliance on the south for fresh goods and associated dependence on air infrastructure (which is both expensive and largely consuming of jet fuel).  The (air)port effectively acts as an infrastructural hub for bringing together local community around production, as well as connecting this community to larger regional networks through shipping.  The Greenhouse coupled within the port takes on different functions in the non-growing season, and is complimented with a market and cultural programs.  This not only connects the local community to their food but reintroduces the inherent skills of sharing and traditional cultural rituals.  The exchanges in this new infrastructure are manifold – economic, cultural and logistical.

[View of Interior. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]

All images courtesy of Amrit Phull and Claire Lubell

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 5 per 1,000 in the second generation. The current rate at the time was approximately 20 in 1,000. Hygeia anticipated a population of 100,000 in 20,000 houses on 4,000 acres, or about 25persons/acre. Hygeia was of considerable influence to Ebeneezer Howards Garden City (whose trajectory can easily be traced through to modern planning and urban design).

Here is Dr. Richardsons description of Hygeia in terms of food, water, animals, and the dead:

Our model city is of course well furnished with baths, swimming baths, Turkish baths, playgrounds, gymnasia, libraries, board schools, fine-art schools, lecture halls, and places of instructive amusement. In every board-school drill forms part of the programme. I need not dwell on these subjects, but must pass to the sanitary officers and offices.

There is in the city one principal sanitary officer, a duly qualified medical man elected by the Municipal Council, whose sole duty it is to watch over the sanitary welfare of the place. Under him, as sanitary officers, are all the medical men who form the poor law medical staff. To him these make their reports on vaccination and every matter of health pertaining to their respective districts; to him every registrar of births and deaths forwards copies of his registration returns; and to his office are sent, by the medical men generally, registered returns of the cases of sickness prevailing in the district. His inspectors likewise make careful returns of all the known prevailing diseases of the lower animals and of plants. To his office are forwarded, for examination and analysis, specimens of foods and drinks suspected to be adulterated, impure, or otherwise unfitted for use. For the conduction of these researches the sanitary superintendent is allowed a competent chemical staff. Thus, under this central supervision, every death, every disease of the living world in the district, and every assumable cause of disease, comes to light and is subjected, if need be, to inquiry.

At a distance from the town are the sanitary works, the sewage pumping works, the water and gas works, the slaughter-houses and the public laboratories. The sewage, which is brought from the town partly by its own flow and partly by pumping apparatus, is conveyed away to well-drained sewage farms belonging to, but at a distance from, the city where it is utilised.

The water supply, derived from a river which flows to the south-west of the city, is unpolluted by sewage or other refuse, is carefully filtered, is tested twice daily, and if found unsatisfactory is supplied through a reserve tank, after it has been made to undergo further purification. It is carried through the city everywhere by iron pipes. Leaden pipes are forbidden. In the sanitary establishment are disinfecting rooms, a mortuary, and ambulances for the conveyance of persons suffering from contagious disease. These are at all times open to the use of the public, subject to the few and simple rules of the management.

The gas, like the water, is submitted to regular analysis by the staff of the sanitary officer, and any fault which may be detected, and which indicates a departure from the standard of purity framed by the Municipal Council, is immediately remedied, both gas and water being exclusively under the control of the local authority.

The inspectors of the sanitary officer have under them a body of scavengers. These, each day, in the early morning, pass through the various districts allotted to them, and remove all refuse in closed vans. Every portion of manure from stables, streets, and yards is in this way removed daily, and transported to the city farms for utilisation.

Two additional conveniences are supplied by the scientific work of the sanitary establishment. From steam-works steam is condensed, and a large supply of distilled water is obtained and preserved in a separate tank. This distilled water is conveyed by a small main into the city, and is supplied at a moderate cost for those domestic purposes for which hard water is objectionable.

The second sanitary convenience is a large ozone generator. By this apparatus ozone is produced in any required quantity, and is made to play many useful purposes. It is passed through the drinking water in the reserve reservoir whenever the water shows excess of organic impurity, and it is conveyed into the city for diffusion into private houses, for purposes of disinfection.

The slaughter-houses of the city are all public, and are separated by a distance of a quarter of a mile from the city. They are easily removable edifices, and are under the supervision of the sanitary staff. The Jewish system of inspecting every carcase that is killed is rigorously carried out, with this improvement, that the inspector is a man of scientific knowledge.

All animals used for food,–cattle, fowls, swine, rabbits,–are subjected to examination in the slaughter-house, or in the market, if they be brought into the city from other depots. The slaughter-houses are so constructed that the animals killed are relieved from the pain of death. They pass through a narcotic chamber, and are brought to the slaughterer oblivious of their fate. The slaughter-houses drain into the sewers of the city, and their complete purification daily, from all offal and refuse, is rigidly enforced.

The buildings, sheds, and styes for domestic food-producing animals are removed a short distance from the city, and are also under the supervision of the sanitary officer; the food and water supplied for these animals comes equally, with human food, under proper inspection.

One other subject only remains to be noticed in connection with the arrangements of our model city, and that is the mode of the disposal of the dead. The question of cremation and of burial in the earth has been considered, and there are some who advocate cremation. For various reasons the process of burial is still retained. Firstly, because the cremation process is open to serious medico-legal objections; secondly, because, by the complete resolution of the body into its elementary and inodorous gases in the cremation furnace, that intervening chemical link between the organic and inorganic worlds, the ammonia, is destroyed, and the economy of nature is thereby dangerously disturbed; thirdly, because the natural tendencies of the people lead them still to the earth, as the most fitting resting-place into which, when lifeless, they should be drawn.

Thus the cemetery holds its place in our city, but in a form much modified from the ordinary cemetery. The burial ground is artificially made of a fine carboniferous earth. Vegetation of rapid growth is cultivated over it. The dead are placed in the earth from the bier, either in basket work or simply in the shroud; and the monumental slab, instead of being set over or at the head or foot of a raised grave, is placed in a spacious covered hall or temple, and records simply the fact that the person commemorated was recommitted to earth in those grounds. In a few months, indeed, no monument would indicate the remains of any dead. In that rapidly-resolving soil the transformation of dust into dust is too perfect to leave a trace of residuum. The natural circle of transmutation is harmlessly completed, and the economy of nature conserved.