An interesting new report by AMO for Roadmap 2050 recently emerged online.  Roadmap 2050 is a policy roadmap to address the 80-95% reduction in CO2 emissions targeted by Europe for 2050.  The AMO study creates a new image of Europe as Eneropa, a continent now defined by energy territories – Biomassburg, Geothermalia, Solaria, Isles of Wind, Tidal States, etc….  These new territories are connected by a new green grid, represented by AMO in a language akin to subway transit maps – isolating nodes of production and movement corridors for energy.  While doing so, this new networked grid creates a legible structure of energy infrastructure which is displayed in various branding schemes.  The report also discusses the possibility of an energy exchange with North Africa, utilizing the solar potential of North Africa in exchange for wind energy from Eneropa"""''s Isles of Wind.

[The Target: 85-90% reduction in CO2 emissions. Image via AMO/OMA]

[Predicted Energy Supply in 2050]

What would happen to the old energy infrastructure of Europe?  The report suggests that this could be preserved as as Unesco Sites of the pre-Eneropa world.  Perhaps as a memory/ reminder of the world reliant on carbon, these would be the monuments of a world enthralled with energy.  And how much would this cost?  AMO"""''s study estimates that the increased energy cost per household to live in a decarbonized Europe would only be 140 euros.  The report also touches on some new energy initiatives and technological breakthroughs.  You can access the Report PDF here.

[Rendering of Solaria via OMA/AMO]

[Rendering of Hydropia. Image via OMA/AMO]

[Energy Grid of Eneropa. Image via OMA/AMO]

We are eager to get our hands on two recently launched issues of the always impressionable MONU and 306090.

MONUs Real Urbanism poses the provocation that what is "real" for some is not always in sync with what is "ideal" for all. To our delight, the issue in particular seems to focus on the economic reality of urban form – from corporate urban takeovers, to financially-driven urban develop strategies. Below is the full table of contents:

MONU vol. 12 CONTENTS ///// Luxury Space / Jason Lee; The World According to Mr. Reds / Doreen Jakob; The Shelter Category / Mammoth (Stephen Becker and Rob Holmes); How the City of Broad Shoulders Bought its Growth Spurt / Karl Johann Hakken; Residential Developers and Investors in Central Europe: Boom and Bust / Maximilian Mendel; Pyongyang in a New Era / Yim Dongwoo; Casino City State /Rustam Mehta and Thomas Moran; Solidere, Inc., or Downtown Beirut /Carol Moukheiber; Real High – The Desire for the Real in Urban Real Estate / McLain Clutter; Real Creativity: A Case for Ethical Freedom in Architecture / Randall Teal; Life without Architects – Interview with Magriet Smit / Bernd Upmeyer; The New York Value Exchange / Joyce Hwang; Real Big – Interview with Bjarke Ingels / Beatriz Ramo; Magic Realism – A New Skyline for Rome / Simone De Iacobis; Business Park De Hoef Revisited 1998-2008 / Arjan Harbers (Topotronic); Brand New Landlords / Daan Roggeveen and Michiel Hulshof; Living on the Edge / Bas Princen; Why should a Developer read Aristotle / Marta Relats; Unbuilt Rotterdam / ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles]; Rotterdam is a Whore – Interview with Andre Kempe / Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer; To Build or not to Build / MVRDV.

MONU – magazine on urbanism is a unique bi-annual international forum for artists, writers and designers that are working on topics of urban culture, development and politics. Each issue collects essays, projects and photographs from contributors from all over the world to a given topic. Thus MONU examines topics that are important to the future of our cities and urban regions from a variety of perspectives.

[306090 vol 13 titled Sustain and Develop.]

306090s Sustain and Develop surveys innovative thinking and proposals operating at the complex intersection of development pressured sites and toxic ecologies or marginalized socio-cultural conditions. They ask: "How can architects confront either of these courses within the paradox that any mark in the ground will inevitably disrupt a natural ecology?" Below is the extensive contents:

306090 vol. 13 CONTENTS ///// Introduction: Sustain and Develop / BOLCHOVER, Joshua and SOLOMON, Jonathan; Preface: In the Briar Patch / EASTERLING, Keller; Rx for the R1: Sustaining the Neighborhood / CUFF, Dana and DAHL, Per-Johan; Towards Un-Building: Sustainable Architecture as Social Enterprise / MAHER, Dennis; Operational Alternatives: (Re-)Configuring the Landscape of Alberta’s Athabasca Oil Sands / DORAN, Kelly; Flow Mechanism: Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky / SCROGGIN, Jason; Prosolve / DRING, Alison and SCHWAAG, Daniel; Endurance and Obsolescence: Instant Cities, Disposable Buildings, and the Construction of Culture / VEREBES, Tom; Over-Weathering: On Permanence and Resistance in the 2000s / DULIERE, Aude-Line and WONG, Clara; Be Our Guest / HONG KONG CULTURAL IMAGING WORKSHOP; Legs / SVERDLOV, Alexander; Robots and Towers / SAMPLE, Hilary; Go West, Go Big, Go Green? A Journey through China’s “Great Opening of the West” / BRAZIER, Cressica and LAM, Tat; Rural-Urban Ecology / BOLCHOVER, Joshua and LIN, John; Towards ‘Sustainable Communities’? Community, Consultation and the Compulsory Purchase of the site for the 2012 Olympic Games / DAVIS, Juliet; A Brief History of the Fortunes of Deptford Creek: An Interview with Mark Brearly / KOHN, David; Landmarks in Post-Western Ecology / DELOOZ, Pierre Alexandre; China’s Sustainability: Asynchronous Revolutions / JIANG, Jun; Taiwan Strait Atlas, Xiamen Incubator and Beckton Loop Project / BUNSCHOTEN, Raoul; China’s Food-Energy-Water Nexus—A Terrifying Triple Threat / WONG, Julian L.; Spatial Sustainability in Urban Asia: Conservation, Eco-Modernization and Urban Wilding / SADOWAY, David; Chinese Carnival / CHEN, Zhuo and HUANG, Keyi; Along Trails and Shorelines / AYÓN, Angel, MARKS, Gerald and WHITE, Sarah; Reflections on the Hong Kong Waterfront, an Epilogue / EDICK, Kipp, HILLYARD, Chris and YUNG, Edward; Onset, Event and Release / MARSHALL, Victoria; Something Rich and Strange / BRACKEN, Gregory; Is Going Green another Utopia? / HEMPEL, Adina; The Economy of Desire / LI Shiqiao; The Clean Development Mechanism: Tactics of Aggregation / ACHT, Joost van; Urbanization of Post-Olympic Beijing / LIAUW, Laurence; Three Sustainabilities / PIPAN, Tomaz; New York City (Steady) State / TERREFORM; Sustainable Development and Architecture / CHU, Yan; Recombinant Ecologies / GATTEGNO, Nataly; poroCITY / ZOTES-LOPEZ, Marcos; DC on the High Seas / LECAVALIER, Jesse; On the Water: Palisade Bay / SEAVITT, Catherine; The Osmotic Territories / DECOSTERD, Jean-Gilles; Nothing Runs Like a GPS-Navigated Deere: Cedric Price and the Precision Farming Industry / BISHOP, Elizabeth; Feeling Green: Plastic Transformability and Generative Critique / EDNIE-BROWN, Pia; Arid / GRIFFITHS, Jason; DMZOO / YANG, David; Revelation and Indication / MOTODA, Hisaharu; The DEW Project / STANKIEVECH, Charles; Sitting on a Floating Green / FAN, Ling

Exploring contemporary issues in architecture “from every angle,” 306090 is dedicated to opening up architectural discourse by publishing design projects, critical essays, and historic inquiries that are cross disciplinary, collaborative and socially engaged.

It was a pleasure to participate in the amazing cross-blog dialogue–or blogoquim, as we liked to call it–this week as part of the Glacier/Island/Storm studio. No doubt the conversation will continue to expand from here. We are now looking forward to seeing / reading the projects incubated in this context.

In the meantime we leave you with InfraNet Labs 3 contributions, and a postscript.

1. LandFab, or Manufacturing Terrain. Island Edition.

2. Islands of Speculation, Speculation on Islands: Spray Ice. Glacier Edition.

3. Particulate Swarms. Storm Edition.

Postscript: please visit Snowbrokers: eCommerce for eSkimos. Especially recommended is their Short History of Snow Logistics.

Snowbrokers.com was set up a few years ago to service the growing need of online snow sales for the Inuit community of Alaska. Although research had clearly indicated that there was in fact no need at all for such a service this meant that if even the remotest need was ever discovered then this was clear growth from a starting point of zero. And as no serious canvassing of Eskimo snow purchasing tastes had ever been carried out then the assumption that there was no need could be considered flakey.

Here are my iphone notes from the Symposium. My fine colleagues at The Dirt have done far better in capturing the full spectrum of the day… but I give you here my open notes (doodles and commentaries omitted).  Better late than never…

Policy v Design
New problems for a new century
Its about resources
Dissolve discipline and scale boundaries
Field-like infrastructures
tendencies: 1) softer lighter infra OR 2) piggy-backing on infra (Allen)
solution thinking out problems
What is role of design here?
media and comm infra – data access
active (hwy) v passive (energy tap) infra
Bombay slum micro-sewage.
Small becomes big.
Future infra is visible (working) (Taylor)
Infrastructure is sometimes in places we shouldn't be
Problem & solution OR Challenge & opportunity (InfraNet)
distances between urban and footprint
Who manages? Market vs government

[WPA 2.0 post-party at the National Building Museum, Washington DC.]

Energy transfer v entropy
Efficiency arguments always lose.
Place specificity
Structural change future of our profession
A way of thinking – tactically
Global Green & starbucks

Starts from a hunch
Departure when data means something to you (Diller)
Question was more a solution than a question.
Solutions were a priori (Mayne)
Data is soft not hard
research v design … NO its about a new typologies!! (InfraNet)

More can be found at WPA 2.0 website.

Our hats off to Dana Cuff, Roger Sherman, Tim Higgins, and the cityLAB crew for a fantastic day and an energetic momentum to something much bigger.

We are excited to reveal more details about HYDROCity Symposium on Hydrology and Urbanism.

It is this Friday and will feature an impressive international lineup of speakers presenting work and research on where water meets the city and vice versa. The schedule is as follows:

November 6, 2009, 9am – 6pm
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
230 College Street, Room 103

9:00 – Welcome, Opening – Dean Richard Sommer (University of Toronto), Mason White (University of Toronto)

[left to right: Michael Hough, Katherine Rinne, Jandirk Hoekstra, Nina-Marie Lister, Alan Berger.]

AM SESSION: URBAN ECOLOGIES
9:20 – Katherine Rinne (California College of the Arts)
9:50 – Michael Hough (York University)
10:20 – Nina-Marie Lister (Ryerson University)
10:50 – Alan Berger (MIT)
11:20 – Jandirk Hoekstra (H+N+S)
11:50 – respondent
12:00 – PANEL ONE – Jane Wolff (University of Toronto), moderator
12:35 – Open-audience discussion.

——————————————-

[left to right: Liat Margolis, Aziza Chaouni, Koen Olthuis, Catherine Seavitt, David Waggonner, Kelly Shannon.]

PM SESSION: URBAN INFRASTRUCTURES
2:15 – Aziza Chaouni (University of Toronto) / Liat Margolis (University of Toronto)
2:45 – David Waggonner (Waggonner Ball Architects)
3:15 – Kelly Shannon (KU Leuven)
3:45 – Catherine Seavitt (Seavitt Studio)
4:15 – Koen Olthuis (Waterstudio)
4:45 – respondent
4:55 – PANEL TWO – Robert Wright (University of Toronto), moderator
5:30 – Open-audience discussion

6:00 – Closing – Jane Wolff, Mason White

InfraNet Lab is seeking projects, built, unbuilt, dreamed, etched, scripted, carpet-bombed, etc … that address issues or opportunities within hydrology and urbanism. Selected projects will be included, alongside pre-slected projects, as part of an international exhibition. The exhibition, titled HYDROCITY, will feature visionary projects operating primarily at the city or infrastructural scale that hypothesize new relationships between water infrastructures and the city.

HYDROCITY originates in Toronto, in collaboration with Alphabet City, and is set to travel across North America. We are delighted to receive a PDF (3 pages or less and under 6Mb) of any project wishing to be included by October 15, but space is limited so earlier submission is preferred. Several projects have already been pre-selected, but there remains an interest to find new unpublished or recently completed schemes from architects, landscape architects, urban designers, or planners.

The exhibition will run concurrently with an international symosium of the same title. Information on that can be found here.

Please send your wet visions to: editors[at]infranetlab[dot]org

The output of MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) continues to impress, and with issue #11, Bernd Upmeyer and company raise the bar. This issue is dedicated to clean urbanism and a range of responses, mostly antagonizing or shoring up sustainability and its discontents, come pouring in. An initial browse reminds me of Dominique Laporte's oft overlooked theory/survey Histoire de la Merde (trans: History of Shit) in which he charts myriad devices, urban modifications, and codes that cleaned up the contemporary city. Laporte suggests that our very identity as modern societies is intimately wrapped up within the complex management of our own waste – from language to justice to urbanism.

[The Grass is Greener by TomorrowsThoughtsToday shows a series of postcard narratives of a group of Londoners willingly separated from the rest of city inadvertently serving as a carbon sink for the rest of the inhabitants.]

Also, appropriately enough, clean urbanism can be seen as being pleasantly complemented by dirty realism. It is the systematic marginalization of shit, literally, into the hidden pockets of the city, out of view, that maintain a clean front – from buried sewer mains to sex- and drug-trades, to offshoring. One could almost argue that our urban environments are not necessarily any cleaner just better managed and with more crap out of sight. If fact, it is likely that our cities are dirtier, if calculated in aggregate with waste that has been dispersed, traded, or sunk.

[Bio-Port: Free Energy City.]

Clean Urbanism swings across of the gamut of the recent preoccupation with eco-cities, efficiency, and landscapes of power.

Here are the complete contents:
Sci-fi Greenery …or just Responsibility? – Samo Pedersen
Clean Cities – Dirty People – Matteo Muggianu
Dirty Consumerism – Nikonus Pappas
Coming Clean – Randall Teal
Domes over Manhattan – Interview with Gerd Hauser by Bernd Upmeyer
Rendering the Clean – Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (WAI)
The Mobile Library Unit – John Southern
Where the Grass Is Greener – Tomorrow’sThoughtsToday
Clean around the Edges – Lee Altman
Bio-Port – Greg Keeffe and Simon Swietochowski
Zeekracht – The North Sea Masterplan – OMA
Scarcity: Bipolar Urbanism in the Sonoran Desert – Felipe Correa
Regenerative Ecologies – Claudio Astudillo Barra
Clean Energy is Dirty Business – Aleksander Tokarz
Dystopic Verdure – Jacob Ross Boswell
How to Win Poetic Praise and Influence Architects – Amanda Webb
The Cooperative City – Rogier van den Berg
Mania – Bryan Norwood and the Jackson Community Design Center

[OMA, Zeekracht, and the North Sea's perfect storm.]

You may browse the entire issue here:

And you may purchase it as well as back issues here.

NEW GEOGRAPHIES #1 to launch March 31

Edited by doctoral candidates at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), the second volume of the New Geographies journal is entitled "Volume One, After Zero." Contributors to New Geographies #1: AFTER ZERO include: Albert Pope, Ulrich Beck, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara, Erik Swyngedouw, Keller Easterling, Thomas J. Campanella, Francois Blanciak, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Matthew Gandy, Behrang Behin, Lola Sheppard, Mason White, Joseph Grima, and Peter Hall.

A reception to launch the publication will be held from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm on Tuesday, March 31, at the Harvard GSD. Copies of the journal will be available for sale at the event and thereafter at the GSD online bookstore and through Harvard University Press. For additional information, visit the new geographies website.

To purchase, please visit this online bookstore.