infrastructures / networks / environments
- InfraNet Newsletter: Summer 2010
[WeatherField by Paisajes Emergentes + Lateral Office for the Land Art Generator Initiative, 2010.]It has been a very exciting and busy summer at InfraNet Lab. We are delighted to announce a few recent projects–some completed, some on-going, and some only just starting. We have had a phenomenal team of InfraNetters this summer including: Fionn Byrne, Andria Fong, Cecilia Hui, Matthew Spremulli, Fei-Ling Tseng, Ceara Watters, and Shannon Wiley.
[Bracket 1: On Farming in the recent Actar 2010 catalogue.]1) First, we are happy to announce that the launch issue of Bracket, our collaboration with Archinect, is officially at the printers. Through the stunning graphics and coordination of Thumb, and the editorial work of Maya and Mason, we expect to see copies of Bracket: On Farming on shelves this October. The fine folks at Actar will be publishing and distributing the issue. We will have information forthcoming about launch events in various locations: Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, and Houston. And we are only a few weeks away from announcing a call for issue #2, which has a fantastic jury lined up (including Benjamin Bratton, Julia Czerniak, Jeffrey Inaba, Geoff Manaugh, Philippe Rahm, among others) and a theme that we think is timely and potent. Neeraj and Lola will be editing the second volume with generous support from the Graham Foundation. More on that soon.
[Working mock-ups of Pamphlet Architecture #30, aka Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, by InfraNet Lab / Lateral Office, forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press.]2) We are also delighted to announce that Pamphlet Architecture #30, co-authored with Lateral Office, is almost at the printers. We are in the home stretch in working with Princeton Architectural Press toward a tight complete representation of our work. We cannot write too much but we have 6 projects and texts from 3 guest authors whose thinking and writing have percolated through ours (via the work). The issue, titled Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism is available Dec 1, 2010.
3) Neeraj has recently been selected as a Wortham Fellow at Rice School of Architecture, so we will be consoling ourselves over his departure from Toronto (for now!), and scheming on the next phase of our international cross-climate collaborations with him down there in the city of no zoning. Neeraj was also awarded the prestigious L B Anderson award from MIT for research he will be conducting on housing in the Arctic, related to the on-going Next North project.
[Next North is a research project on the current and speculative infrastructures that maintain and operate in the unique context of the Canadian Arctic. The work will be published and part of a traveling exhibtion in 2011. Let us know if you are aware of an interested venue.]4) Lola and Mason (Lateral Office) were recently awarded the Professional Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts. The award recognizes a portfolio of work and a research travel proposal titled Emergent North. They will be traveling in 2 or 3 individual trips to the Canadian Far North during 2010-11.
It has been a busy few months, so we apologize for the infrequent blog postings. We hope to be back on to a more regular schedule in September. In the meantime, thanks for visiting, reading, and commenting.
[WeatherField by Lateral Office + Paisajes Emergentes. Diagrams of Public Experience types and Weather Events.]
- Student Works: Edible Corridors
[A proposal for the ONE Prize by Drew Adams, Fadi Masoud, Denise Pinto, Karen May, and Jameson Skaife titled Growing the Hydro Fields approporaites hydrocorridors as cultivatable public lands.]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.
- Foodprinting.TO
[Foodprint Toronto logo.]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.]http://www.foodprintproject.com/toronto/
- 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 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.]
- Expanded Territories
[99th Annual Conference, ACSA. Montreal, March 3-6, 2011.]We are hosting a topic session at the 99th ACSA Annual Conference next March in Montreal. Our topic is titled Architecture’s Expanded Territories. If you are interested to submit a paper for the session (or any of the other great topics) read below for more. Here is how to submit. (Submissions are due September 15, 2010.)
Architecture’s Expanded Territories
Topic chairs: Lola Sheppard, University of Waterloo / Mason White, University of TorontoIn Rosalind Krauss’s 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” (PDF) Krauss observed that the practice of sculpture had been obscured and could only qualify itself in opposition to architecture and landscape. Krauss identifies three additional practices of sculpture that sculpture had previously been burdened with and names them “site-construction,” marked sites,” and “axiomatic structures.” Taking up a similar cause in 2004, Anthony Vidler offered emergent practices for “Architectures Expanded Field,” (DOC) by arguing that “underlying the new architectural experimentation is a serious attempt to reconstrue the foundations of the discipline, not so much in singular terms, but in broader concepts that acknowledge an expanded field, while seeking to overcome the problematic dualisms that have plagued architecture for over a century: form and function, historicism and abstraction, utopia and reality, structure and enclosure.”
Vidler’s potent proclamation and offer to architecture to evolve with its time has incubated for more than 6 years. Where are we now in this (still) expanding field? This session will table the messy and contentious territory between architecture, landscape, ecology, and urban design. A territory whose foundation was cultivated by Benton MacKaye, planned by Constantinos Doxiadis, designed by Cedric Price, with recent developments chronicled by Keller Easterling, among others. In short, the session will look at where the XXL and the S meet, or a new architecture within our expanding territories.
It could be argued that the potential of an expanded territory is increasingly being hijacked by an agenda of “good practice,” in the name of sustainability, often reducing architecture to the operational concerns of construction efficiency and building performance on a particular site. This session asks what form, format, and programs might exist in the new territory afforded by a deeper understanding of site? Or, what is sustainable design without the burden of sustainability?
What defines these expanding territories? Architecture’s recent privileging of operational costs over capital costs is a paradigm shift in scale, program, and function. No longer relegated to façade design only, we are seeing ever-expanding ambiguities of architecture’s envelope. This session seeks to find these large territorial lines, interrogate them, design them, and expose them. What potential lies in the tools encouraging a widening envelope of design influence – environmental data, maps, politics, economies – upon a give site? Sometimes it might not even look like architecture.
The session calls for speculative design research proposals or critical papers to think big. How does design operate at the scale of the region or the globe? Forgoing utopian ambitions to design the region or the globe, how can design participate in the temporal space of emerging natural and artificial systems – energies, ecologies, mobilities, and, possibly most importantly, economies? What is the role and operation of the big project in our age of urgent environmental issues and crippled economy? Where do you stand in the expanding territory?
- 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 Toronto. Guest post and images are by Gerard Gutierrez.
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The four species of Asian Carp, Bighead, Black, Silver, and Grass, have become a menace in the Mississippi River basin as desperate attempts have been made to stop its entrance into the Great Lakes. Its seemingly insatiable appetite has endangered many local species by consuming much of the local food sources as different Asian Carp species feed on aquatic grasses and various types of phytoplankton. The fish can reach a length of 4ft long and weigh up to 100lbs. This extreme size has also become a danger to recreational boaters and fisherman as the fish can jump up to 6ft out of the water when startled by incoming watercraft.
[Carp tracking since 1972. The US and Canadian Governments formed the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in 1955 specifically to battle sea lamprey, which had devastated the fishery.]The initial introduction of this invasive species to the United States occurred in 1973 as Bighead, Silver and Black Carp from Taiwan were first introduced to the U.S. by an Arkansas fish farmer who used his own stock of Grass Carp as an experimental weed control agent. In 1979, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, working with a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), utilized Silver and Bighead Carp as an experimental cleaning agent in sewage treatment plants around the state. By the 1990s, a large population of Silver and Bighead Carp escaped into the Mississippi River when Southern aquaculture facilities became flooded. This event started the migration of the fish up the Mississippi River and has resulted in the great proliferation of the various species, especially bighead and silver. At its most extreme concentrations, the Carp has accounted for over 90% of the total biomass within certain stretches of the Mississippi and Chicago river systems.
[Tests for an electric fish barrier in Chicago.]The Chicago River system has become the final battleground for preventing the Asian Carp from entering Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes at large. Numerous attempts have been made to prevent the carp’s movements, amongst these has been the installation of two underwater electric fences by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2002 and 2006. These experimental barriers soon proved to be a failure as fish were found upstream from the fence. When the barriers needed maintenance, a poison was dumped into the river to stop the fish as vital work was completed. Most recently, extreme measures have been proposed that would close the Chicago Shipping Canal as a last resort to stopping the Carp from entering Lake Michigan.
[Bow-hunting Carp as kill sport.]Many entrepreneurs are currently developing new ways of utilizing the carp. The most obvious has become turning the many carp into a viable food export to various parts of Asia and certain parts of North America. Other emerging uses include processing the fish into animal feed, omega-3 oil and even using the fish as a source for bio-fuel. With these emerging uses, the fish can be envisioned as a lucrative future commodity that can be farmed on a large regional scale. In a future where the Asian Carp has entered the Great Lakes ecosystem, can large-scale Carp-farming help control the rampant growth of the invasive species? Certain stretches of the Great Lakes shores can be converted to large fish farming beds while many parts of the Mississippi River system can also become fish farming areas that would capitalize on the abundance of Carp that would be processed for food export, animal feed, omega-3 oil, and bio fuel.
Also from the Feedback seminar:
Corn Belt 2.0: Syncing the Starchscape, Matthew Spremulli
Re-Link: The Physical Network of Data, Ali Fard
Border Economies: the Maquiladora Export Landscape, Juan Robles
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, Fei-Ling Tseng
- Corn Belt 2.0: Syncing the Starchscape
[Mountain of Corn.]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.
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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
- 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 meaning, is there an ecology of excess?
This notion of Ecologies of Excess was the premise of an intriguing studio taught by Eva Franch Gilabert at Rice University, that I had the pleasure of reviewing last week. According to Franch, the ideological succession of machine for living by organism for living perpetuated the same social, political and environmental dilemmas of the previous century. Franch envisions a new movement, Ecologies of Excess, during the 22nd century that "provide us with a guide to thinking, designing and building based on what we, human beings, produce without measure: endless amounts of energy in social [crowds], political [wars], and environmental terms [pollution]. In sum: Excess"
Set in the year 2101, the studio centered on the design of a Worlds Fair Exhibition Pavilion, deemed "Great Exhibition of the Works of Excess of All Nations". Each studio participant was to site their project in a different country and analyze the productive aspects of excess. The studio produced fascinating results, two projects of which are highlighted below.
[Top: The floating, tangled settlements of trash facilitate the spread of invasive species (like mussels, barnacles, invertebrates, and pelagic crabs) across the ocean. Middle: Invasive species often attach to floating plastic settlements, affecting the oceans oxygen, phytoplankton, and zooplankton production, to the detriment of native ecosystems. Bottom: The average cubic centimeter of ocean water holds about one million phytoplankton-producing-bacteria; however, if this bacteria attaches to plastic, it creates biofilm colonies on the surface of the ocean, depriving lower depths of an even distribution ocean nutrient cycling. Images Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]
Polymergy Waterscapes by: Igraine Perkinson
Polymergy Waterscapes looks at the garbage gyre written about by InfraNet Lab last year. The great pacific garbage patch is comprised of floating plastics that swirl within slow winds and ocean currents. Entitled Polymergy Waterscapes, Igraine envisions a future typology that builds upon and with this trash. Igraine states:
Whereas traditional patterns of urbanity sought to settle away from trash, Polymergy Waterscapes creates a floating aquatic society that inverses this relationship, using garbage as a generative device for new urbanism. The pavilion adopts a labyrinthine open system of channels that brings the trash to its proximity by disrupting the clockwise currents of the gyre. These systems grow by means of compaction, reducing debris by a factor of ten.
[Siting Strategy. Top: The gyre occupies an area of slow wind currents; as a result, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through it—hence, a lack of awareness of its presence. Middle: Warm water from the south crashes into cooler water from the north, creating a spiraling current that collects the floating garbage. Bottom: Each season affects ocean water temperatures, pushing the location of the gyre about 1000 miles north and south every time. Images Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]Sited at an opportune location for gathering garbage – where winds and currents are slowest – Polymergy Waterscapes not only raises awareness of this emerging continent of garbage, but also incorporates programmes that can take advantage of garbage – spas (heat generated by recycling process), research labs, and various recreational activities of play. The accumulation or densification of the island over time slowly clears the larger mass of water. Here, garbage is the unit of growth and the subject for occupation.
[A labyrinthine strategy of open water channels collects trash by disrupting the clockwise currents of the gyre, following a specific path typology that relates to process and program. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]
[Accumulation Legs, View of Model. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]
[Each program zone architecturalizes collected garbage uniquely (zone1 ex: accumulation wall, soft square, synthetic dunes, garbage whirlpool) constructing collective aspirations that result from the design process. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]
[Sections. Top: Other water channels empty debris into the collection ponds and topography terraces of Plastic Laboratories, which can then be closed off and left to dry in order to store contents for energy or research. Bottom: Polymergy Spa is an underwater refinery that melts plastic and converts it into energy, releasing mist as a result of the process, and adding a layer of privacy for each user—the relaxation seeker. Image Courtesy of: Igraine Perkinson]Species Indetermina by: Ashley Johnson
Species Indetermina tackles the issue of species migration in ballast water. As globalized markets put increasing pressure on shipping, ballast water becomes a large issue. This water is typically polluted (with the residue of the cargo) and often contains alien species, which are dumped in ports far from their origin. These alien species often alter and eliminate parts of the local ecosystem. Ashley Johnson takes advantage of these alien species in her project, Species Indetermina, by containing the ballast water and creating core samples of wildlife and landscape from different parts of the globe. These contained ecosystem core samples essentially create a new zoo typology that is curated by shipping routes and alien ballast water. Johnson sites her project in New Zealand, where she notes, "in 2010 twenty new species of algae were discovered from samples taken in Auckland Harbour labeled species indetermina".
[Placement of a single port outside of Auckland Harbour where Ballast Water is typically dumped. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]
[Plan of Port at low tide. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]Her containment port located outside the harbor would allow "The people of New Zealand to sail five minutes off their own coast and enter exotic new environments, on sea level with the new life, as well as up above in restaurants and observation decks." What is interesting about this scheme is that while sited in New Zealand, it could provide a prototype for dealing with ballast water at all international shipping ports across the globe. A travelling network of contained (and contaminated) ecosystems, which introduce the public to new exotic worlds.
[Proliferation of exotic life. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]While the projects seemed fantastical, perhaps because of their future projection of 2101, the issues they addressed were imminent and the solutions were all - in some form - viable (particularly when looking at the proposed schemes for the oil containment in the Gulf of Mexico). By finding new solutions for excess, new "ecologies" can emerge that are fueled on our invisible waste. We are excited to hear that Eva Franch Gilabert was recently appointed the Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and we hope to see more on the Ecologies of Excess.
[Exploded Axonometric showing public layers hovering above container. Image courtesy of Ashley Johnson]
- Re-Link: The Physcial Network of Data
[The global network of submarine cables as it existed in 1901.]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 Ali Fard.
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With an estimated 1,733,993,741 users and a global growth rate of 380% since 2000 , it is easy to think of the internet as a free-flowing cloud of information accessible by all. However, unlike popular belief, our connection to the internet is not mediated by an uber high-tech network of satellites (or any of the other usual suspects). In fact, satellite links account for only 1% of all internet connections. Automatically, and incorrectly, thought of as a complex metaphysical network of information, the Internet consists of a highly physical network of lines and nodes; a simple system with inherent complexities.
Simply put, it is a network of submarine communication cables laid across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and other water bodies that connect us to information databases in other continents. Although the technology has changed significantly, the network itself does not differ greatly from the network of submarine telegraph lines which existed as early as 1901. Much like long umbilical cords, these cables are the not-so-visible proof of our dependence on concentrated sources of information. These very real and physical “communication highways” establish links between information super hubs, while controlling internet’s dissemination of information. These lines, coupled with the terrestrial network of land lines and data centers, are the medium of the internet.
[The existing global network of submarine communication cables.]The lines and nodes of the internet, much like any other physical infrastructure, are prone to an array of politico-economic issues. Closely related to the politico-economic reading of the hierarchical structure of the world, much of this understanding of internet has to do with its very physical backbone. Areas with the least number of users get the best connections and others, like most of Africa, get nothing. We can clearly make out the users from producers. The redundancies of the submarine lines to North America and Europe have caused internet prices to plummet, which in turn has encouraged not only higher usage of internet but an active participation in the information world. Meanwhile, you can count the number of lines feeding Africa on one hand. As a result, prices are so high that even the lines that are already in place become meaningless, because of lack of use.
[Submarine cable system, from left to right: Cable + Repeaters + Landing Points + Termination Stations.]
[Submarine communication cable: 1. Polyethylene cover; 2. & 4. Stranded steel armor wires; 3. & 5. Tar-soaked nylon yarn; 6. Polycarbonate insulator; 7. Copper sheath; 8. Protective core; 9. Optical fibers.]
[Cable-laying ship.]
[A submarine cable arriving on land in Bangladesh, April 10, 2009. REUTERS/Gina Din Corporate Communications/Japheth Kagondu/Handout.]The Internet can be read as a dynamic network, but a network which is far from equally distributed. This unequal distribution is not because of lack of potential, but lack of means. It is clear that in today’s information heavy economy, to compete means to be connected. So, areas with little or no internet connection, which are already among the most economically unstable, get left behind and cannot compete. It is clear that the current state of the network privileges the most developed countries. This outcome is merely due to economic factors and not necessarily based on efficiencies and strengths of the network. So, how can this unequally distributed network be rewired to be able to function efficiently? How is this network affected with regards to the recent crisis in the economic structure of the world? How can a more logical rewiring of the network help African countries or other poorly connected areas of the world, while improving the system as a whole?
[A current map of the global internet connection.]
[A possible re-wiring scenario in which Africa becomes an internet hub, taking advantage of its geographic location.]One possible rewiring scenario has to do with the strategic geographic location of Africa. With cheap land, availability of natural resources and proximity to Asia, Europe and South America, Africa can provide fertile grounds for international data center activity. Big Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, whose data center activity is mostly concentrated in North America and Europe, can start investing in the internet infrastructure of African countries by providing better connections, and in return can be allowed to establish data centers in areas with little economic activity. These companies can take on an active role in shaping the information economy of Africa by not only providing internet connections, but also by providing jobs and training. All this cannot be achieved by corporate colonization, but through an active and dedicated participation in the growth of the information economy of the region.
Although great imagination may be required in visualizing such proposition, and a great deal of analysis is required in understanding the ups and downs of such a mammoth initiative, it is in no way farfetched. It is in fact such a proposal that can bring much needed attention to how information is distributed throughout the world and provide grounds for discussion of possible new futures of the network.
Also from the Feedback seminar:
Border Economies: the Maquiladora Export Landscape, Juan Robles
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, Fei-Ling TsengRelated: Rewiring (Tele)Geography
- 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 21st century regional economies have created numerous territories of abundance. Among these spaces the maquiladora landscape, in the northern border of Mexico, has seen the greatest change in the last 50 years. From a manufacturing sun-belt territory limited to an area 20 kilometers south of the U.S.-Mexico border and saturated by U.S. investment; to an industry gaining strength across the Mexican country from Asian and European investment and reorganization.
[Even though the biggest concentrations of maquiladoras are found at the border, these territories of assembly are found all around Mexico.]
[Of the top 100 maquiladoras in Mexico; 66 are owned by companies from the U.S., 7 from Japan, 2 from the Netherlands, 1 from Germany, 3 from Canada, 1 from Singapore, 4 from Korea, 1 from China, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Sweden, 2 from France, 1 from Australia, 1 from Taiwan, 1 from Finland, and 5 from Mexico.]With maquiladoras mainly producing electronic equipment, clothing, plastics, furniture, appliances, and auto parts the industry has grown from under 2,000 factories in the early 1990s to over 3,000 maquiladoras concentrated along the major border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros.
[The growth of the maquiladora industry along the U.S. - Mexico border and the increase in export goods and labor across the main border towns has created a unique interdependent but unequal economic sister-city relationship between the paired metropolises.]These plants began as part of a Mexican Border Industrialization Program in 1965 to solve the problem of rising unemployment along border cities caused by the end of the Bracero Program in 1964 when close to 180,000 Mexican farm workers were left without work. At its peak it employed over 445,000 braceros while the current maquiladora industry employs over 1.3 million Mexican workers. The intention of the maquiladora program was to clean up the border, attract more tourists, and create more jobs, not knowing that the new manufacturing landscape would bring numerous socio-political, economic and environmental problems to the region.
[Since the maquiladora industry offers thousands of low-skill jobs, the border has been a magnet to Mexican workers seeking economic opportunity for decades. The opportunist nature of this industry creates an industrial ecology of trade, supported by and supporting millions of migrant workers living in shanty towns around the industrial parks while industry logistics are controlled on the U.S. side.]Unlike the typical manufacturing industries in the U.S., maquiladoras are labor-intensive assembly operations that import materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly under the condition that the assembled product is exported out of the host country. These plants are mostly owned by European, Asian and U.S. corporations who take advantage of more lenient industrial development regulations and exploit cheap labor in close proximity to the U.S. market.
Located 2.5 hour from the Long Beach Shipping Port, Tijuana had full advantage to become the biggest manufacturer of electronics in North America, especially the production of color televisions.]Maquiladoras export 90 percent of the assembled products to the U.S. with the electronics industry having the largest share of exports concentrated in Tijuana. The previous organization of these industries had parts shipped in from the country of origin, assembled in Tijuana, and exported to the U.S.
[In the late 1990s Tijuana became the Television Capital of the world producing over 14 million televisions and monitors per year. While Mexico’s share of world television production grew from 1.7 million in 1987 to 25 million in 1998 and continued to grow to a peak of almost 35 million TVs in 2003.]In response to the recent economic crisis, especially seen in electronics, the industry has created new clustered maquiladora parks in the primary NAFTA distribution-based border cities. This was a strategy to make the assembly industry more efficient in order to compete with strong competition from China’s Special Economic Zones. At the turn of the century, Mexico saw close to 500 plants close and move to Asian competitor countries but has recently seen an increase in investment due to the rise in shipping costs.
[The reorganization of maquiladora industrial parks creates a new system of sub and main maquiladoras which bring the parts manufacturers and assembly plants close together while following the rules of the maquiladora program.]The use of a cluster system started attracting part suppliers to be closer to the assembly factory. The parts that would originally be shipped from overseas have begun to be manufactured by overseas-owned companies either in Tijuana or San Diego. Each plant is an independent company that works closely with the other plants to support new just-in-time production strategies in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The new strategies have made the border industry more efficient but have failed to respond to the socio-economic, political, and environmental conditions that continue to surround it.
Could a new type of industry cluster provide more efficient, social, or productive trade ecologies? Would larger more integrated versions of this cluster system redefine development trends along the U.S.-Mexico border? Could the clustering of different industries along a larger territory linked by a rail system create a more efficient industrial ecology that responds to the poverty in these cities?
[Using the maquiladora cluster concept, the new border bundles whole industries into separate special economic zones between the U.S. and Mexico where one industries outputs can be used as inputs for another. The desert environment along the border is exploited to create new solar farms that would generate the energy needed in these zones.]Also from the Feedback seminar:
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, Fei-Ling Tseng
