infrastructures / networks / environments
- Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer
[Operations / Interior logistics at the Aalsmeer Flower auction, Aaalsmeer, The Netherlands. At 10.6 million ft2, it is the third largest building in the world.]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.
- InfraNet does HotDocs
[Chelyabinsk, Russia, a nuclear dumping site for decades, is the subject of the film Tankograd.]Festival season is starting. In particular, we are excited about a slew of films that are part of the Canadian International Documentary Festival, nicknamed HotDocs, that runs April 29 – May 9, 2010 here in Toronto. With so many fascinating accounts represented in this edition, we thought it best to profile them here, for safe keeping. The tales we have selected chronicle landfills, clean energy wars, and land use ambiguities.
Waste Land, directed Lucy Walker (UK / Brazil)
[Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, shows May 1 and May 5.]Lucy tracks artist Vik Muniz and his work with pickers of recyclable materials in Brazil’s Jardim Gramacho, arguably the world’s largest landfill site.
Land, directed by Julian Pinder (Canada)
[Land, directed by Julian Pinder, shows May 2 and 9.]Burnt-out baby-boomers, Sandinistas, and ex-lefty capitalist developers clash in a wild-west showdown over land in a bucolic Nicaraguan seaside town.
Gasland, directed by Josh Fox (USA)
[Gasland, directed by Josh Fox, shows April 30 and May 2.]Flammable tap water, mysterious ailments, poisoned land and livestock, Sundance prize-winner Gasland exposes the environmental calamities and cover-ups caused by natural gas drilling.
Into Eternity, directed by Michael Madsen (Denmark, Sweden, Finland)
[Into Eternity, directed by Michael Madsen, shows May 5 and 7.]The scientific minds behind Finland’s massive underground nuclear waste storage facility, Onkalo, where radioactive waste must sit untouched for at least 100,000 years to neutralize its potential danger, are probed in Into Eternity.
Wistful Wilderness, directed by Digna Sinke (Netherlands)
[Wistful Wilderness, directed by Digna Sinke, shows May and 8.]The island of Tiengemeten is getting a makeover. Originally tamed to serve as agricultural land, its now being left to the elements to revert back to wilderness. Filmmaker Digna Sinke documents 15 years of transformation.
Tankograd, directed by Boris Bertram (Denmark)
[Tankograd, directed by Boris Bertram, shows May 4 and 7.]Chelyabinsk, Russia, once the site of a top secret Cold War atomic bomb factory, is now the most radioactively polluted city in the world. Its residents live with the consequences of catastrophic leaks and dumped toxic waste as cancers, auto-immune diseases, and undrinkable water flow freely. But the city most foul sprouts a most unlikely growth—the vibrant, inspiring Chelyabinsk Contemporary Dance Theatre.
Dreamland, directed by Þorfinnur Guðnason (Iceland)
[Dreamland, directed by Þorfinnur Guðnason, shows May 2 and 4.]With its hydroelectric and geothermal power surplus, Iceland’s clean energy initiatives have attracted heavy industries whose pollution decimates natural vegetation. A tale of sabotage from the frontlines of the green revolution.
I Bought a Rainforest, directed by Helena Nygren and Jacob Andren (Sweden)
[I Bought a Rainforest, directed by Helena Nygren and Jacob Andren, shows May 2 and 4.]Jacob Andren, like over 400,000 other Swedish children, remembers raising money to help save a rainforest. Twenty years later, wondering if his efforts made any real impact, he visits Costa Rica to see whether this piece of land remains preserved.
They Come for the Gold, They Come for it All, directed by Pablo D’Alo Abba and Christian Harbarak (Argentina, Chile)
[They Come for teh Gold, They come for it All, directed by Pablo Abba and Cristian Harbaruk, shows May 6 and 8.]In a small town on the border of Argentina and Chile, the residents of Esquel are conflicted over a lucrative bid from Canadian mining company Meridian Gold. On the one hand, the mine will provide much needed work for residents, half of whom live below the poverty line. On the other hand, the gold and silver extraction requires large amounts of water and cyanide.
You can access the complete listings–time, locations, details–here. Enjoy.
- Feedback: Architecture’s New Territories
[InfraNet Lab Winter seminar, University of Toronto. Feedback: Architectures New Territories.]Total Design has two meanings: first, what might be called the implosion of design, the focusing of design inward on a single intense point; second, what might be called the explosion of design, the expansion of design out to touch every possible point in the world. – Mark Wigley, from "Whatever Happened to Total Design?"
This past Winter, I taught a seminar at the University of Toronto called Architecture’s New Territories [PDF]. In the coming weeks, I will be posting some of the research the students conducted during that term, which coincided with various readings and discussions. The position of the course began with a few key observations.
++ The idea of architecture as a self-reflexive, isolated, and willful internal wrangling of formal preoccupations does not have the ability (alone) to address and re-dress the opportunities and challenges in our contemporary design climate.
++ Architecture operating as a singular act on a singular site overlooks its capacity as a large feedback machine extending increasingly beyond itself. Its footprint, always already, is wide and complex.
++ Architecture’s potential, today, lies as much in its functioning as a surface, conduit, and container for ephemeral flows of resources, cultures, and energy as it does in its symbolic cultural and formal capacities.However this potential is increasingly hijacked by a "good practice" sustainable agenda often reducing it to efficiency and performance. How architecture gets its power, economy, materials, and labour, among others, is as essential to understanding the future role and operational capacities of a building on its site. In many ways this paradigm shift suggests a natural (economic) evolution in building culture toward privileging operational costs over capital costs. In short, the building response to its future time is valued as much as, if not more than, the building at its inception.
[Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, 1979.]In Rosalind Krauss’s 1979 essay on sculpture’s expanded field, Krauss observed the practice of sculpture had been obscured and could only qualify itself in opposition to architecture and landscape. Using a Klein group structure, Krauss identifies three additional practices of sculpture that sculpture had been recently burdened with, and names them site-construction, marked sites, and axiomatic structures. Similarly, Architecture is in need of a range of situational qualifiers to establish its position amongst the rapidly expanding disciplinary terrain of landscape architecture and within the fractured and troubled territory of urbanism. But marking the expanded field in architecture can also be productive toward addressing new functions for architecture as a conduit, transmitter, and receiver for opportunities found within local and regional networks. To do so, we have removed architecture from the original Kraussian diagram and replaced with the problematic term "infrastructure." The resulting terms are: productive surface, civic conduit, and spatial container. Arguably architecture can now be any of these as a result of the pairings.
[InfraNet Lab, Architecture in the Expanded Field, 2009.]
This seminar will pose the simple question of: Now what? How might architecture fruitfully capitalize on its expanded territory and how might we characterize its development? The seminar will be preoccupied with the airspace that architecture operates within and the logistics that support and influence it. Its immediate climate and larger environment, with those terms stripped of their dominant sustainability overtones, will provoke an understanding of architecture’s performance as a design act equivalent to other acts of design.
[InfraNet Lab, Architecture in the Expanded Field, 2009.]
The seminar discussed architecture’s expanding operational opportunity and impact. Or, in short, an expanded understanding of architecture’s wider territory. This is in reaction to a burgeoning disciplinary loophole between economy, geography, ecology, landscape, urbanism, and architecture, a loophole in which architecture seems most primed to lead.
[FEEDBACK sections / readings.]The course was structured around five territories: flows, velocities, ecologies, economies, and energies.
Flows will look at questions of scale within architecture’s operation? Where is the end of a building’s envelope? How does it extend or how might it extend? And where does the site end and building begin? Velocities will look at the territory of mobility and its influence on architecture. will look at the territory of mobility and its influence on architecture. How could architecture engage directly its condition as a hub within a larger network? Ecologies will look at the question of architecture’s culpability within larger complex industrial and natural ecologies. How does architecture participate in urban (infrastructural) ecologies? How does or might architecture participate in natural ecologies? Economies will look at the influence of our global economies on architecture. What is economic influence beyond merely a design budget? How do economies produce architectural typologies? Energies will look at the opportunity of resources and climate in the formation of architecture. How does architecture address its airspace? How is architecture culpable in the production of energy beyond itself?
[FEEDBACK structure.]Students were asked to investigate and document a "space of abundance, excess, or inundation and tracks its relevant flows." These spaces would be considered typological of forms of urbanism as informed by globalization. It was argued in the course that these types of spaces are superlatives, but have been forgotten by design and architecture and, like an unmonitored species, have flourished to dominate the built landscape. In the coming weeks, we will share the projects of the students in a series of guest posts.
- Stored Potential
[The 62-interlocked concrete silos as seen from I-80, Omaha, Nebraska. Courtesy flickr user bnmelvin.]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.]
- Frozen Cities / Liquid Networks. (air)port & Infrastructural Autonomy
[Air/Port, a new infrastructure for Igloolik. Image courtesy of Lubell and Phull]The melting of the polar caps will not only open up new shipping routes such as the North-West and Northern Passage, it has the potential to connect existing communities in the Arctic to a larger network of distribution. Presently, most Arctic communities depend 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
- Eneropa – Territories of Energy
[Eneropa - The New European Map? Image via OMA/AMO]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]
- Frozen Cities Liquid Networks: Landjacking the Mackenzie
[The amphibious landscape of Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories]At 4,200 kilometres in length, the Mackenzie River in North-western Canada is one of the longest rivers in the world (11th). Its watershed, 1.8 million square kilometres in size, drains one-fifth of the country. The River, whose headwaters begin in the Peace and Athabasca rivers, flows north, across the Arctic Circle to the Beaufort Sea, a territory rich in oil and natural gas resources.
[Mackenzie River Basin]Landjacking, by University of Waterloo students Virginia Fernadez and Meaghan Burke, is a project which deals with the confluence of significant ecosystems, hydrological systems and resources. Burke and Fernadez write: “The Mackenzie Basin is just one incidence of a major Arctic river coinciding with significant oil or gas deposits. Such sedimentary basins – where over time marine organisms have been deposited, and decayed to form oil or gas – are also found in the Russian Arctic."
By 2050, environmental pressures will increase melting ice and precipitation, increasing the annual discharge of the northern rivers such as the Mackenzie by 12-20 precent. This freshwater flows into the Beaufort Sea, becoming salt-water at the Delta. Collecting, treating and distributing just 4% of this excess water annually would produce 3 trillion m3 of water, enough to satisfy the annual water needs of 2 million Canadians.
Burke and Fernadez explain: “The existing Mackenzie Gas project is proposing an infrastructure for extraction and processing facilities and housing; all centered on a finite resource, natural gas.
[The river has served to gather several settlements and extraction sites along its length, to service the projected gas pipeline which is to run parallel to the river for approx. 1220km.]Landjacking seeks to hijack the construction of the pipeline and build a water pipeline alongside the gas infrastructure, introducing a new renewable resource to the region’s economy. The river delta presents the opportunity for co-opting the natural lake system, to develop a freshwater industry that would promote local economies with longevity.”
Located close to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, the project profits from the relatively immunity from rising sea levels and storm surges while still collecting water from the river’s highest runoff.
[Geography of the Mackenzie Delta with its existing lakes, and proposed walls and canals networking the lakes into a new ecosystem]The project essentially consists of three walls totalling 114km in length, which encircle 700km2 of territory near the Mackenzie Delta – a landscape ‘pock-marked’ with endless lakes. The project proposes to co-opt some of the lakes to act as natural wetlands to treat water flowing northward in the Mackenzie River.The water of the Mackenzie is polluted as various points downstream by mining, oil and gas works.
[Elements of an amphibious landscape: Existing lakes; River tributaries, New Flood walls; and Canals supplying and diverting water to lakes]A combination of mechanical treatment and a gravitational network of collection, cleaning and storage lakes treat the highest water volume in the summer, and are supplanted in the winter by an entirely mechanical system. Smaller systems of wastewater management, aquaculture, snow collection and electricity production are connected to the water treatment diversifying the output of the system. The clean water is then sent back south for irrigation and general consumption.
[Chemical and mechanical water treatment, as well as housing, recreation, services and transportation are embedded in the walls.]The project is composed of a collection wall along the river where primary/initial water treatment occurs, and two secondary treatment walls linking the river with the land, all connected to the wetland system through pipelines and canals. The walls act as a levee shielding the wetlands from salt water and further pollutants when the water level rises, while perforations controlled by sluice-gates allow the maintenance of the natural hydrological and ecological systems.
[Inhabiting the infrastructural water landscapes]The wall changes its width responding both to program and landscape. Transportation, pedestrian paths and pipelines span the wall merging water and human networks. A port for small barges coming along the Mackenzie, a road connected to the Dempster highway and four, four meter diameter pipelines are the connections to rest of the world.
[The Arctic''''''''''''''''s great water wall?]A modern day Hoover dam, the project is a colossal infrastructure that seeks to find a way in which it might co-exist with its surrounding landscapes, albeit in an altered state. One might imagine this enclosed Arctic landscape like a modern Lake Mead – a natural landscape transformed, but supporting recreation, economies, and newly emerging ecologies.
- Geoengineering After the Tipping Point
[Eruption of Mount Pinatubo pumped large quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, effectively changing the climate]The increasing speed that climate change is impacting our globe, coupled with slow transformations of lifestyle and policy to radically reduce GHG emissions, have prompted many climate change scientists to (re)consider Geoengineering, A.K.A planetary climate-engineering, to rapidly cool the earth. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have surpassed 385 parts per million, rising above the limit of 350 parts per million that many scientists consider to be the threshold for maintaining a stable ‘natural’ climate. Despite the present interest in global warming, current studies reveal that we are still pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – approximately increasing the levels by 2 parts per million each year. Geoengineering – an option that was seldom considered viable, is now being acknowledged as a potential solution, or Plan B to climate change. One of the reasons for this (beyond the grim reality of carbon levels) is that geoengineering could potentially be very cheap. Many now argue that geoengineering is an economic alternative to ‘buy us time’ to develop zero-emission technology in a cost effective manner. While most scientists agree that the reduction of GHG emissions is the fundamental solution (Plan A), they also admit that geoengineering may one of the few options to address future climate change. Ronald Prinn, a professor of atmospheric science and the director of the Center for Global Change science at MIT, explains why climate scientists have started to change their minds about geoengineering in this video. Put simply, we have come too far and engineering our way out of this situation may be our only choice.
[Comparison of various Geoengineering Strategies via newscientist.com]For years, geoengineering techniques were only to be found in science-fiction novels, and not put on the table as possible options. Now, as geoengineering is being reconsidered, we realize how little we know about the atmosphere and climatic changes. This has already prompted research and a report on Geoengineering by the UK’s Royal Society, as well an American report, instigated in part by President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren. Even the IPCC’s report touches on geoengineering in section 4.7, stating what many scientists firmly believe – geoengineering focuses on the symptoms rather than the cause. The purpose of this nascent research, however, is to wage the various options of geoengineering, understand how to implement them, and run models to gain insights on their potential side effects. There are several schemes currently being cooked up by scientists to geoengineer our climate that fall into two basic categories: (i) Solar Radiation Management and (ii) Mitigation techniques, such as carbon sequesterering. While several of these initial ideas are seemingly sci-fi in nature, they are becoming increasingly plausible solutions to address climate change. Step 1 is to understand atmospheric systems more precisely and Step 2 is to figure out how to manipulate this system.
[Cloud seeding and cloud brightening with salt water to increase solar reflection via wired.com]Solar Radiation Management could take several forms, but the basic premise of each strategy is the same: to block or reflect solar radiation out of the atmosphere. Proposals range from cloud seeding, to arctic ice harvesting (for its reflective quality) to large sun disks in outer space. The first notable proposal, which is still under investigation today, was by the Soviet Scientist, Mikhail Budyko in 1974. Budyko suggested the injection of gases into the upper reaches of the atmosphere would cool the earth. The idea is inspired by the natural phenomenon of volcanic eruptions or massive forest fires that send sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere where it acts as micro-deflectors of sunlight. Hovering 10 kilometers above the earth in the stratosphere, this sulfur not only reduces the amount of sunlight that hits the surface, it also creates a haze that diffuses the sunlight. The most cited precedent for such an approach is the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991, which released 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and cooled average temperatures by half a degree Celcius. Current predictions estimate that between one and five million tons of sulfur would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. From rockets filled with sulfur to hot air balloon smokestacks from coal-fired power plants, there are several options on how to actually get the sulfur into the stratosphere. One major issue with sulfur injections is that they do not address GHG emissions. In fact, they require a continual supply of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere – and, as the earth is further heated – will always require more and more sulfur dioxide in future years. The economic and resource investment would be continually past down to future generations. Beyond the technical and unsustainable growth model of sulfur dioxide injections, scientists don’t know enough about atmospheric chemistry to predict exactly what will happen. Without percise climate models, there is little understanding on how this will affect rain, wind patterns and ocean currents. And simultaneously, climate modeling is our only choice – as it is difficult to test several ideas without impacting climatic systems. The unpredictable nature of the ensuing effects could be more disasterous than our current climatic crisis. Others have noted that sulfate shields only work to block sun, and would therefore be less effective during the night and winter. This differential climate would have several large reaching effects on the world’s ecosystems and oceans. Oceans, in fact, would continue to acidify because the GHG’s would linger and build in the atmosphere. Other climate models show that sulfur sunshades could also create catastrophic droughts (droughts were noticed for a year after Mount Pinatubo’s eruption). With so many variables and little precision in climate modeling, sulfur dioxide injections may pose more problems than solutions, especially because they are cheap.
[Solar Shading - Sulfur, Clouds or Disks? via livingearth.com]Mitigation Techniques include different forms of carbon capture and carbon sequestering. Three of the major strands of research here involve (i) Phytoplankton Storage (ii) Artificial Trees, and (iii) Geological Storage. Phytoplankton consume large amounts of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Filling the seas with iron – a favorite of phytoplankton – would encourage blooms that would absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide and transport this to the bottom of the ocean. The dropping of massive quantities of iron into the ocean and promoting large scale phytoplankton production would have great repercussions on ocean ecosystems – repercussions that we cannot predict.
[The Ocean as a Mega-Phytoplankton Farm? via popularmechanics.com]Other materials that can capture and store large amounts of carbon dioxide are being explored to augment natural processes. One such trajectory of research is examining peridotite rocks, which form magnesium carbonate when they react with carbon dioxide. Others, such as Columbia University’s Klaus Lackner, are exploring the production of ‘artificial trees’. Lackner’s tree is able to capture a ton of carbon from the atmosphere each day. What are these ‘trees’ made of? For the most part, panels of an absorbent resin that react with carbon dioxide to form a solid. Lackner’s prototypes suggest that a 10m x 10m area of panels could extract 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. Once captured, these filters can be cleaned with steam.
[Rendering of Artificial Trees developed by Lackner]The largest issue with attempting to orchestrate a climatic transformation is that we just don’t know enough about how our atmosphere works and the repercussions of our tampering. Further, most geoengineering schemes require future generations to maintain such measures, with little end in sight. Geoengineering also poses a political issue, as any response would affect the entire globe. Because certain schemes, such as sulfate shading, are quite simple and relatively cheap to implement, they could be done by most nations, creating the seeds for future conflicts. Currently, no international laws or treaties would prevent a country from unilaterally beginning a geoengineering project. Who would monitor such projects, and who should have a say? The political administering of geoengineering is just as complex as some of the schemes. Another issue is a social one – the present energy on climate change initiatives may slow if there is a belief that we can always find new engineering solutions to address unsustainable practices. As it stands, the risks of geoengineering seem to outweigh any possible benefits. Some scientists predict that we are about 40 years away from understanding this technology. Once we do, Plan B may be less risky than doing nothing.
A great discussion on Geoengineering took place a few weeks ago on TVO’s The Agenda. You can watch the episode here.
- Hygeia: A City of Health, 1876
[Hygeia: A City of Health Re-Imagination of the 20th Century by Joshua Arnold, completed under Norman Klein while at SciArc, 2005.]Dr. Benjamin Richardson conceived of a city of health called Hygeia in 1876. Dr Richardson is an M.D., and he calculated a death rate for Hygeia of 8 per 1,000 in the first generation and 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.
- Inverted Infrastructural Monuments, pt. 3
[The Escondida Mine in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Image courtesy NASA GSFC, MITI, ERSDAC, JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.]The nationalization of the Chilean copper mines, originally pioneered in the 1950s, was built around the considerable dependence of the Chilean economy on copper exports–some 60 to 75% of the Chilean GDP comes from copper exports. And this dependence extends beyond its borders, as Chile supplies the world with about one third the global supply. Leading that economic drive is the Escondida Mine–seen above, from above.
The Escondida mine has majority ownership by the (Australian-British-Dutch-owned) BHP Billiton, which is the worlds largest mining company; or, as their tag line bluntly proclaims, "Resourcing the Future." (BHP Billiton requires considerable unpacking, which is filed for later.) They manage mining and processing operations in 25 countries, employing approximately 38,000 people, and their primary by-products are base metals such as copper and lead.
The relationship between Chile, copper, and global trade is evident in this truth: The massive earthquake on February 27, 2010 in Chile delivered economic aftershocks as far as Wall Street, as the cooper prices spiked intensely amid fears of global supply delays. Copper is the second largest consumption item of non-ferrous metals in China. Statistics from China Customs showed that China imported 1.38 million tons of copper and 2.88 million tons of copper ore in 2004. (via people daily)
[The radiating deposit of copper effluent fans out from the Chuquicamata mine. Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.]
[Escondidas terraces, or benches, from open-pit mining.]Located in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the Escondida Mine employs over 5,700 people producing copper, gold, and silver. The massive open-pit mine came on stream in 1990. Current capacity is 127,000 tons/day of ore; 2007 production was at 1.483 million tons of copper worth US$ 10.12 billion. Primary concentration of the ore is done on-site; the concentrate is then sent to the coast for further processing through a 170 km long, 9" pipe. Escondida is related geologically to three porphyry bodies intruded along the Chilean West Fissure Fault System.
Already the largest copper mine in the world, Escondida has recently established plans for expanding (via reuters). Ironically, given its seen-from-space status, Escondida means "hidden."
[Northern mining sites of Chile along the west fissure fault line. Image ©2010 Andina Minerals.]Previously: Inverted Infrastructural Monuments, pt. 2 | Inverted Infrastructural Monuments, pt. 1
Related: Moving House(s) | P3 Post-Peak Phosphorous
