Probably no other country is considering such a significant (and potentially devastating) geo-engineering project as Iceland. With the entire country volcanically and geologically active, Icelanders are the most likely to achieve the world's first hydrogen society.

We will be in Reykjavik in two weeks time, and before that in Oslo, Norway, and Murmansk, Russia. Please hunt us down if you are located in any of these places and we would love to go out for Hakar or fårikål.

We can be reached at: editors (at) infranetlab (dot) org.

[Fissure swarms.]

[A tectonic fissure.]

A new issue of AD was recently published titled ENERGIES: New Material Boundaries, edited by Sean Lally of WEATHERS. This edition focuses on the rich, yet overlooked, territory of design that foregrounds the effects of material energies on boundaries of environments. Boundaries are taken to mean atmospheric thresholds that are the result of material decisions. This refers to the transition in air quality, illumination, temperature, olfactory concentrations, acoustics, among others, that permeates interior environments. Serving as an upgrading of Banham's Well-Tempered Environment, ENERGIES consists of essays and projects that position the design of these often nearly invisible yet sensed conditions at the center of a contemporary debate between sustainability and atmospherics.

[Weathers' proposal for the Estonian Academy of Arts leverages six Artificial Climatic Lungs to serve as thermal collectors throughout the building.]

[Philippe Rahm's Interior Gulf Stream is a project that identifies program and occupation through temperature. Two horizontal planes are conditioned to temperatures of 22°C and 15°C.]

With so many technologies developed that are at the service of modulating our interior environments, it is little wonder that designers have marginalized their role to a perfunctory performance-based criteria – a "best practices" model. Or as Lally writes in his introduction:

… [W]hen it comes to one of the most prevalent and ubiquitous materials to influence architecture and its adjacent disciplines in the last thirty years – energy – we’ve made only stunted attempts to explore its design possibilities.

[An Te Liu's Cloud installation includes air purifiers, ionizers, sterilizers, washers, humidifiers, and ozone air cleaners all running continuously.]

Sean and An Te Liu had invited me to write a text on Liu's recent work embodied by the climate-controlling megastructure "Cloud" found in the 2008 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The idea of boundaries in Liu's work is about invisibility. It explores the boundary of clean air from dirty, and varying degrees of processed air, and the psychological effects of that invisibility.

I recommend picking up a copy of the issue if you are interested in topics of modified environments, atmospherics, and the future of interior environments. Texts by Penelope Dean on green-washing and Michelle Addington on the illusive hermetic seal of building envelope round out a fantastic and thorough issue.

We read with great interest of the project by James Tait at the University of Strathclyde and his award-winning proposal for a seaweed farm in the northwest coastal villages of Scotland. His project is titled "Time and Tide for Seaweed," and posits seaweed cultivation as an economic and social catalyst, while capitalizing on cyclical vegetal processing methods.

[Diagram of a seaweed industry as the generator for a trade and transport network connecting remote areas within the North West Highlands.]

[Key points in the new trade and transportation network.]

As James Tait writes in his project description:

From fuel production and fertiliser to cosmetics and foodstuffs seaweeds’ versatility makes it a lucrative natural resource. Scotland’s shores host around 20% of the total seaweed biomass in Europe and nearly half of this can be found in the North West coast.

A thriving seaweed industry would revitalise and reinvigorate the area, reconnecting it with its vast coastline, repopulating and diversifying the social mix of its towns and villages while providing much needed opportunities for its young people.

[Aerial Perspective of the cultivation farm and its related programs, at Arisaig.]

[Detailed analysis of seaweed farm incorporating boat stations and seaweed cultivation rafts.]

The architectural proposal will consist of: an offshore cultivation farm, farmers’ bothy, floating restaurant and pier, seaweed baths, and drying tower.

The seaweed farm complex at Arisaig requires little energy to transform the raw material into a product, the farmers boats will be powered by biodiesel made from unused seaweed, while the cultivation process aids biodiversity by providing nutrients for fish and other marine life.

A policy of energy re-use is also employed in the cultivation rafts where LEDs absorb and store daylight during the day and emit it at night while the drying tower base is home to a series of steam baths which use the energy created during the seaweed drying process.

[Detailed analysis of public seaweed baths and drying tower complex using steam to provide the energy needed for both functions.]

[Detailed analysis of floating seaweed restaurant and its relationship to its surrounding landscape and parasitical nature of the base resource.]

[Sunset view of new floating sea vegetable cafe, surrounded by the farm rafts which serve it.]

[Phenomenology and industry combine to produce a magical nightime affect across the bay, as the cultivation raft poles glow at night.]

[Seaweed baths and drying tower glows like a lighthouse across the bay.]

Found via Bustler

The idea of a tidal fence / barrage has been kicking around for almost 100 years as a means for flood control, transport, and potentially tidal power. The last 20 years years has seen an increase interest in tidal energy harvesting, though many countries, such as Canada, have completely sworn it off. One site that has had proposals floating around since the beginning is the Severn estuary.

[Plan of entire Severn dam. Sluices in green, turbines in red.]

A £15bn dam, spanning the estuary from Lavernock Point near Cardiff, to Brean Down, near Weston-super-Mare called the Severn Tidal Fence has been proposed. It is estimated to provide 5% of the UK's renewable energy needs. It is a continuous line of underwater tidal current turbines, which would force water flow through them, and would be around 9km long, in three 3km sections, passing near to the Bristol channel's two islands.

The fence would have a capacity of 1.3GW – slightly more than Sizewell B nuclear power station – and provide around 1% of the country's electricity supply.

Two other projects announced in the last year also capitalize on giant tidal harvesting turbines:

[The Wando Hoenggan Water Way turvines are each 11.5m in diameter.]

[SeaGen in Strangford Lough]

Many have viewed "carbon sequestration" — taking the CO2 produced by burning coal and burying it underground — as a major component of combating climate change. However, there are many questions about the plan — most notably, just where a major emitter like the US could find a safe place to stash gigatons of carbon dioxide safely over hundreds of years.

The answer, say Columbia researchers, lies in huge reservoirs of basalt off the coast of the Pacific northwest. That basalt is buried underneath hundreds of feet of sediment, and that in turn lies thousands of feet below the ocean's surface.

The basalt, located on the San Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, could store about 150 years' worth of the United States' yearly load of 1.7 gigatons of emissions.

from Wired Blog