The 2011 Phyllis Lambert Seminar, organized by Alessandra Ponte, is centered on the theme of the North. It is titled “New Northern Cartographies” and we are honored to be among the architects, artists, film-makers, geographers, and climatologists included in what will be a fascinating two days. Ponte positioned the North relative to geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin who identified that there are “many Norths in this North.” She goes on to describe the context of the seminar to acknowledge an intensity of interest today in the North that parallels that of the 1960s and 1970s. Ponte writes: “During the last two decades, the end of the Cold War and subsequent realignment of the balance of powers, together with massive climate changes, have in fact redefined, once again, the map of the Arctic region and rekindled a passionate interest in the North.”

Should you be in or near Montreal this weekend, here is the schedule:

Friday, February 25, 2011
Opening Remarks: Anne Cormier, Directrice, École d’architecture, Université de Montréal Introduction: Alessandra Ponte
First Session, 10:20 – 13:00
Respondents: Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, Université de Montréal
Peter Fianu, architecte, atelier braq, Montréal
Lateral Office/InfraNet Lab (Lola Sheppard, Mason White, Toronto, Prix de Rome 2010): Next North: Infrastructures for a Shifting Landscape. [10:20 – 11:00]
Caroline Desbiens (Chaire de recherche du Canada en géographie historique du Nord, Université Laval, Québec): Nordicité et culture de l’hydroélectricité au Québec: science, paysage, tourisme. [11:00 – 11:40]
Marie-Hélène Cousineau (cinéaste, isuma.tv, Montréal): Montre-moi sur la carte : cartographie virtuelle sur isuma.tv, portails des réalités autochtones contemporaines. [11:40 – 12:20]

Second Session, 14:30 – 17:00
Respondents: Denis Bilodeau, Université de Montréal
Kelly Crossman, Carleton University, Ottawa
Arctic Perspective Initiative (Matthew Biederman, Montréal): An Open Sourced North. [10:00 – 10:40]
Territorial Agency (John Palmesino, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Architectural Association School of Architecture, London): North: Escalation. [15:10 – 15:50]
70°N arkitektur (Gisle Løkken / Magdalena Haggärde, Tromsø, Norway): Impacts of Global Pressure on Vulnerable Landscapes and Societies: Planning for Unknown Futures in Maniitsoq, Greenland. [15:50 – 16:30]

Saturday February 26, 2011
Third Session, 10:00 – 12:40
Respondents: Patrick Evans, UQAM, Montréal
Stephan Kowal, Université de Montréal
Charles Stankievech (artist, Yukon School of Visual Arts, Dawson City): Under The Rainbow: Outpost Architecture + Electromagnetic Infrastructure in the Arctic. [14:30 – 15:10]
Future Cities Lab (Jason Kelly Johnson, San Francisco): The Aurora Project and other Dynamic Cartographies. [10:40 – 11:20]
Kelly Nelson Doran (regionalArchitects, Toronto, Prix de Rome 2009): Repositioning the Remote. [11:20 – 12:00]

Thanks to those that came out to Storefront for Art and Architecture on a chilly Friday in late January to celebrate the publication of Pamphlet Architecture #30: COUPLING and to hear provocative / entertaining manifestos as delivered by some of the brightest minds we know. This was part of the series called MANIFESTO and the theme was Infrastructural Opportunism, which came out of Pamphlet subtitle. Through collaboration with Storefront, we asked each participant to include 10 images and 10 (concise) manifesto points on the challenges and opportunities facing infrastructure in the 21st century. This led to a 100-point collective  manifesto. Our dream team list included:

MIMI ZEIGER on manifestos  // INTERBORO on exclusion  //  DIANA BALMORI on realignments  //  PLANETARY ONE on stripping down  //  LYDIA KALLIPOLITI on remedies  //  ANDREW BLUM on tubes  //  JOYCE HWANG on interventions  //  MAMMOTH on expanding fields  //  JANETTE KIM on highjacking  // and we put our money where our mouth is too … INFRANET LAB on contingency

[Joyce Hwang on interventions, with images of work by Sergio López-Piñeiro.]

[mammoth on expanding fields, gave a fictional account of an infrastructural meta-narrative.]

Mimi has already published her Infra-Opp manifesto, so we thought we would follow suit with ours. After all, what is an un-disseminated manifesto?

1. Know That There is a System of Systems

Arthur Jensen, played by Ned Beatty, in the 1976 film Network said: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it, is that clear?! You think you have merely stopped a business deal — that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians. There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!, Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!

2. Architects as Expert Generalists

Buckminster Fuller, labeled a dilettante and a dabbler in his age, was instead the forerunner of a new breed of designer / thinker that we like to call the expert generalist. Long live the new expert generalists!

3. Be Alert to What Has Just Happened; Be Entrepreneurial.

[photo by Shiho Fukada for The New York Times.]

After a multi-day traffic jam in Hetaocun, China, Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times wrote: Stranded drivers chain-smoked, stomped their feet against the chill and cursed the government for failing to come to their rescue. As the night wore on, fuel lines froze and cellphone batteries died. The residents of Hetaocun, however, saw the unmoving necklace of taillights from their mountain village and got entrepreneurial. They roused children from their beds, loaded boxes of instant noodles into baskets and began hawking their staples to a captive clientele. The 500 percent markup did not appear to dent sales.

4. There is Always Missing Information, Use it.

Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous 2002 speech yielded a term that now has its own Wikipedia entry: unknown unknowns. He said: [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

5. Agile Maneuverability Rewrites Protocols

[from There Will be Blood!]

Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2007 film There Will be Blood says: Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake… I… drink… your… milkshake!

6. Software Can be Big and Physical, Like Hardware

The Medusa Bag was conceived in 1988 to meet the anticipated requirement for large scale water imports to California as well as to Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Others at the time were looking into tanker conversions and pipelines, but no practical economic embodiment of these ideas was found. The bags size and shape have been optimized and the first prototype bag will be built using industrial polyester fabric and special straps. A bag containing 0.5 gigaliters of water would be 465 meters long and 110 meters wide, while a 1.5 gigaliter bag would be 670 meters long and 160 meters wide.

7. Be Resourceful

Thilafushi Island in the Maldives has grown at the rate of a square metre a day, as more and more rubbish is dumped here. Mountains of rubbish – plastic, metal tins and rusty oil barrels – extend as far as the eye can see. Unlike the adjacent resort islands, the only visitors here are the Bangladeshi workers who wade through the sludge and brave the stench to burn the tonnes of refuse that arrive at the island every day. Spotting the potential to generate revenue from the mushrooming island, the government decided to lease part of it for industrial purposes. Additional terrain was created using white sand and now giant cement cones, oil drums and the skeletons of future boats can be seen dotted around. Metal compactors compress junk into blocks for sale to India. Each tonne sells for US$175. The island has grown to such proportions that it now has a café, a restaurant, two mosques, a barbershop, a clinic, a police station and rather unexpectedly, a makeshift zoo.

8. Measurements Can be Misleading, But Oh So Fruitful

[Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, published in 2000.]

Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a book about a book about a movie about a house. A series of surveying measurements initially reveal that the house is larger on the inside than on the outside. The discrepancy is less than an inch, but is a sign of things to come. One day a small, closet-sized room appears in the home, although the outside dimensions remain unchanged.

9. Scalar Indifference

A thermokarst lake, also called a thaw lake, refers to a body of freshwater, usually shallow, that is formed in a depression by meltwater from thawing permafrost. This landscape operates by scalar indifference as pools appear and disappear under freeze and thaw.

10. Live By Strategy, Play by Tactic

The Russian chessplayer Savielly Tartakower said: Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do, strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.

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.]

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC-SB is presenting a series of fantastic events this year on the theme Oil+Water. With this event they turn to their own backyard: the case of Southern California. Oil + Water commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Santa Barbara oil spill, and provides an opportunity to examine the impact of these two resources on the history, economy, and culture of California and the world. Interested parties should contact our program and events coordinator, Laura Devendorf (ldevendorf[at]ihc.ucsb.edu), for more information. Below is a schedule of events and activities for the conference.

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Oil + Water: The Case of Santa Barbara and Southern California
April 8 – 10, 2010
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
UC Santa Barbara / Santa Barbara, CA, USA

This conference will explore the ways in which oil and water have created and transformed the history and culture of Santa Barbara and Southern California. Topics will include the Santa Barbara oil spill; the impact of oil on Hollywood; agriculture and marine life; the Owens River Valley; the Salton Sea; cars and car culture; and environmental histories and their lessons.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Oil + Water series, the UC California Studies Consortium, and the Community Environmental Council.

Thursday, April 8
5:00 PM KEYNOTE: Oil Runs Through It: Power, Publics, and the Role of Place
Harvey Molotch (Social & Cultural Analysis, NYU)

Friday, April 9
9:00 AM Introduction
Ann Bermingham (Acting Director, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB)

9:15 AM PANEL: Oil, Water, and Activism: The Case of Santa Barbara
Teresa Sabol Spezio (History, UCD) / Most Congressmen Care Little: The Role of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in Changing Federal Environmental Laws
Eric Smith (Political Science, UCSB) / What the California Public Thinks About Off Shore Oil Development
Linda Krop (Chief Council, Environmental Defense Center and Environmental Studies, UCSB) / The Environmental Politics of Off Shore Drilling

11:00 AM KEYNOTE: Whales, Noisemakers, and Noise
Jim Nollman

1:30 PM PANEL: Oil+Water: the Case of Southern California
David Maisel / The Lake Project
Mason White & Lola Sheppard / Farming the Salton Sea
Andrew Fitzpatrick / Ocotillo Wells: California Oil History Encapsulated
Kenneth Rogers, Caleb Waldrof and Bill Kelley, Jr. (Third Rail Group, UCSD) / Slow Activism, Dialogical Practice and Environmental Remediation at the Inglewood Oil Fields

3:00 PM KEYNOTE: After Oil!: Petroleum, Media, and the California Experiment
Stephanie LeMenager (English, UCSB)

4:00 PM PANEL: The Culture of Oil
Vanessa Osborne (English, USC) / Celluloid and Oil: Early Hollywood and the Oil Industry in Upton Sinclair’s Oil!
Jean-Paul deGuzman (History, UCLA) / At the Car Wash! Culture and Labor in the City of Angles
Desiree D’Alessandro and Diran Lyons (Art, UCSB) / World Water Shortage vs Golf Consumption and Jake Gyllenhaal Challenges the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Saturday, April 10
9:15 AM ROUNDTABLE: Oil and Water in the Santa Barbara County Agrifood System
David A. Cleveland (Environmental Studies, UCSB)
With: Ingrid R. Avison, Caitlin Brimm, Heidi Diaz, Sydney E. Hollingshead, Dominique C. Liuzzi, Nora M. Muller, Corie N. Radka, Tyler D. Watson, Hannah Wright.

10:45 AM KEYNOTE: Near Goleta But Closer: An Unnatural History
Harry Reese (Art, UCSB)

1:30 PM PANEL: Histories of an Unnatural History
Karen Piper (Comparative Literature, Carnegie Mellon University) / Owens Lake: California’s Albatross
Eliza Martin (History, UCSC) / Making Rain, Creating Floods: Expertise and the Manufacturing of Disaster in San Diego’s Flood of 1916
David Zetland, (Agriculture and Resource Economics, UCB) / Joseph Jensen and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Michael R. Adamson (History, CSU Sacramento) / Oil Booms and Boosterism: Local Elites, Outside Companies, and the Growth of Ventura California

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Hope to see some of you there.

31 October – 6 November
ALPHABET CITY FESTIVAL 2009 : WATER
presents
HYDROCity

HYDROCity explores the relationship between cities and water, presenting visionary leaders and design projects from around the world. Water shortages are changing patterns of urbanization and requiring increasingly elaborate infrastructures by which to source and transport water to urban centers, which in turn need to be redesigned and retrofitted to conserve, collect, repurify, and recirculate water resources. HYDROCity asks: What forms of urbanism and landscape systems will emerge, and what design potentials exist, in this expanding liquid infrastructure?

All of the HYDROCity events are free and open to the public. HYDROCity was made possible through the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ottawa, and was developed in partnership with InfraNet Lab.

Monday 2 November
5:30 pm
HYDROCity Panel : Water, Cities, Disaster
Arbour Room, Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle
First 25 to arrive receive a free copy of Alphabet City’s Water anthology
Panel sponsored by The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company
Panelists George L. Cooke (President and CEO, The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co.), Prof. Robert Kirkbride (Parsons The New School for Design, NYC), Paul Kovacs (Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction), and Tracy Metz (Dutch Delta Commission on Water Safety; visiting fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design) discuss a future in which global warming drives catastrophic changes in hydrology even as cities face massive infrastructure investment deficits.

Tuesday 3 November
1:00 pm
The Building of “Waterpleinen/Watersquare”: Jeroen Bodewits
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
Room 106, 230 College Street
Created for the City of Rotterdam, Watersquare responds to the increasingly violent rainstorms that will be driven by global warming by seeking to catch rain and thereby create playful public features while preserving the water quality in the canals. Watersquare was designed by Marco Vermeulen and Florian Boer and constructed by Jeroen Bodewits. Model on exhibition at Daniels through 13 November.

Thursday 5 November
6:00 pm
HYDROCity Exhibition Opening
Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West (at Lansdowne)
Curated by Anneke Abhelakh, Chris Hardwicke, Ghazal Jafari, Sara Kamalvand, John Knechtel, Mason White
Exhibition runs to 5 January 2010
Exhibition presented, in part, through the support of RBC Blue Water Project™
Opening party sponsored by Netherlands Consulate General, Toronto

Friday 6 November
9:00 am – 1:00 pm & 2:00 – 6:00 pm
HYDROCity Symposium on Hydrology and Urbanism
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
Room 103, 230 College Street

Symposium presented, in part, through the generous support of Cities Centre, University of Toronto. Alphabet City gratefully acknowledges the partnership of University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Participants: Anneke Abhelakh (independent curator), Alan Berger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Aziza Chaouni (University of Toronto), Jandirk Hoekstra (H+N+S Landscape Architects, Utrecht), Michael Hough (York University), Nina-Marie Lister (Ryerson University), Liat Margolis (University of Toronto), Koen Olthuis (Waterstudio.NL, Rotterdam), Katherine Rinne (California College of the Arts), Catherine Seavitt (Catherine Seavitt Studio, New York), Kelly Shannon (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Richard M. Sommer (University of Toronto), David Waggonner (Waggonner & Ball Architects, New Orleans), Mason White (University of Toronto), Jane Wolff (University of Toronto), Robert Wright (University of Toronto).

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WATER festival presented through the support of: Mondriaan Foundation; MIT Press; Canada Council for the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ottawa; Cities Centre, University of Toronto; RBC Blue Water Project™; Netherlands Consulate General, Toronto; Drake Hotel; Warren’s Waterless Printing; Cascades; CLARITY; Opera in Concert; The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company; The City of Rotterdam; Circuit Gallery; Toronto Free Gallery; TYPE Books; Hart House.