Prompted by an excellent text entitled "Three Doors to Other Worlds" by Andrew Crompton in the JAE from last November, we are following him down the rabbit hole. (Get the complete PDF here.) Crompton positions architecture within the cognitive sciences with a fancy for the grotesque / Baroque. In this particular text Crompton is seeking to chart and qualify architectures that elude description through drawing or photograph, instead requiring something more, err, cognitive. A tall order, and possibly one that were it actually taken to task would be a very short list in architecture, though maybe longer in art and media, and surprisingly engineering. One case in point in Crompton's search is the architectural equivalent of a black hole. It is a bellmouth spillway. In particular Crompton refers to the Ladybower bellmouth constructed in 1935 near Sheffield, UK.

[The spillway at the Monticello Dam, near San Francisco, CA.]

Unable to evaluate whether the bellmouth truly qualifies for its ineffable status having not seen them in person, it is easy to note in photograph the surreal nature by which the weighty mass of water at once appears as a single surface folding in on itself. Or as Crompton writes: It is easy to overlook its obvious purpose and see instead an object of sinister artistry. Simply speaking, the spillway is a massive drain for the reservoir. It prevents water from rising above a certain level and spilling over the dam or lake shoreline. The bellmouth at the Monticello Dam is the largest in the world at a diameter of 87 feet narrowing to 27 feet and can drain off 367,500 US Gallons per second. Gulp.

Spillways serve to regulate reservoir levels and maintain two states; (1) in use they disappear and are minimally obscured by flowing water, (2) not in use they are sculptural oddities hovering ambiguously above the water line. In use the spillway is pure negative space, a void; not in use, they are solid, positive space. Aside from Crompton's observations on the black hole condition, we would add the potential for contradictory phase change to its ineffability. The spillway swallows its own description as it imbibes water through Klein-bottle-like inversions.

[Section of the Morning Glory Spillway of the Val Noci Dam in Montoggio, Italy showing revisions made to the design for increased performance.]

The nomenclature behind the bellmouth spillways further its reading as a massive engineered earthen orifice. The mouth, the throat, the shaft. In refining the engineering behind the bellmouth for the Val Noci Dam in Montoggio, Italy a throttle and air supply was added to accelerate the spillways ability to process extreme flow and turn a 90 degree corner. In other words, to keep the bellmouth from choking on itself in grew a tongue.

[Studies of the flow for the Morning Glory spillway for Val Noci Dam.]

[The massive High Island Reservoir, created in 1978 near Hong Kong on the Sai Kung Peninsula, is serviced by this bellmouth.]

[The steeped edges of the Ladybower bellmouth prevent the surficial reading found in the smooth flow of the bellmouth at Monticello Dam.]

[Peering into the ineffable, the Ladybower bellmouth spillway.]

A recent thesis project at McGill University by Tania Delage takes Lebbeus Woods’ idea of the borderline and the ecological phenomena of the ecotone as an opportunity to cross-breed infrastructure, ecology and public amenities.

The borderline is the site where various systems collide, superimpose, or react to create a new condition. (Woods) These systems can vary greatly in scope; from social conditions to ecological and biological conditions. They may be tied to shifts in economic activity, technological advancements, obsolete or growing infrastructure, and environmental phenomena. Ecotones are the natural spaces where transformation and growth occur, typically at borderline site conditions. It is these sites of superimposed systems that provide the grounds for a new ‘mode of culture.’

[Points of infrastructure and ecology along St. Lawrence Seaway]

At an ecological scale, the site is the Great Lakes basin and Saint-Lawrence River, the largest freshwater system of the world. The watershed is home to many ecological systems and provides important migratory routes for fish that spawn in fresh water only to return to their salt water habitat. Ringed by areas of intense urbanization, the watershed represents a major transportation artery for commercial navigation and provides a source of hydro electric power to the surrounding areas. The waterway also serves as an open sewer to cities along its shore, as it simultaneously supplies their drinking water.

[View of finger-like aerobic filtration gardens, and ringed sedimentaion gardens, which together form natural filtration system for the river water]

The site of intervention is the overflow or deversoir of the Rivière-des-prairies hydro-electric dam, one of the first built in Québec, located between the north shore of Montreal and the south shore of Laval. The overflow is essentially a giant retaining wall that allows for the regulation of water levels. The overflow is adjacent to the nature park – l’Ile de la Visitation. In contrast to the bucolic nature of the area, housing developments upstream discharge the equivalent of one Olympic-sized pool of untreated waste every three days into the river, producing highly polluted sediment in the area.

[1 Aerobic filtration gardens, 2 Sedimentation gardens, 3 Fish ladders, 4 Visitor pathways]

The project reconfigures the dam to become an inhabited filtration system and a public ‘water’ park. Fingers into the river form aerobic filtration gardens, while the concrete rings in plan form sedimentation basins, and support natural habitats for amphibians and waterfowl and re-establish migratory routes of certain fish species.

[Hydro park negotiating variable water levels]

Hydro-electric generation can literally be turned on and off by shutting and opening the watergates, an endeavour lasting merely a few minutes. In times of low energy requirements, such as at night, the watergates are shut, thereby stopping the currents. The two water levels present in the site offer opportunities for a changing landscape, atune to the cyclical hydrological variations. Floating filtering gardens, located on the high water level sway back and forth with the currents produced by the dam to reminding visitors of the inner-workings of the facility itself. At the lower water level, an extension of the nature park is created, allowing visitors to experience the filter housing sequence.

[Visitors walk on pathways, alongside fish ladders which help reestablish migratory routes displaced during the original construction of the dam]

Elements of the landscape become submerged, no longer suitable for human inhabitation but become appropriate for different types of wildlife. Part infrastructure, part landscape, the park becomes a shifting exchange point between water systems, energy resources, human users and animal habitats.

[Inhabiting the Ecotone Hydro park]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many freshly independent Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, were dealt either a strong or poor hand with regard to land resources. Reading in the NYTimes on Sunday, Tajikistan hopes an abundance of water will leverage its lingering economic woes. The Tajiks were dealt few exploitable resources, i.e. oil / gas, but the productive combination of heavy winter precipitation and endless mountains, has produced a healthy abundance water. Throw in global warming, and you have a very full river. Along the Vakhsh River, Tajikistan, the Nurek Dam is an icon of 1960s Soviet infrastructure ingenuity. At 300 m (984 ft), the Nurek is the tallest Dam in the world. The massive reservoir fuels nine hydroelectric turbines producing 3.0 gigwatts, or 40% of Central Asia's power needs and 98% of Tajikistan's.

[Interior of Nurek Dam ... or central control.]

Just up-river from Nurek is another dam project, Rogun, that has been in the works – and then stalled – for over 30 years. Rogun, the Sagrada Familia of dams is expected to reach 335m (1099 ft) when completed. In fact, Tajikistan pins its entire future on its ability to export power to neighboring energy poor countries such as Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Most affected downstream, Uzbekistan is unhappy with the Rogun project as it will disrupt water flow and therefore considerably effect an already fragile agriculture cycle.

[Irrigation infrastructure in Shartuz, where the cotton fields dried up in the early 1990s. Photo by Carolyn Drake for The New York Times.]

[The complex politics of water control in Central Asia. Map by UNEP.]

To compensate for this, the Tajik's sought energy independence through hydropower, which worked well. So well in fact that it is leveraging the exportability of its hydropower success against neighboring water poor states. This has now come back full circle as Tajikistan seeks to have water (hydropower) recognized as a tradable commodity, like the oil and gas it has had to purchase from Uzbekistan.

[A closer look at the politics of damming, runoff, and irrigation in the Ferghana Valley. Map by UNEP.]

Canada, the US and Mexico have signed NAFTA agreements for a series of infrastructural or multi-modal Super-Corridors as part of the slightly ominous-sounding "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP). Supported by a coalition of political and corporate leaders, the intention of the network is to develop, over-time, a European-style Economic Union.

Maps and plans have already been initiated for the first of the super-corridors. Known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, the TTC is a superhighway system, four football-fields-wide, including tollways for passenger vehicles and trucks; lanes for commercial and freight trucks; tracks for commuter rail and high-speed freight rail; depots for all rail lines; pipelines for oil, water, and natural gas; and electrical towers and cabling for communication and telephone lines.

[View of multimodal corridor: dedicated truck lanes, water pipelines to the right, and rail lines far right]

The corridors are tied into a North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN), that are “sites located away from traditional land, air and coastal borders with the vision to facilitate and process international trade through strategic investment in multi-modal transportation infrastructure and by promoting value-added services as goods move through the supply chain."

One of the striking features of the proposed Super Highway and the Inland Port network is the proposed shift in borders. In the service of efficiency, trucks entering the US from Canada or Mexico would not be vetted at the border, but at an inland port hub. A joint U.S.-Mexico Customs facility called SmartPort is already under construction in Kansas City, Missouri, allowing Mexican trucks to enter the US on FAST lanes and be scanned by SENTRI technology, only officially crossing the border in Kansas.

In a nation obsessed with border security, the proposal raises interesting questions regarding control and access to these super-corridors. Politicians in the US are up-in arms, arguing that the corridor is a threat to security and national sovereignty, bringing in illegal goods and immigrants. One imagines an Orwellian system of surveillance, and electronic checks and balances behind the scenes.

Environmentalist, meanwhile, are sounding alarms, over the environmental impact of the corridors: the potential of a smog-filled highway, contaminating air and water and displacing ecosystems. Even more concerning is the presence of the water pipelines, which imply water is a commodity under NAFTA, rather than an essential need and public trust. There is ongoing political debate, in water-rich nations such as Canada, on limiting or extending bulk export of national water and its implications both on sovereignty, and regional ecologies.

The network reminds one of the radical urbanism of the 1960's. Superstudio's Continuous Monument, a gridded superstructure that would wrap around the world, eventually, covering the entire surface of the planet, leaving a physically and culturally frictionless suburban matrix. In this case, the supercorridors would shuttle goods, oil, gas, electricity, and people, in a futuristic hyper-network.

[Superstudio\'s Continuous Monument, a commentary on the rampant spread of globalization.]

Watch for a Corridor coming to a neighborhood near you….

With a nod to Pruned's post.

A new project in Boscombe (near Bournemouth, UK) proposes an artificial wave-breaking ridge located about 210 meters from shore. Not exactly a surfer's paradise yet, Boscombe hopes to raise its profile with the new £2.7million surf reef. Sculpting the seabed, the ridge will be made of two layers of geotextile bags, a total of 55 bags of various diameters and lengths, covering an area the size of – since it is England – a football pitch. The bags will be anchored to a geotextile mat on the seabed.

Once the bags are in position on the seabed, they will be pumped with sand, bringing their weight up to 2500 tons and heights of up to 2m.

[surf reef simulation, complete with AIR]

The large ridge is estimated to make break waves of up to 13ft (4m). It simultaneously serves as an artificial reef for local marine life. The project is designed by Dr. Kerry Black, aka the Surfing Futurist. Dr. Black is an oceanographer that has pioneered the artificial surf reef into a triple whammy of coastal erosion protection, surfer's dream, and marine life reef.

[Dr. Kerry Black asks: How does complex bathymetry affect wave shoaling and breaker characteristics?]

[The configuration of large-scale reef components at Bingin, Bali, Indonesia from ASR Ltd.]

New images and a video of the High Line in New York has prompted a ricochet of references of examples of biologically domesticated infrastructures.

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There is the promenade plantée. Designed by Jacques Vergely (landscape architect) and Philippe Mathieux (architect), the promenade is a 2.8 mile elevated park in Paris’ 12^th arrondissement that extends from Opera Bastille to the eastern city limits. It reinhabits a 19^th century railway viaduct abandoned since 1969.

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[Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago]

Which can be extended to regional sized versions of domesticating dormant infrastructure. Commonly called railbanking.

Railbanking (as defined by the National Trails System Act) is a voluntary agreement between a railroad company and a trail agency to use an out-of-service rail corridor as a trail until some railroad might need the corridor again for rail service. Because a railbanked corridor is not considered abandoned, it can be sold, leased or donated to a trail manager without reverting to adjacent landowners. The railbanking provisions of the National Trails System Act as adopted by Congress in 1983 have preserved 4,431 miles of rail corridors in 33 states that would otherwise have been abandoned.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) dropped 400,000 HDPE recyclable black plastic balls into Ivanhoe Reservoir. The DWP drop was designed to stop sunlight from mixing with the bromide and chlorine in the 10-acre, 58-million-gallon Ivanhoe Reservoir. The 102-year-old facility serves about 600,000 customers downtown and in South Los Angeles.

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Uzbekistan, a land-locked country that was once part of the Soviet Union, is home to one of the biggest man-made disasters in history. For decades its rivers were diverted to grow cotton on arid land, causing the Aral Sea, a large saltwater lake, to lose more than half of its surface area in 40 years.

[The draining of the Aral Sea. via Earth Observatory]