Juergen Bergbauer's series Jardin a la francaise oscillates between a masked-cropped photo and a model-space future nostalgia. Bergbauer speculates that this is how André Le Nôtre might represent designs for castle gardens or elaborate hedgework – as 3d-modeled perspectival figures on a beige canvas – were he at work today. Each image operates from an ideal height (of roughly 3.5 meters) as though ready for pan, tilt, rotation, and zoom. Landscape fabrication, scripting, and the modeling of environments somehow seem increasingly less distinct, or new for that matter.

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) (Detail) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (orangerie II) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

[Juergen Bergbauer, untitled (broderie I) 100 cm x 110 cm (40” x 43”) lambdaprint on aluminium / diasec face matt, 2004.]

Juergen, might we suggest Longleat next?

related: see Habitat Interlocks

This past October 25, 2008, The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design hosted a symposium organized and curated by Prof. Pierre Bélanger, recently swiped up by appointed by Harvard GSD, titled Landscape Infrastructures. Bélanger rightly marks our time as witness to a unique convergence of infrastructure and landscape. The urgency and opportunities of this embrace engineering of landscapes.

[Screen grabs from the DVD. George Baird (top left), Stan Allen (top right and bottom left, Jane Wolff (bottom right).]

Guest speakers included:
Stan Allen, Princeton University / George Baird, University of Toronto / Pierre Bélanger, University of Toronto / Julia Czerniak, Syracuse University / Herbert Dreiseitl, Atelier Dreiseitl / Kristina Hill, University of Virginia / Michael Jakob, Université de Genève / Nina-Marie Lister, Ryerson University / Kate Orff, Columbia University, SCAPE / Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

The proceedings of the symposium is now available in DVD format. Contact Pierre at belanger[at]harvard[dot]edu if you would like additional information.

[Mobility conduit, or landscape infrastructure par exellence.]

The optimism surrounding the potential of electric vehicles to mitigate resource extraction does overlook a few key factors that extend beyond the obvious economic and cultural hurdles. One interesting factor is resources needed; Yes, resources for electric and hybrid vehicles. Such as the need for massive amounts of lithium carbonate. Lithium is the mineral of choice for batteries, and is found in most laptops and mobile phones. It is central to the next generation of hybrid and electric cars and this success will depend upon 5 times the current estimates of lithium worldwide to support the emerging industry.

[Salt mounds harvested, after a night of rain. photo by flickr/kuzquiano.]

Many are turning to Bolivia for clues. With over half of the world's (untapped) lithium reserves found in Bolivia, in the the Uyuni salt plain, the attention is obvious. Uyuni is the largest salt playa in the world, covering nearly 9,000 square kilometers. The salar playas are believed to have been a closed basin for the last 10000 years. Receiving about 300mm/year of rainfall has created a repeated wet/dry cycle and a thick but smooth evaporite of mostly halite.  Besides its fascinating geomorphological history, the Uyuni is also simply a stunning endless mirror landscape of surficial saline waters.

[A $6 million pilot plant for extracting lithium from the salt flats of Uyuni, in the town of Rio Grande, Bolivia. Noah Friedman Rudovsky/AP.]

Recently, the southern Uyuni has been found to contain major lithium deposits, originating from the drainage area of the Rio Grande de Lipez. And with this discoverey comes attention from major companies and developers, such as Mitsubishi, to mine this landscape. Currently Bolivia depends predominantly upon the export of natural gas for economic viability. Pressure to determine the future of this landscape is mounting with economic and environmental concerns complex and contradictory…

related:
Sea Dust, pt 1
Sea Dust, pt 2

Having recently endured a power outage during one of the coldest days of the year in a country that begins above the 45th parallel, we are bluntly reminded of the power of (electrical) power. There continues to be increased, and just, pressure to modernize our aging electrical network from "the grid," as it is known, into a smart grid or a super grid. How synchronous then that we read with great interest on Alexis Madrigal's site about how the US Department of Energy has now designated the century-old electrical power grid an "ecosystem."

[Latitude 41.42685 Longitude -71.70365 by Brian Rosa.]

Here the ecosystem refers to the hardware itself, as a sprawling tentacular pulsating machine. Or as they write in the Smart Grid brochure:

Our century-old power grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth, so massively complex and inextricably linked to human involvement and endeavor that it has alternately (and appropriately) been called an ecosystem. It consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines. … Today’s electricity system is 99.97 percent reliable, yet still allows for power outages and interruptions that cost Americans at least $150 billion each year — about $500 for every man, woman and child.

But somehow we prefer to think of the grid not necessarily as an ecosystem so much as demarcating one. That the networked powerlines and associated towers and tunnels mark a territory. And that territory, deemed undesirable for human development, instead inscribes an interconnected ecosystem habitat highway. The only true wild remaining in US runs parallel and under this network.

[Adam Ryder and Brian Rosa's On The Grid, which is of their Powerlines Project.]

Adam Ryder and Brian Rosa's On the Grid, currently at the Stairwell Gallery in Providence, RI, seems to capture this version of the ecosystem better. Their photographs follow the high-tensioned electrical lines in Rhode Island, starting near Ocean State Park Power facility in Burrillville. The network, typical in many ways, is full of rusty trucks, loading docks, horses, birds, bugs, and other marginilized urbanisms and nature. As development pushes from either side of these electrical corridors, animals and insects flock to this zone as it becomes a reliable no-man's land of occupation, and kind of everyday demilitarized zone between competing developments.

[Latitude: 42.01354 Longitude: -71.66617 and Half-Mile Radius by Adam Ryder.]

Or as they write:

The path of the power lines functions as a rural to urban transect, cutting through farmland and commercial parks, cul-de-sacs and strip malls, used car lots and interstate highways.

[Latitude 41.93919 Longitude -71.39578 by Brian Rosa.]

And further still on the kind of landscapes that emerge around power lines:

… the realm of power lines seems to exist not only outside of regulation, but also outside of the normative properties of the native landscape. Whereas an area half of a mile away from a high tension line may be densely wooded, the space occupied by the wires will be clear-cut, devoid of trees and exhibiting, at most, low shrubbery and grass. The uniformity of this narrow swath as it cuts through the landscape reveals as much about its own spatial utility as it does of the landscape it bifurcates across the state (and beyond).

On the Grid runs from Jan 10 – ? at the Stiarwell Gallery in Providence, RI.

And a related radio segment is here.

Chasing down one of the designers of the Peak 2 Peak gondola linkage for Whistler, we stumbled upon Ecosign. They have certainly carved a niche in ski resort planning, or what they call "mountain design." Obviously a misnomer, mountain design sounds inverse to what actually takes place in their design process. Through a rigorous analysis of sun angles, prevailing winds, and topography they arrive at some kind of idealized clearings for the pleasure of downhill maneuvering, the mountain proper remains untouched.

[Ecosign: mountain design for Luosta, Finland.]

These guys are the double-diamond of the industry. They have designed "350 resort development projects in over 32 countries spanning 6 continents as well as the design of 4 Winter Olympic Games and several World Alpine Championships venues." They have been mogul-making since 1975.

[Ecosign: runs for Sierra Nevada, Spain.]

The possibilities for bifurcating runs and slopes is a little underexplored in their 30+ year history. What is needed in an exercise like this? And what should it address? The networks of routes mark the speed of mountains, and are then ranked according to difficulty. In addition, routes expand and contract according to popularity or some pachinko logic of converging skiers. There is room for rethinking the simplified independence of a skiers energy and a chairlift, or the organicist criss-crossing routes relationship to difficulty ratings. Like a net cast over a peak, the infrastructures supporting this sport have a Benton MacKaye logic of geotechnics using ridge lines, transects, and cross grain topos.

[Ecosign: Sun Valley, Idaho.]

[The continuous interior of data centers is a palace to the monolithic slabs of data storage.]

In an increasingly ubi-comp environment, massive data centers processing or storing data continue to sprout up in contexts and sites of economic and geographic convenience. In a post-Silicone-valley glow, many sites are happy to promote their contexts as ideal for these data centers. Iceland promotes itself as just such a site.

[Brochure pitching Iceland as the ideal environment for massive data centers.]

With clean water, stable power and cool air as an ideal location, Iceland is lobbying for the search engines and IT firms to come into the cold. The most alluring project within this agenda is Data Islandia. Data Islandia is a storage company based in Iceland that has tabled a green data center (link via Drunken Data) in the town of Sandgerdi in southwest Iceland. The facility will be built near a former US Naval Air Station, and will use natural wind cooling to reduce energy usage. And I am sure that abundant geothermal is figuring into the convenience to boot. The landform references Icelandic turf farms and makes extensive use of the landscape.

[The rolling hills of a proposed server farm in Iceland from Data Islandia designed by architect Robert Örn Arnarson.]

The Sandgerdi data centre will have a moss roof. Putting plants on the roof doesn't just drop a building into the landscape, it can absorb excess water, protect the materials of the roof from the sun, and increase the diversity of flora and fauna. The 4,000 m2 digital data archive is designed by Danish architect Robert Örn Arnarson.

[IBM\'s Project Big Green.]

IBM’s Project Big Green is another green data center proposal responding to the economic (and environmental) inefficiency. Today, roughly 50 cents is spent on energy for every dollar of computer hardware. And this is only expected to increase.

[Strangely religious overtones from the imagery package for IBM\'s Project Green.]

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

08_07_03_railbanking01

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.

08_07_03_railbanking02

[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.

Mr. Benner, 78, a retired professor of ornamental horticulture, is also a longtime practitioner and advocate of what he calls "the moss approach" to lawn maintenance. "Every time I give a lecture, I go into this spiel: get rid of your grass, and grow moss," he said. "And now it’s finally gaining momentum."

According to one estimate, 40 million acres of land is devoted to turfgrass in the United States with nearly 75 percent in home lawns and more than 30 billion dollars spent on annual lawn maintenance.