Dive into the archives.
- HYDROCity Full Events Schedule
[HYDROCity is part of the Alphabet City WATER Festival. All events are free and open to the public.]
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 [...]
- Inverted Infrastructural Monuments, pt.2
[Lake Berryessa, the Monticello Dam, and the largest drain, or spillway, in the world.]
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 [...]
- Student Works: Ecotone Hydro Park
[Hydro park adds a public park, animal habitats and water treatment to an existing dam ]
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 [...]
- Strategies Against Desertification
[Installation view at the LWR Gallery, University of Toronto. Photo by John Howarth.]
Colleagues of ours, Aziza Chaouni and Liat Margolis, recently mounted a fantastic exhibition here at the Daniels Faulty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. The exhibition is titled Out of Water: Innovative Technologies in Arid Climates. It is a survey of technologies and proposals [...]
- Dam Politics in the ‘Stans
[The Nurek Dam in Tajikistan forms this massive 10.5 km³ reservoir. Photo by Carolyn Drake for The New York Times.]
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 [...]
- Dead Zones
[Over 400 dead zones dot the globe (see black dots above). There seems to be a bit of a graveyard forming in the Eastern US and Northern Europe...]
An interesting article in Science chronicles the ever rising numbers of dead zones. Dead zones are oxygenless waters as a result of activities such as riverine runoff of [...]
- Aquacultural Hubs
[Cabling network system of the Kona Blue aquaculture Sea Station.]
Resembling something out of the portfolios of Frei Otto or Cedric Price, the Kona Blue Sea Stations off the coast of Hawaii are open sea offshore 3,000-cubic-meter submersible fish pens.
Kona Blue’s premiere achievement is Kona Kampachi®, a premium sushi-grade Hawaiian yellowtail species.
Currently, four open ocean aquaculture [...]
- Farming the Desert
[In Toshka farm,near Egypts border with Sudan, the Egyptian goverment hopes to grow 2 million acres of wheat, alongside fruits such as the grape fields as above.]
As recently chronicled in the NY Times, Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a dilemma: grow more crops to feed expanding population or [...]
- Vortices, Heaps, and Enzymes
[The streets of Naples have been inundated with garbage since last summer.]
Or, Three States of Waste…
We have been following the Naples “trash crisis” for almost a year now. Unbeknownst to us, as of a few days ago, the problem has apparently been declared “resolved” by Berlusconi.
It began more than 14 years ago, but flared up [...]
- Breaking Waves
[Boscombe Surf Reef in Bournemouth, UK]
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 [...]
