Calamity Library of Alternate Realities Winka Dubbeldam & Richard Garber
Calamity Library of Alternate Realities Winka Dubbeldam & Richard Garber ARCH 704 - 201| Spring 2021 Winka Dubbeldam Ella Warren Shafer Miller Professor Chair of Architecture with Richard Garber, AIA assisted by Ryan Barnette Department of Architecture Stuart Weitzman School of Design University of Pennsylvania
Assembled by Alexander Jackson
Table of Contents PREAMBLE Introducing the Anthropocene
SECTION I. CHAPTER 1 Atlas of Amelioration CHAPTER 2 River’s Edge Fulcrum CHAPTER 3 The Outlook CHAPTER 4 The Archipelago of the Chthulucene CHAPTER 5 Ground, Intertwined
SECTION II. PRECAST CONCRETE FABRICATION NorthEast Precast Factory
APPENDIX
PREAMBLE
Introducing the Anthropocene
Prairie Island, Welch, MN Alexander & Rachael Granite City, IL Sami & Alyssa Kaskaskia, IL Merrick & Amie
St. Louis, MO Daniel & Xinyi
New Orleans, LA Amanda & Lin
PREAMBLE It is now common knowledge in architecture schools that the influential Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen claimed, in 2002, that we are no longer living in the Holocene, which is the climatic period that began after the last glaciations. Instead, he argued, with the invention of the steam engine in the 1780’s, we had entered into a wholly new and different epoch, the Anthropocene, which is characterized by man’s industrialization of the world and a potentially dangerous rise in world carbon dioxide emissions. Such emissions have led to many environmental complications and degradations, including the rising of sea levels and the loss of tundra permafrost due to rising temperatures. Shoreline areas, their lowlying landmasses, and areas built on reclaimed land, have increasingly become subject to flooding and dramatic changes in topology. As we have seen in New Orleans, such lands organized around flood plains have always flooded, however, such events now have the capacity to upend millions of people. River habitats have been subject to land reclamation projects for most of their colonized existence. In the 18th and 19th centuries, land reclamation was largely profitable as it allowed for the farming of areas that were previously inhospitable marshland. In fact, the growth of “salt hay” from previous brackish marshes was seen as advantageous from both a farmer’s perspective (you could feed more cows) as well as geologists and early land use planners, in terms of replacing stagnant water that bred disease-bearing insects and bacteria with this useful crop.
Mississippi River Meander Map by Army Corps of Engineer cartographer Harold Fisk.
Unfortunately, land reclamation for farming purposes met several untimely ends, and by the end of the Civil War, the path to industrialization had begun to take effect. By the early 20th century, the ability of family and small-scale farms to compete was effectively stopped. Many local farmers, unwilling to maintain reclaimed lands they once farmed, sold these lands to speculators which in turn accommodated a rise in population along river banks and coastal areas. A review of maps, and later satellite images, of Manhattan demonstrate how land reclamation strategies have significantly increased such arable, and therefore develop-able, land. Dutch technologies that went into the forming of polders, or artificial land masses, could allow for these areas to easily be reverted back to their natural condition so long as the reclaimed use of land was specifically agricultural. The origin of this term is Latin and literally means “dust”. But, as many of the lands originally reclaimed for farming purposes have been sold to state or private development interests – specifically to address the need for housing and the general services that are required to sustain it – issues of flooding have become increasingly common, and the need for strategies to engage such phenomena have become wide spread. Most agriculturalists would agree that the returning of such land to its near original state would be disastrous economically as well as technologically unviable, making a very interesting problem that the building profession has increasingly needed to address – how to maintain robust conditions in land reclamation areas as water levels continue to rise.
DON’T FIGHT WATER The Dutch government has experimented with a “Green Rivers” project, known as Ruimte voor de Rivier in which the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment, and the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management seek to enlarge flood plains along the River Ijssel to create bypasses of water. In the wider portions of these plains, additional inlets are being created for both additional drainage and to provide for urban development in the flood plains themselves. That speaks to the viability of such an endeavor on this side of the Atlantic.
The Glen Canyon Dam, a concrete “arch-gravity dam” located along the Colorado River.
STUDIO This studio will consider how architects can anticipate and address a series of future conditions that will allow shoreline areas to take on different functional uses, and more importantly develop a design pedagogy that is both forward thinking while also being protective of, and progressive towards, natural assets. The students in the Calamity Library Project Studio will specifically focus on such global ecological challenges concerning architecture and water systems in the Anthropocene. Themes like climate change, politics, infrastructure, new economies, and culture will form the lenses to understand the cities along the river and urban landscapes in the context of a transforming environment. Flooding, drought and other forms of extreme weather are observed more and more as normal occurrences everywhere on the planet. The impact of urbanization, its global reaches into rural, oceanic, and atmospheric environments, has become immense, and often damaging. Human impact thus forms an ongoing feedback loop of dynamic interactions between the built and non-built environment.
RIVER AS GENERATOR The Anthropocene flood plane is our field of study, in specific the Mississippi flood planes in the USA, the world’s fourth-largest drainage basin (“watershed” or “catchment”). The basin covers more than 1,245,000 square miles (3,220,000 km2), including all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. During the first decades of the 20th century it saw the construction of massive engineering works costing billions of Dollars, such as levees, locks and dams, often built in combination. A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya River and bypassing New Orleans. The long-term interactions between humans and the watershed will be analyzed and discussed as catchment areas for ecological, cultural, economic and social realities. Topics of spatio temporal transformations like mobility, pollution, and resource extraction will be looked at as water culture that is both human and non-human in order to inform future-oriented design projects. the Mississippi underwent construction measures to control the flow of water over hundreds of years, man changed the appearance of the River and its riverscape. The natural waterways were straightened and narrowed for shipping and flat-bottomed boats and dykes were built as a flood water protection on lengthy stretches. The Mississippi threatens to explode beyond its engineering structures with the biggest floods recorded, spring flooding is not uncommon along the Mississippi, but last year’s floods were exceptional. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), flooding last year in the Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas River basins were responsible for an estimated twenty billion dollars in damages, and 2019 was the second-wettest year in the Lower 48 states in the 125 years of record-keeping. It is time to give back and sometimes give UP.
Flooding along Interstate 44 in eastern Missouri, via Jeff Roberson, The Associated Press https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article52342020.html
CALAMITY LIBRARY The goal of the Calamity Library Project Studio is to create HYBRIDS, to develop architectural interventions for the more and more defunct infrastructures such as levees, dams, etc., for human or post-human occupation. The intersection of the large infrastructural structures with a precise architectures inserts as hybrid structures could be of great interest to reinvigorate the Mid-American city, and societies. Over the last century human interventions have disturbed the natural water balance, results are disastrous and it is time to re-calibrate. We are not so much interested in the study of landscapes- many biologists are working on this - but more in how these architectural interventions inventions would integrate into the flood landscapes and riverbanks, and how they merge with the urban, economic and cultural. Dr. Rita Pinto de Freitas describes these hybrids as: “Consequently, all architectural intervention is defined as hybrid that is at once object, landscape and infrastructure, an architectural intervention that simultaneously meets three conditions:
• It is a physical intervention that, as a result of a project, proposes an architectural space generated on the basis of human intervention.
• It is an architectural intervention, which is at the same time a landscape, beyond simply being an object placed within the landscape: using a variety of possible mechanisms (fusion, transformation, reconfiguration …), the architectural intervention integrates inseparably into the landscape.
• It is at once an architectural intervention and an infrastructure, beyond its connection to infrastructure: in transforming into a section of infrastructure itself, the architectural object becomes a part of the infrastructure and incorporates its laws and mechanisms of functioning.”
Shanghai’s “Quarry Hotel” is a hotel built in an abandoned quarry has been described as a “fight against gravity”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/22/china-quarry-hotel-shanghai
MATERIAL ECOLOGIES RESEARCH Student teams will rigorously analyze and study the Mississippi and will develop architectural concepts through research-design and in-depth communication with external experts to ground their concept and develop their design intervention. One of such experts is North East Precast, a concrete company located in Millville, NJ, where we will be able to learn how to make complex formwork, develop detailed large models, and pour them in the factory. Innovations in concrete performance, and the investigation of new filler materials are possible areas of research. The Material Ecologies Research will focus on concrete and specifically it’s materiality – how it is manufactured and the logistics of its assembly - and cultural affects through both its traditional uses within the urban environment as well as new approaches to infrastructure and building typologies.
SECTION I.
Speculative Futures CHAPTER 1 Atlas of Amelioration
CHAPTER 2 River’s Edge Fulcrum
CHAPTER 3 The Outlook
CHAPTER 4 The Archipelago of the Chthulucene
CHAPTER 5 Ground, Intertwined
ATLAS OF AMELIORATION A Catalog of Nuclear Remediation Prairie Island, Minnesota Alexander Jackson & Rachael Kulish “Every attempt to pull myself free by some act of cognition renders me more hopelessly stuck to Hyperobjects. Why? They are already here.” -Timothy Morton
Prairie island is the home of a series of key attributes that are emblematic of the conditions along the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Three major elements are at this nexus of this site that engage both infrastructure, culture, and ecology. Located on the northern portion of the island, lies the indigenous lands of the Prairie Island Indian Community. This community’s lands used to encompass the entirety of the Island, but due to a number of private and federal projects, the area has been drastically reduced. The current and historic impacts on this region from defunct infrastructural systems has been negative. The project proposes that old, disparate systems can be hybridized to create new processes, ecologies, and materials that can simultaneously remediate the land and introduce economic alternatives to provide an optimistic future for the Island and its indigenous communities As a method for nuclear remediation, the Almanac contains a workflow system of mushroom spore growth. Mushroom mycelium are great insulators of toxic and radioactive waste, being able to store and dissipate radioactive material 10,000 times faster than air. To encourage growth, the project employs a Spore Nursery, A Menagerie of Machines and an Incinerator for nuclear sequestration. Remediation cannot occur instantaneously and will likely occur over decades. The almanac project’s speculative socio-political attitudes that pair in tandem to a post-nuclear future. The project examines the future ramifications of nuclear waste to transition from the Anthropocene into the next epoch. Ultimately, the project creates a strange beauty, one that is synthetic and symbiotic to a multi-species ecology as existing infrastructure become subservient to this system. This new nature releases man’s control over the Mississippi River allowing non-human entities to prosper. The landscape becomes home for the mutants and monsters of the now and of the future, one that is strange, yet familiar. The remediated land, while not returning to Holocentric ideals, can now be reoccupied by the indigenous populations that once prospered on this land. Material species and organisms are as much a part of the project as the specific landscape manipulation and architectural interventions. The project contains new speciation along with these new hybrids and is equally about the emergent ecosystems that are generated as it is about a constructed space. The proposal is beyond architecture, producing pervasive Hyperobjects; beyond a single entities capability to be perceived and controlled. Through its hybridization of existing infrastructure and the production of a new nature, the Atlas of Amelioration is a catalog of nuclear remediation strategies in the Anthropocene.
CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Planter Unit
Spore Nursery (Production)
Tillers
Tillers
Tillers
Germination & Growth
Distribution (Site Specific)
Germination & Growth
Emitters #96 - 142
Germination & Growth
Distribution (Site Specific)
Germination & Growth
Emitters #143 - 189
Germination & Growth
Distribution (Site Specific)
Germination & Growth
Emitters #190 - 236
Germination & Growth
Harvesting (Radioactive)
Collection (Radioactive)
Harvesting (Radioactive)
Incinerator (Radioactive)
Incinerator (Radioactive)
Decontamination (Harvest Machines)
Harvesting (Radioactive)
Germination & Growth Planter Unit
Clean Machines (Harvest Machines)
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Raw Material Exports (Nuclear Sequestration)
Distilled Water (Ionization)
Mississippi River
Emitters #48 - 95
Conveyor East
Germination & Growth
Conveyor East
Distribution (Site Specific)
Incinerator (Radioactive)
Conveyor West
Germination & Growth
Sorter South
Emitters #1 - 47
Harvesting (Radioactive)
Sorter North
Germination & Growth
Harvester Bravo Swarm
Tillers
Distribution (Site Specific)
Harvester Charlie Swarm
Tillers
Harvester Alpha Swarm
Germination & Growth
Alexander Jackson & Rachael Kulish
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2035 Spore Remediation Program Online
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Spore production launches and is employed across Prairie Island. Radiation and ecosystem regeneration and landscape hybridization begins..
2025 World Temperatures Rises to 1.65˚C
2036 Retirement of Brown Energy Sources
Rising global temperatures accelerates research into waste mitigation technology and ecosystem rehabilitation. Spore Remediation goes from theoretical to empirical
Global governments adhere to previous agreement to retire all brown energy sources and utilize sustainable energy
Pilot program lauded as a success by both Xcel and Prairie Island Elder Council. Radiation and waste contaminants were independently verified to be safely re-mediated across the Island with symbiotic relationships between introduced and native systems.
2022 World Leaders Commit to Retirement of Brown Energy Sources
2062 World Temperatures Begins to Decrease
Global leaders formulate strategy for the full retirement of brown energy sources and invest collectively into remediation programs and sustainable energy resources
Air toxicity levels measured at Prairie Island show significant improvement from baseline levels
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2030 Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant to pilot Spore Remediation Program
2144 Prairie Island Remediation Program Successful
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2145 Prairie Island Re-Occupation Remediation efforts are certified by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. Program is replicated to hybridize other nuclear power plants with spore production systems as a mechanism for energy to mitigate the waste it produces.
Xcel and Prairie Island Indian Reservation Elder Council have joined forces to begin a remediation program that allows the power plant to continue producing electricity with nuclear energy for the next 40 years. To ensure the health, safety, and longevity of the Prairie Island Community and its unique habitats, Xcel must implement a “spore restore” ecosystem rehabilitation program to be monitored and inspected, and eventually run by, the Elder Council.
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a menagerie of machines
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Future Projected Remediation Site
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Typical Future Projected Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Flooded Plains
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Spring Snow-melt Flooding Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Snow Covered Site
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Frozen Mississippi River Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Dried Mississippi Riverbed
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Extreme Drought Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
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Alexander Jackson & Rachael Kulish
Hybridization of Architecture and Nature
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Lock & Dam No. 3 Chunk
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Typical Future Projected Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Spore Nursery Worm’s Eye Chunk
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Typical Future Projected Scenario
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration Day 0 (Existing Conditions)
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration Day 365
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration Day 1,825
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration Day 36,135
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration Day 58,357
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Sorter Unit #2 Actuated Lifters 360 Pivot System
Planter Unit Docking Station Refueling Station Charge Point Access Cables
Riparian Zone Sagittaria latifolia Scirpus americanus Eleocharis obtusa
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Alexander Jackson & Rachael Kulish
Lock and Dam No. 3 Incinerator Compactor Stack Water Filtration Ionization Station
Northern Hardwood Forest Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) Canadian Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) American Ash (Fraxinus americana) American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) Yellow Birch (Betala alleghaniensis) Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
Conveyor System Continuous Rollers
Northern Mississippi River Species Catfish (Silurus glanis) Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) Sturgeon (Acipenseridae) Northern Pike (Esox lucius) Walleye (Sander vitreus)
Riparian Zone Sagittaria latifolia Scirpus americanus Eleocharis obtusa
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CHAPTER 1 | Atlas of Amelioration
Fukushima Pale Grass Butterfly Swarm (Zizeeria maha) Radiation biology species
Migratory Bird Flock American Robin (Turdus migratorius) Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) American Black Duck (Anas rubripes)
Planter Unit #8
Borer Unit #5 Spore Emitter # 462
Harvester Swarm
Open Remediation Site
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Alexander Jackson & Rachael Kulish
Northern Hardwood Forest Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) Canadian Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) American Ash (Fraxinus americana) American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) Yellow Birch (Betala alleghaniensis) Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
Borer Unit #23 Broken down organic compounds Sand, Silt, Clay Fungal Spore Cloud White Nuclear Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)
Tiller Unit #12 Spore Nursery B
Spore Nursery Units
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RIVER’S EDGE FULCRUM A Parallel Model of Riveredge Restoration Granite City, Illinois Sami Samawi & Yunshi Chen
Located at the last lock and dam along the Mississippi River and surrounded by dense rail network, Granite City has been famous as a transport hub for raw and processed agriculture products. This industrial city has spent much investment to reconstruct the Mississippi River and to resist flooding. As a pivot point, the levee is the key to balance the city and the river – rather than seeing it as a dividing line between water and land, we consider it as a media of river edge restoration as well as bioproducts exchange. This project visions that a berm not only serves as a defense against flooding, but also should serve as a distributor of bioproducts and an activator for human production. At the back of the berm, we propose a massive man-made system against the environment malfunction including flooding, energy shortage and transportation inefficiency. The previous levee prevents any use of river and human access. Yet, with the potential of water edge malleability, the visitors now have a chance to approach the natural-like berm park along the Mississippi River. The distribution center inside the levee hybridizes the existing bioproduct processors with a futuristic logistic system. Currently the transport of agricultural products and by-products is heavily relying on highway and barges, which are energy-demanding and unreliable. This proposal challenges the traditional transportation of bioproducts by introducing autonomous transport via non-human agency. With its collection of drone hive, pod dock, and freight station, the distribution center collects crops from farmland along the river, delivers them to the bioproduct processors and redistributes the processed products to afar. Its symbolic gesture of two-way exchange shows how agriculture commodity exchange can be expedited with technology and architecture.
CHAPTER 2 | River’s Edge Fulcrum
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Sami Samawi & Yunshi Chen
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THE OUTLOOK Greater New Orleans Digital Archive New Orleans, Louisiana Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
The Outlook is a data center in a hot-spot of emerging Internet traffic to ease congestion and provide data service to a region, underutilized from New Orleans proper. We selected Bonnet Carré Spillway as the ground for our Hybridization. The Bonnet Carré was constructed in 1931, it is a mile and a half long parallel to the river, designed to divert flood water from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, reducing water level and the stress on down stream’s levees, as an attempt to prevent New Orleans from seasonal flooding. The outdated system still functions today, while the seasonal flood is coming more and more frequently. We see this as an opportunity for our intervention, as the large amount of water and sediment that was wasted by discharging to the Lake, could be utilized as valuable assets. The base of the new hybrid was built on top of the original spillway intake structure and parallel to the river, while the data archives change its orientation and facing the direction of water-flow. The structure underneath the archive would serve as a new intake channel that draw the river water for Hydro Cooling system in the server farm to remove the excessive heat generated by the machine, the water then gets exported onto the rooftops to be cooled down, and in the end, fall back to the river in the form of waterfall to form a closed loop. With the new Data Center hybridized with the existed flood control infrastructure, we are responding to the growth of tech industries that are encouraged in Greater New Orleans region, taking advantages from the natural assets such as large amount of cold water and sediment, and transform the urban void into valuable territory that can assist the expanding of tech and media companies. Meanwhile, encourage the decentralization process and reform the urban fabric to coexist with the nature instead of fighting against it.
CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
PRECAST MOCK-UP Data flow is not visible, but it is closely related to the water flow and sediment flow in our project. The water and sediment circulation not only representing the whole building system that hybrid with the original spillway structure, but also a reflection of the data storage and data flow in the non-human non-visible space. not only does the water became an agency to shape the interior, but it also determines at which location does the water make its appearance on the surface so the atmosphere can assist at cooling down the overheated water before it reaches the human-occupied space, and before it circles back to the river.
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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CHAPTER 3 | The Outlook
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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Huadong Lin & Amanda Ai
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ARCHIPELAGO OF THE CHTHULUCENE Self-Growing Silt Habitat St. Louis, Missouri Daniel Yang & Xinyi Huang
Our project locates in the upper Mississippi river area, upstream to St Louis. We placed our structure in the middle of the Mississippi river near the Chain of the Rock Bridge and two abandoned intake water tower. The east side of the river has the local water treatment plant that filter and delivers drinking water to St Louis area. This area of the river is shallow and carries a large amount of sedimentation to the downstream. We proposed a self-growing sludge island that serves the function of water filtration and sludge treatment. The idea is to build water filtering infrastructure first, get the sludge as the byproduct of the water filtering and dredging from the river bank, and then utilize the sludge as construction material to build the sludge island (the rounded artificial structure). Once the sludge island is built, it changes the water flow and allow water to accumulate sludges on the back of the island, therefore letting the island grows naturally. The water flows freely into the island and get filtered. Natural vegetation starts to grow on the island and the cleaned water attracts local aquatic lives to live in. Multiple selfgrowing sludge island would create a new natural habitat on top of human intervention on the river.
CHAPTER 4 | The Archipelago of the Chthulucene
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Daniel Yang & Xinyi Huang
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Daniel Yang & Xinyi Huang
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Daniel Yang & Xinyi Huang
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GROUND, INTERTWINED Soil and Water as Networks Kaskaskia, Illinois Amie Hanqing Yao & Merrick Castillo
Ground intertwined proposes a self-sufficient Artificial Intelligence run biodiverse farm on the edge of the Mississippi River. The project explores the possibility of a hyper productive farm, capable of producing produce for one thousand farms. The intervention inverts the precedent of the Cahokia Mounds by creating inverted terrace farming, forming a relief in the landscape. The terrace farming allows water to step down and be stored in inverted wells located at the center nodes of each zone, these wells push deep into the earth, allowing the water to fall and generate electric power while storing it for agricultural use. All of the systems form a feedback loop, allowing the farm to run without human interaction, creating a truly self sufficient system.
CHAPTER 5 | Ground, Intertwined
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Amie Hanqing Yao & Merrick Castillo
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CHAPTER 5 | Ground, Intertwined
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Amie Hanqing Yao & Merrick Castillo
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CHAPTER 5 | Ground, Intertwined
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Amie Hanqing Yao & Merrick Castillo
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SECTION II.
Precast Concrete Fabrication
SECTION II | NorthEast Precast Factory
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APPENDIX
A Semester to Remember
HYBRID LEARNING In studio with the students and faculty
MOCK-UP PRODUCTION At NorthEast Precast’s Factory to cast mock-ups
WORK FROM HOME LIFE New classmates in studio IN-PERSON DESK CRITIQUES Collective progress and charette sessions
CONCRETE MOCK-UP REVEAL Discovering how heavy concrete really is
GALLERY SHOW ASSEMBLY Setting models and posters in place for exhibition
FINAL REVIEW In-person final presentations
OUTDOOR RECESS Admiring strange natures on campus
READING LIST Student teams will be expected to lead a series of discussions READING LIST based on assigned readings per the list below. Reading discussions will generally take place during the Wednesday meeting period. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010. (excerpts to be specified) Fenton, Joseph. Pamphlet Architecture 11: Hybrid Buildings. Princeton Architectural Press, 1985. (excerpts to be specified) Haraway, Donna. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationoncene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159-165. Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World. Basic Books, 1995. Nieuwenhuys, Constant. Constant: New Babylon. Hatje Cantz, 2016. Latour Bruno, Down To Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Polity Press (Wiley), London, 2018 (exceprts to be specified) Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, 1993. (excerpts to be specified) Manaugh, Geoff. “Cool Dam.” BLDG BLOG, http://www.bldgblog.com/2013/03/cool-dam/ Manaugh, Geoff. “We’d All Be Living in Dams.” BLDG BLOG, http://www.bldgblog.com/2007/07/wed-all-be-living-in-dams/ McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities). Univ of Minnesota Press, 2013. (excerpts to be specified) Pinto de Freitas, Rita. “Hybrid Architecture Object, Landscape, Infrastructure.” GSTF. “Renaturation of the Spree Floodplains.” Leag, www.leag.de/en/business-fields/mining/spreefloodplain/ Scherer, Bernd, and Jurgen Renn. “Mississippi. An Anthropocene River.” Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2018/mississippi_an_anthropocene_river/mississippi_an_an thropocene_river_start.php. Stipisic, Morana, and Bry Sarte. “Water Infrastructure: Equitable Development of Resilient Systems”. Columbia GSAPP, 2016. Wallace-Wells, David. “The Uninhabitable Earth”. New York Magazine (July 2017)