4 Much Ado About Pylons

global sea level rise global sea level rise feedback loops feedback loops tamaki drive 2011 tamaki drive 2011

climate change predictions climate change predictions “Not a single government in the “Not a single government in the world is suggesting a radical change world is suggesting a radical change in the structuring of economic life in the structuring of economic life that would bring us anywhere near climate change predictions that would bring us anywhere near the level which is necessary to save the level which is necessary to save human civilization.” “Not a single government in the human civilization.” world is suggesting a radical change -Jeremy Rifkin, adviser to EU and President of in the structuring of economic life -Jeremy Rifkin, adviser to EU and President of Foundation on Economic trends that would bring us anywhere near Foundation on Economic trends the level which is necessary to save human civilization.”

-Jeremy Rifkin, adviser to EU and President of Foundation on Economic trends

LAND LAND

LAND ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY

-David Adam, The Guardian, 11 -David Adam, The Guardian, 11 March 2009 March 2009

global sea level rise

-David Adam, The Guardian, 11 March 2009 feedback loops

-Stephenson&Turner, Storm surge -Stephenson&Turner, Storm surge in Auckland in Auckland what happens what happens at the coastline? at the coastline?

tamaki drive 2011

-Stephenson&Turner, Storm surge in Auckland what happens at the coastline?

fossil fuels fossil fuels UN Intergovernmental UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Panel on Climate Change 2007 : leading cause of 2007 : leading cause of human induced climate human induced climate change is the burning of fossil fuels change is the burning of fossil fuelsUN Intergovernmental fossil fuels

Panel on Climate Change 2007 : leading cause of human induced climate change is the burning of fossil fuels oil crisis oil crisis July 2008 - price of oil July 2008 - price of oil record peak at $147 per record peak at $147 per barrel resulting in barrel resulting in Global Economic Global Economic Collapseoil crisisCollapse

July 2008 - price of oil record peak at $147 per barrel resulting in

Global Economic

Collapse “Virtually every commercial activity in “Virtually every commercial activity in our global economy is dependent on oil our global economy is dependent on oil and other fossil fuel energies.” and other fossil fuel energies.”

-Jeremy Rifkin, -Jeremy Rifkin, adviser to EU and president of adviser to EU and president of Foundation on Economic Trends Foundation on Economic Trends

“Virtually every commercial activity in our global economy is dependent on oil and other fossil fuel energies.”

-Jeremy Rifkin, adviser to EU and president of Foundation on Economic Trends

Mangrove Mangrove energy energy becomes becomes catalyst for catalyst for renewal renewal

“Mitigation means the difference between 2 feet of sea-level rise and 6 feet of sea-level rise. Just because we’re focusing on adaption doesn’t mean we’re “Mitigation means the giving up on mitigation.” difference between 2 feet of sea-level rise and 6 feet of soft engineering - protect the coastsea-level rise. Just -Oyster-tecture : Rising Currents exhibition -Ellen Douglas, Boston Harbor Association Preparing for the Rising Tide Report because we’re focusing on adaption doesn’t mean we’re giving up on mitigation.”-New Urban Ground

“Mitigation means the difference between 2 feet of sea-level rise and 6 feet of sea-level rise. Just because we’re focusing on adaption doesn’t mean we’re giving up on mitigation.” soft engineering - protect the coast

-Ellen Douglas, Boston Harbor Association Preparing for the Rising -Oyster-tecture : Rising Tide Report Currents exhibition -New Urban Ground Mangrove root Mangrove root systems are efficient at systems are efficient at dissipating wave dissipating wave energy. energy. natural barrier Mangrove root systems are efficient at natural barrier dissipating wave energy. natural barrier

Mangrove

The mangroves can power energy The mangroves can power 10,000 homesbecomes 10,000 homes catalyst for main power plant for renewalmain power plant for Rosebank development Rosebank development The mangroves can power 10,000 homes

main power plant for Rosebank development

soft engineering - protect the coast

-Ellen Douglas, Boston Harbor Association Preparing for the Rising Tide Report -Oyster-tecture : Rising Currents exhibition -New Urban Ground

mangrove power plants mangrove power plants

distribution distribution

distribution

mangrove power plants

new buildings are power plants new buildings are power plants Mangrove Energy Farm Mangrove Energy Farm will be the main power will be the main power plant in Rosebank but plant in Rosebank but every new development/ building can become its new buildings are power plants every new development/ building can become its own power plant Mangrove Energy Farm own power plant will be the main power plant in Rosebank but every new development/ building can become its own power plant

+ power grid power grid

The buildings in Rosebank The buildings in Rosebank can share electricity can share electricity through the smart grid if through the smart grid if power grids are upgraded in the future. power grid power grids are upgraded in the future.

The buildings in Rosebank can share electricity through the smart grid if power grids are upgraded in the future. smart grid smart grid

smart grid SELL SURPLUS + SELL SURPLUS + $$ $$

Incentive to saving energy SELL SURPLUS + Incentive to saving energy is to sell the surplus back to the grid.$$ is to sell the surplus back to the grid.

This map/plan is illustrative only and all information should be independently verified on site before taking any action.Copyright Auckland Council. Boundary information from LINZ (Crown Copyright Reserved). Whilst due care has been taken, Auckland Council gives no warranty as to the accuracy and completeness of any information on this map/plan and accepts no liability for any error, omission or use of the information. Height datum: Auckland 1946. Map Titlerosebank ´ sea level rise

Created: Friday, 5 April 2013,8:30:06 a.m. Scale @ A3 1:15000

Rosebank is at serious threat of sea level rise. According to Brunn rule, a sea level rise of 1cm induces a coastal retreat of 1m. Social determent to the coast is to be expected.

SEA LEVEL RISE 2100 up to 70% of Rosebank Industry at risk is there an alternative to retreat? mangroves

2.6 sq km area mangroves

hydro

biomass

solar

wind age of renewable energy The age of oil is over and we must be looking at our sustainable options.

biosphere

PLANT-E

plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC)

Marjolien Helder and David Strik are the founders of the PMFC technology that generates electricity from the natural living processes of plants. sun

photosynthesis

e-

e-

e-

anode

rhizodeposits micro-organisms

H+ H20

membrane cathode Plant micro-bial fuel cell gathers electrons released in the natural process of rhizodeposition.

PMFC robot 01

hydrogen storage tank legs pmfc rod

energy generation

Architecture bringing together the human political, social, economic sphere with the natural sphere

module 01

mangrove growth multifunction platform mangrove farm energy net walkway on top of mangroves mangrove energy farm viewing platform

New developments in the area are sea resilient and equipped with energy harnessing technology

AUCKLAND

carbon neutral city independent from centralised national grid $$

AGENCIES OF NEGOTIATION

Interview with Teddy Cruz

Interviewer: Can you describe the kind of work you have been doing alongside Kathy?

Teddy Cruz: [. . .] The opportunity for me coming here was [. . .] to become a part of a conversation but also [to] become aware of the very specific set of issues across a variety of registers from social, political, economic to cultural dynamics in the area. For me, that became an emblematic aspect of what the Triennial can produce—the opportunity of engaging in the meeting of knowledge. I came with my own set of procedures from my own history and engagement with the particular area where I work in the Tijuana and San Diego border. As I came to encounter the investigation the students with Kathy were producing, in that sort of meeting of those processes, a lot of conversations began to emerge that [were] truly operational in re-imagining not only the potential of these spaces but [also] the possibilities that a transformation of institutional thinking can open up by enabling that meeting of knowledge. In a sense, as I was mentioning to the students, this became a learning experience for me because I was introduced to a very specific situation—the Whau River. Not only its current condition, as almost forgotten, but also at times I imagine almost an invisible natural system to the institutions. I began to see it as a dumping site at times or an indifferent relic, a type of left-over space enabling people to meander through. It wasn’t doing that much or producing that much in terms of social, cultural or public space. As Kathy and the students guided me through those environments it was truly resonating and echoing the types of institutional indifference that I’ve been engaging in my own locality—the institutional stupidity that has enabled the types of conflicts or collisions across communities and jurisdictions. The types of separations between urban policies that tend to operate in a faulty way, unable to include the kinds of bottom-up natural and social economic dynamics.

So, the same types of issues began to surface.

[. . .] The intelligence of the kind of work Kathy and the students had already produced enabled a fertile platform to begin with, for me at least, in order to then engage in a one-week workshop. [This was] where the effort was to attempt to organise the kind of epistemological systems, the kind of theoretical reflections, the types of operational concepts that the process itself had produced. So in other words, the students produced propositions—at times buildings, at times reflections on historical processes—a variety of approaches that produced a kind of cloud of not only propositions but issues, conditions as well. I’ve been quite interested in the construction and designing of conditions within which opportunities can be organised. Not only material systems as an architect but really propositions in rethinking urban policy, economics or a kind of political economy of urban development and so on. So simply, the exercise became, with the students, a conversation. It was really organising what I ended up reflecting on as the architecture of a conversation. Taking as a point of departure the stuff, the things the students produced and also the pieces of thinking they approximated, and trying to extract from all of that a series of maps or conceptual diagrams.

[This] could give us very pointed provocations about how to critique institutions, about how to amplify the conflicts that we were dealing with, about how to even re-imagine certain definitions. For example, one that I carried with me but was also enabled here was the possibility of rethinking the meaning of infrastructure as a mono-functional thing, as a top-down large project that is indifferent to the smaller scales and the emergent informal dynamics in the city, or infrastructure as a way of mediating and organising complexity, as one of the students of Kathy suggested in the conversations. All of these are beautiful redefinitions of the conventions, in terms of language that we have perpetuated from the institutional vantage point. Re-imagining zoning, for example, which tends to be blind in its rigid compartmentalisation of the city into islands of use that do not relate to each other. That zoning could be rethought as a more permeable and flexible scaffold within which other categories of use can be enabled. So, we brought up this issue of: can zoning be a generative tool of activity and economy, as opposed to a punitive tool that prevents socialisation and so on? If you see the maps, [pages x-x] you will see how pregnant they are [with] this conceptual material.

[. . .] I’m very interested in the relationship between theory and practice. And the work the students produced was so rich in a set of relations from which to theorise. I love this notion where reality demands a new theory. I think it’s important to say that the students were engaged in the construction of a theory and of a language as we were moving through the projects and the sites. The diagrams contain that type of material. Very provocative, amplifying the controversies, the conflicts, the critique of institutional protocols, of fixed language in the definition of urban policy. From there, they begin to set up a very interesting set of relations that could allow us to re-imagine infrastructure, zoning, community participation, ecological systems as productive frameworks and so on. So that’s what the studio really produced in one week, it was really an attempt to organise those relations or conditions. That’s really again what brings us to the issues of the Triennial.

Interviewer: How did you see The Lab functioning within the Triennial? It would be great to get some of your observations, and if you could talk perhaps about whether you’ve seen sites like The Lab within other triennials and biennials. For Auckland, this is a very new thing and this is only our 5th Auckland Triennial!

Teddy Cruz: [. . .] it was suggested somewhere in the conversation in the Triennial, that art might just carve a sacred space for itself, that it does not want to mess up or mess with those institutions. When in reality, I think this is really the urgency that art needs to engage, because we have perpetuated the idea again of art or even the avant-garde [. . .] as a project that depends on the critical distance from the institutions to critique them from the periphery. I believe that we need to shift the terms and really speak of a critical proximity instead—a critical proximity to the very institutions from which we can reimagine all the arrangements in a sense. Maybe I’m being a romantic about this, but I believe that art can play an instrumental role [. . .] in entering into that debate with institutions. Not from a distance, but from within the institution’s own procedures and systems of governance. [. . .] The museum is not only a site of display but also a site of the production of knowledge. In a way the issues are brought

Left:

Teddy Cruz.

Photograph Herman Haringa

Right:

Site visit to the Whau River.

Photograph Zee Shake Lee to the platform of the museum as a way of generating approximations and propositions in a sense, engaging the institutions of planning, in terms of The Lab, as a kind of extension of the architecture studio and the urban studio in the university. So by bringing the issues of concern around which the conversation is reorganised, I think The Lab definitely plays an important role within an exhibition like the Triennial. For a moment, I’m again thinking of the necessary role that cultural institutions have in visualising the conflicts and issues that are mobilising the rethinking of contemporary culture.

So yes, I am [. . .] critical of something else that was somehow suggested in our conversations about the Triennial. [That is] that art [. . .] takes a role of being absent from the drama of reality or is in the context of an absence, of laziness, or daydreaming. That it is through that process that art constructs culture. I think that it is the opposite. [. . .] I think [. . .] that the Triennial can open a space within the exhibition to enable the entering into those urgencies that are brought into the forum, to reorganise a conversation. I think that this is a very important role that [the] Triennial can have [. . .] —not creativity just for creativity’s sake but really as a way again of engaging knowledge production. I think it can also be said very directly, not only is it producing knowledge but enabling or facilitating the transference of knowledge. So The Lab, in the context of the students’ and Kathy’s work, and my participation, is attempting to not only look at issues and conditions embedded in the particular ecological systems of the Whau River and its multiple controversies and conflicts across again what I mentioned—communities, jurisdictional boundaries, rigid zoning and so on. That we not only acted in The Lab as a way of bringing issues to the forum, from which again, the conversation and debate is organised. But at the same time, there might be a possibility that The Lab produces a new agency of negotiation—the council members and community members can come here to the museum and be introduced to the content of the work. The students, Kathy, and the institution—in this case the university—might then serve as an interlocutory, a representative or a translator of these issues to begin asserting pressure against the institutions of planning. That’s the task I think, that’s the challenge. Not only do I love the idea that the forum produces knowledge and reminds us the issues of concern, but at the same time potentially it constructs new institutional platforms from which to move forward. I think that is a fantastic role of artistic practice, that we can become facilitators of the transference of knowledge from the bottom up to the top down and back, but also [become] representatives of that knowledge towards the institutions of planning. I think that is something that clarifies better that art is not separate to the institutions.

Interviewer: It’s so refreshing. I am very pleased you came, and that The Lab is part of the Triennial. It is very interesting—Sarati talking about idleness, laziness, and then you talk about results. You talk about the generation of knowledge and the next step, and the changes that could take place. The possibility of change within Auckland is quite meaningful.

Teddy Cruz: Yes, one of the issues we discussed with the students had to do with this. The pretention of our ideas of public space is to just simply beautify the space and wait for people to show up magically. When in reality, there