This Is Not Wilderness

THIS IS NOT WILDERNESS ARCH 401 SETH JENKINS | GRANT MORTHLAND

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TABLE OF CONTENTS PHASE ONE: MAPPING.......................................................................................4 PHASE TWO: SITE EXPLORATION GRANDBY DAM | LAKE GRANBY, CO......................................................................14

PHASE THREE: SITE + INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH + ANALYSIS....................................................................................................22

PHASE FOUR: SCHEMATIC DESIGN MODULAR HOUSING...........................................................................................32 PHASE FIVE: MODELS...................................................................................................42 PHASE SIX: NARRATIVE: COLLAPSE OF INFRASTRUCTURE...................................56

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PHASE ONE: MAPPING

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Dam Infastructure

Powe

er Grid

Colorado River

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The site at Lake Granby rests at the juncture of nature and infrastructure. Here, the potential energy of the river is harnessed and shot outwards to surrounding states and communities, allowing for habitation and civilization to occur. The intervention of the dam network in the Colorado River basin has provided the overland canopy of support that carries electricity and water to its constituents. An effort to divert water and, in turn, supply electrical energy to the people within the valley has been an effort that has spanned multiple decades. But, through political dealings and negotiations, the network has disproportionately supplied water out of the valley to locations such as California and Arizona. These policies are a result of the exploitation of the existing natural systems in place. The water’s network, has been parceled and shipped through the use of canals and pump stations and divided further through legally binding watershed policies in the immediate area surrounding Granby and Shadow Mountain Dams. Our analysis of the site has led us to focus on two main factors of the valley and its various infrastructural networks. First, the hydrological systems already naturally in place have been treated and transformed into an object instead of an intricate system. This has led the dams and electrical infrastructure to pull the power of the waters skyward. The dam itself is the juncture where the water’s physical power is interrupted, collected, and sent skyward through the electrical grid. The power grid is then shot eastward and westward, axially perpendicular to the immediate power source. This relocation of the resources is depicted in the model as the sprawling black canopy. Populated areas, such as Boulder and Denver Colorado, are called out with the vertical ring stands, and symbolize the mooring points throughout the fabric of the grid. As the areas become more populated, the density of the grid intensifies, doubling back on itself and changing in elevation. This evaluation technique allowed us to translate two dimensional information into three dimensional forms. The changing grid, dam networks, and infrastructural canopy contribute spatially, creating a diagram of what the landscape represents today. The land and water have been largely treated as objects and exploited as such. Though this exploitation has been beneficial to the humans underneath its protection, the mismanagement and overuse of the network threatens to pose a threat to the populations that it was originally meant to protect. Colorado’s basin network is a new flashpoint of climatic conditions within our country. Unlike flash flooding and other natural disasters that occur in this area, the loss of the Colorado River’s water supply to outside populations is a creeping and chronic condition. Because of this, the people of the Colorado River basin are at risk of becoming refugees, not by way of military occupation or attack, but by changing climatic conditions facilitated by man. Further analysis will lead to how an exploration of architecture’s ability to intervene in the lives of those affected by this condition for the better, and will lead to a system of resource distribution that does not ignore the needs of those within The Colorado River Basin.

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Words

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The colorado River is modeled with string. The dams represented by concrete pyramids. the nylon is the resources extractd from the river to bedistributed.

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PHASE TWO: SITE EXPLORATION LAKE GRANBY | GRANBY, CO

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PHASE THREE: SITE + INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH + ANALYSIS

This project examines how housing could be distributed through a bureaucratic system during times of crisis - what happens to this system if there is an infrastructural collapse in the the Colorado River Basin? Our project proposed how rapid housing production might adapt to this failure.

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In order to properly place housing within the basin, sites were selected at the confluence of three existing infrastructure systems. In order for these sites to be properly supplied, they were located where water sources, train infrastructure, and dense junctures of the power grid. This confluence takes advantage of existing protective canopy of infrastructure in order to maximize livability of the proposed architecture.

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ASSEMBLY/TRANSPORT SEQUENCING

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DRONE SURVEY/OCCUPANCY ANALYSYS

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ON-CAR FACTORY ASSEMBLY

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LOCOMOTIVE TRANSPORT

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LOCOMOTIVE/TRUCK CARGO TRANSFER

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TRUCK DELIVERY TO SITE

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ON-SITE PLACEMENT/ASSEMBLY

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The delivery of these units works with the existing networks as well, and utilizes the mobility of the train-based infrastructure of the American west. The structures are able to be assembled and packaged in urban rail yards within close proximity to construction materials and labor, and shipped to the site.

This also builds a network between the sites of the basin, and will allow users to travel between sites within the basin.

This is a proposal of a system that was properly planned and executed by a bureaucratic planning structure, and is assembled with an assumption that all infrastructure systems remain during a crisis situation. But, as we all know, the world is not perfect, and disaster cannot be properly planned for by any state entity. We are proposing that this system was deployed but not fully executed, as the power and transport structures failed and decayed before the complete system could be properly deployed. This leaves the proposed architecture in different stages of development and occupancy throughout the landscape, and allows for occupants to adapt the different forms of these structures within the encroaching ecologies of the future Colorado River Basin.

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PHASE FOUR: SCHEMATIC DESIGN MODULAR HOUSING

The design of the dwellings themselves draw from the two models of FEMA housing from the past, being the pre-fabricated trailer, and the disaster tent.

Both models on their own have proved to be unlivable structures due to climatic conditions and toxic materials. Our design mitigates these issues through the combination of both models, which allows for better performance with cross ventilation on all surfaces of the structure with sun shielding that is detached from the building itself.

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The design includes an exterior framing system that the housing modules nest in. This frame is to be assembled on site by highly trained professionals to ensure that occupants sit safely off the ground. The frame has legs which can be customized to adapt to any environment it is placed in as illustrated in the drawing to the left. An advantage to this structural system is that they have minimal impact on the land by leaving a very small footprint on the earth. This is important because many of the sites throughout the Colorado River Basin lie within national parks which is precious, well maintained space.

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PHASE FIVE: MODELING

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PHASE SIX: NARRATIVE COLLAPSE OF INFRASTRUCTURE

The Frieze is a series of drawings that is a visual representation of the narrative and each drawing is directly connected to the colleges on the following pages.

As resources diminish and the infrastructure collapses.The climate refugee housing initiative is abandoned and both the architecture and the people inhabiting them are forced to adapt to a new world isolated from the rest of the nation. Within this new infrastructure-less context people and architecture are forced to abandon a dependence on infrastructure and structures of government and state. To adopt a new lifestyle where nature is embraced and relied on; instead of being exploited, over-managed, and manicured.

As the narrative progresses the aesthetics of the drawings change as well.

When the the housing modules are initially deployed the architecture is represented by a dull grey and technical aesthetic like the other drawings above.

This is to represent the standardized or “one size fits all� solution which is implemented. When the system fails and nature reclaims the land and infrastructure, the architecture behaves in a way it was not designed to. The architecture was initially designed to be separated from the earth on stilts and to remain untouched by the elements as it sits under a large canopy. When partially deployed modules with no tents, or stilts are scattered throughout the wilderness of the basin with no protection from the elements, the architecture takes on a new identity which reciprocates the initial design concept. This new identity allows both nature and people to take ownership of the space in a symbiotic relationship. The change and adaptations that both the architecture and inhabitants endure are aesthetically represented by a gradient from greys to a vibrant color pallet.

There are many ways that the architecture adapts to this new world and the last four images represents possible iterations. One shows how deployed modules reacts to the overgrown environment. The other represents how some building components can be repurposed according to function. Such how a tent structure can be repurposed as a sail to harness the power of the wind to move an undeployed module left on a train car.

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