MArch Thesis - MArch Architecture - Unit 16 - Bartlett School of Architecture

In Pursuit of an Alternative Future:

The Panama Canal MArch Thesis Richard James Breen Unit 16

In Pursuit of an Alternative Future:

The Panama Canal MArch Architecture Thesis by;

Richard James Breen Unit 16 Bartlett School of Architecture UCL Word Count: 8984 May 2016 Tutor; Paul Dobraszczyk

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Introduction | 3

COLON

GATUN LOCKS

PICTURE OF CANAL

Chagres River Gatun Dam

Lake Alhajuela Madden Dam

LAKE GATUN Barro Colorado Island

Chagres River

Culebra Cut Gamboa

PANAMA CITY PEDRO MIGUEL LOCKS ōÞNj ʪŸNjsǣ Ķ Ĩs

MIRAFLORES LOCKS

Vessel Route

Former military zones

Evergreen broadleaf forest

Semi-decidious tropical forest

Canal Zone Bounday

Protected forests zone

Evergreen broadleaf forest little intervention

Semi-decidious tropical forest - little intervention

Canal Watershed Boundary

Urban zones

Evergreen broadleaf forest more intervention

Former Military Bases

Port/infrastructure zones

Semi-decidious tropical forest - more intervention

Rivers Highways

Fig. 1 Map of Panama Canal, canal zone and watershed

Timber producing zones

PACIFIC OCEAN

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Contents iii List of Figures iv Acknowledgements 8-12 Introduction Part I 13-17 Historical Context 18-28 Reductive Past Part II 29-31 Threat and Competition 32-40 The Canal and the Anthropocene Part III 41-53 Ruin and Retrofit 55-80 An Alternative Future 81-83 Conclusion 84-87 Bibliography

Introduction | 5

List of Figures Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16 Fig. 17 Fig. 18 Fig. 19 Fig. 20 Fig. 21 Fig. 22 Fig. 23 Fig. 24 Fig. 25 Fig. 26 Fig. 27 Fig. 28 Fig. 29 Fig. 30 Fig. 31 Fig. 32 Fig. 33

Map of Panama Canal Canal construction photographs Tunnel through the world Culebra Cut - 1913 Chagres River; before and after Canal Arriving labour Construction tourists Culebra Cut section US foreign policy in Panama Landslides in Culebra Cut Inaugural journey - SS Ancon - 1914 Operation Just Cause - 1989 Rita Centeio - competition entry - 2010 Project Plowshare Nuclear excavation test in Nevada The Smithsonian Research Laboratory Barro Colorado biodiversity The threat of water hyacinth Chemical spray in Lake Gatun - 1914 Local connection to water before Canal - 1900 Unapproachable estate cartoon - 1974 Flag Riots - Life Magazine - 1964 Carmen Valiente - competition entry - 2010 Scale of ships diagrams Hurricane Katrina floodwaters - 2005 Day after Katrina 2005 New Singapore Arts Centre responsive facade Reichert-et-al pine cone studies Wenceslau Bombaim, Peter Bottle competition entry 2010 - (frontcover) Isabel Guadix - competition entry - 2010 Abandoned train depot in Poland Abandoned diamond mine, Siberia Manhattan Niagara -Tsunehisa Kimura’s - 1970

Fig. 34 Fig. 35 Fig. 36 Fig. 37 Fig. 38 Fig. 39 Fig. 40 Fig. 41 Fig. 42 Fig. 43 Fig. 44 Fig. 45 Fig. 46 Fig. 47 Fig. 48 Fig. 49 Fig. 50 Fig. 51 Fig. 52 Fig. 53 Fig. 54 Fig. 55 Fig. 56 Fig. 57 Fig. 58 Fig. 59 Fig. 60 Fig. 61 Fig. 62 Fig. 63 Fig. 64 Fig. 65 Fig. 66 Fig. 67 Fig. 68 Fig. 69 Fig. 70

Darién Montañez - competition entry - 2010 Reinier Herencia - competition entry - 2010 Juan Gutiérrez - competition entry - 2010 Oscar Caro - competition entry - 2010 Ulises García - competition entry - 2010 Love Canal - 1981 Affected communities - 1981 Autopia Ampere - 1970 Apache’s rain ritual ceremony Cloud seeding Cybertecture - 1970 Fab Tree House Mycelium grown arch Biofouling and ship protection Structures ‘Grow Out of the Ocean’ - 1979 Visualisation of growth process Biorcok sample from Maldives - 2001 Experiment at Palm Jumeriah - 2004 Electrolysis set-up diagram Automated weaving of brise soleil Topological material organisation tests Biorock reef construction Biorock Pavilion Growths under Venice Visualisation of factory Visualisation of laboratory pods Visualisation of chamber Vincent Callebaut’s floating eco-villages Shimizu Corporation’s Ocean Spiral Mariculture Kuna Yala islands Natural land bridges Living bridges in Meghalaya, India Bridge formations - visualisations Growing bridges in Canal - visualisations Biorock bridge - short section Biorock bridge - elevation and details

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Acknowledgements I would like to dedicate this thesis to Wolf Hilbertz (1938-2007) for his commitment to exploring inspiring and alternative futures.

I would like to thank the following people for answering my emails and questions: Jovanka Guardia - Redactora Técnica Comunicación y Documentación Histórica Marta E. Guardia - Administrative Affairs Specialist - ACP Luis C. Ferreira - Supervisor, Especialista en Comunicación - ACP Albano Aguilar - ACP Norlan Maldonado - Diver - ACP Margot López - Biomuseo, Tutor and Architect Darién Montañez - Biomuseo, Tutor and Architect Benito De Gracia Marín - Biomuseo and Architecture graduate Daniel Connolly - Architecture graduate and blogger A special thank you to Raisa and Harim, two architecture students that were my primary contacts in Panama who gave up their time to answer my many questions and help with contact details.

Thank you to Erika Schnitter and Alejandro Pachón from the Isthmus School of Architecture, who provided me with the images from the Diseño entre mares competition (2010)- all used images have been credited to their authors.

And finally my tutor Paul Dobraszczyk, for our many wonderful conversations about the complexities and vagaries of our constructed futures.

Fig. 2 Culebra Cut labourers (above), Miraflores Lock Construction (below)- http://www.canalmuseum.com/

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Introduction The Panama Canal represents to this day one of the greatest liberties man has ever taken with nature1. In a monumental act of structural violence, man and machine, in pursuit of an inter-oceanic waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, blasted, dredged and extracted 185,022,275m³ of earth from the Panama Isthmus. The scale was equated by John Barrett to; “a 14 foot wide subway tunnel constructed through the entire 8000 miles of the Earth” (1913, p.46) [fig.3]. Barrett’s equivalent aptly alludes to man’s destructive capabilities and dedication to mastering his environment in the wake of his modernist ambitions.

At the beginning of the twentieth century earth moving was the ultimate “measure of man” (Carse, 2014, p.99). Canals were major conduits for economic profit, but they were also thought to carry social progress. They were arguably more symbolically charged than roads and railways as they entailed the transformation of the earth itself to facilitate movement (Carse, 2014, p.85). The Canal’s completion in 1914 “was held up as a symbol of the triumph of modern man over the worldly constraints of tropical nature, climate, disease, and space” (Carse, 2014, p.99). It is through observation of the seemingly perverse global celebration and domestic acceptance of natural destruction in the 1910s and then again in 2010s during the Canal’s expansion, that this thesis finds the basis for its critique of modern infrastructures, which offer a compelling commentary on both modernism and humanism (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.10).

The politicised oversimplification of megaprojects2, such as the Canal, often overshadows the scale of their immediate and lasting environmental impact. Casper Jensen-et-al identify that when the rubric of poetics and politics are transposed onto infrastructures, a human-centred orientation is retained, which denies engagement with the many forms of cultural 1 Panama Canal Company, Panama Canal Review, 1969 2 “The ultimate symbols of modernism and a rationality that perceives the use of technology for the control and transformation of nature as the ultimate signal of progress” (Rosales, 2007, p.35)

Introduction | 9

Fig. 3 (Barrett, p.14, 1913)

Fig. 4 Culebra Cut 1913 - http://www.canalmuseum.com/

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and environmental activity that proliferate around, and help shape them (Jensen-et-al, 2016, p.7). It is only when our intellectual and ingenious trajectories are nailed down in concrete form are we able to understand, through suffering, their profound cultural and environmental impacts.

The consequences for the Canal’s watershed in particular have sustained unchallenged as a result of political obfuscation and the manipulation of the Canal as a node of global connectivity and more controversially, as the symbolical heart of Panamanian identity.

As described in Paradoxical Infrastructures (2015), modern infrastructures inability to ‘grow’ or adapt to their environments will be the cause of their inescapable fall into disuse. The failure of the Canal’s current administrators, the ACP, (Edificio de La Administración del Canal de Panamá) to consider an alternative future beyond expansion is symptomatic of man’s dedication to the rationale of modernity. The future is therefore precarious.

Infrastructures can often become sources of division, anger and disputes when they are instituted without regard for human equality or natural processes (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.8). A critique is therefore developed of our modern constructs3 and their impact on such fragile processes.

This thesis hopes to expose and challenge the construction industry and global governance’s damaging complicity, as well as expose contemporary architectures’ passivity to effective environmentalism and sustainability as an important contributor. The emerging ecological crisis should divest us all of the illusion that man’s continued Earthly dominance is justifiable and sustainable. It is becoming increasingly evident that our advanced technologies are tying us more closely with the habitats we both make and inhabit and our impact upon them, is in turn resulting on their greater impact on us (Carse, 2014, p.220). In light of general ignorance outside of academia and anthropology to this emergent Anthropocene era, it is apt to suggest that only in crisis does man becomes aware of his impact; “through a complete reversal of Western philosophy’s most cherished trope, human societies have resigned themselves to playing the role of the dumb 3 Physical, political and poetic

Introduction | 11

object, while nature has unexpectedly taken on that of the active subject!

Such is the frightening meaning of “global warming”: through a surprising inversion of background and foreground, it is human history that has become frozen and natural history that is taking on a frenetic pace” (Latour, 2014, p.12). This thesis will endeavour to explore the reductive past of the Canal, and mobilise its developing threats and competitors to create a future crisis of redundancy, in order to speculate on an alternative future that challenges the current cultural and architectural zeitgeist.

Whilst exploring the romanticisms of infrastructural ruin and the paradoxes of retrofit, the work of architect and marine-scientist Wolf Hilbertz and biogeochemist Thomas Goreau, is used to explore an environmentally conscious future for the Canal. Their development of Biorock® as a material process and Cybertecture (1970), as an architectural philosophy, is mobilised to illustrate construction’s potential as a harmonious, complementary and regenerative partner to the natural environment in which it is embedded (Grosz, 2013, p.136).

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Part I

Historical Context “The history of Panama is, to a certain extent, the biography of the Chagres River” - Bonifacio Jiménez (Carse, 2014, p.72) [fig.5] Since the New World, foreign powers have cast covetous eyes over the narrow geography of the Panama Isthmus but it was the French who first attempted a canal construction. Their sea-level canal began in 1881 by La Société Internationale du Canal Interocéanique. However, as a result of ignorance to Panama’s climate, geological conditions and geography – the attempt was ravaged by yellow fever, malaria, landslides and flooding as the Earth fought back [fig.10]. The American ICC (Isthmus Canal Commission) took-over the project and equipment in 1903 and US attempts to gain necessary concessions from Colombia (Hay–Herrán Treaty) to revive construction failed. Declared as an absolute necessity for the general prosperity of all nations (Barrett, 1913, p.103), the US, emboldened by this global obligation, militarily supported Panamanian secessionists separation from Colombia. As a result of this support Panama effectively became a client state of the US, and was divided in two by a strip of American territory, entitled the Canal Zone [fig.9].

The Canal was finally completed in 1914 by the US Corps of Engineers, reducing a vessels Pacific-Atlantic journey from 30-45 days (around South America) to just 8-12 hours. The Canal was celebrated as the greatest single trophy of triumph of man over the terrestrial arrangement of his world (Kearns, 1971, p.235) [fig.7, 8]. After its construction, an interdepartmental group studying the Canal’s future concluded that the continued availability of the waterway was crucial for the security interests of the US and Western Hemisphere (Kearns, 1971, p. 236). As its protection had to be assured, any notions of environmental protection, civil liberties and socio-political priorities appeared meek in the face of safety and security. Continuous operation of the waterway, masked as a global obligation, was the fundamental driving force behind many of the reductive social and environmental strategies deployed around the Canal.

Historical Introduction Context || 13

Fig. 5 Chagres River before and after Canal - https://en.wikisource.org

Fig. 6 Labour arriving - http://www.canalmuseum.com/

Fig. 8 Culebra section - https://en.wikisource.org

Fig. 7 Construction tourists - (Carse, 2014, p.97)

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US policy in Panama was focused on destabilising any political movement that threatened their control of the Canal (Weeks-et-al, 1991, p.27). As a consequence, Panama witnessed a century of corrupt politics and internal social turmoil. Despite the piecemeal handing over of the Canal to Panama (completed in December 1999), the Neutrality Treaty retains the US’s right of intervention if Canal operations are ever threatened.

Omar Torrijos’s (dictator from 1968-81) concerns over this treaty, were controversially realised during Operation Just Cause in 1989 [fig.12].

Historical Introduction Context || 15

Fig. 9 US foreign policy in Panama - https://wolfsonianfiulibrary.files.wordpress.com

Fig. 10 Landslides in the Cuelbra Cut - http://www.ajhw.co.uk

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opening of canal - first boat through image of operation just cause underneath

Fig. 11 Inaugural journey - SS Ancon 1914 - http://www.canalmuseum.com/

Fig. 12 Operation Just Cause - http://www. lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com

Historical Introduction Context || 17

Fig. 13 Rita Centeio (2010)

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Part I

Reductive Past The following exploration of the Canal’s history and operation illustrates it as a complex system of engineered technologies, environmental expertise, and political strategies which also links imperial land and resource enclosures to intimate efforts to control human bodies (Carse, 2014, p.94). It will become clear that the ignorance of the ICC to the significance of the Canal’s watershed environment, resulted in a legacy of profoundly damaging mismanagement.

The US corps of Engineers were defined by a military ideology and epitomised their contemporaries faith in engineering’s capacity to reorganise the planet for humanities boundless ambitions (Carse, 2014, p.100). As man waged war on nature and geology, sixty-one million pounds of dynamite4 were used to obliterate the isthmus and once proud and eternal mountains of Cucaracha. A study in the 1960’s by the U.S Atomic Energy Commission, proposed expanding the narrow waterway further into a sea-level canal using nuclear explosives. Described as the “ultimate in super digging tools” (Kearns, 1971, p.239) [fig.15], Project Plowshare proposed creating a “ditch” to transform the “savage jungle into a new pathway for civilisation” (Rosales, 2007, p.89) [fig.14]. This proposal not only typified man’s ignorance to nature as an active agency and dynamic partner, but illustrated his wanton desire for its annihilation.

To create Lake Gatun in 1908 [fig.1], two hundred square miles of forest were flooded, submerging over 50 pueblos perdido (lost towns) (Carse, 2014, p.111). The purpose of Gatun, which sits 26m above sea-level and holds 203 billion gallons of freshwater, is to provide water for the gravitybased Canal lock-system. 52 million gallons (equivalent to the annual water-footprint of 163 Panamanians) is required for each transit and is lost as the vessel is lowered to sea-level and currently 38-42 transits are made daily through the Canal. The secondary purpose of Gatun was to tame the “moody and inconsiderate” Chagres river by absorbing periodic 4 More explosive energy than all previous US military usage combined

Historical Reductive Introduction Context Past || 19

floodwaters (able to rise 25ft in 24 hours), which previously exerted agency over its users. Many species of animals, fauna, and insects were lost during the flooding, and others had migratory routes and habitats destroyed. Those that survived were forced to higher ground and Barro Colorado Island emerged adventitiously as a result at the heart of Gatun [fig.16, 17]. As a rare environmental positive, the Smithsonian Institute for Tropical Research capitalised on the opportunity to research this intimate and intensely biologically diverse environment. As another unexpected outcome of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean’s union, there was a significant lack of fish species extinction, which according to the Smithsonian’s Eldredge Bermingham; “flies in the face of what was ecological dogma” (New Scientist, 2004). The diverse marine richness that continues to flourish, stands as a reminder of nature’s unpredictable intricacies and eccentricities.

As a symbol of nature’s persistence and adaptability, the Canal’s artificiality facilitated the exponential growth of water hyacinth5. Such dramatic growth illustrates how infrastructures can become inextricably and unwittingly part of their environment; “the canal interacted with webs of social and ecological relationships that were often poorly understood” (Carse, 2014, p.209). The stillness of the waterway enabled the plants transformation into “worrisome floating islands of up to 100ft wide” (Carse, 2014, p.211) and this consequence of conquest, resulted in the blockage of tributaries which became problematic for local communities [fig.18]. A problem that was tackled with the ill-advised use of harmful chemical arsenic-sprays [fig.19]. Though unforeseen, this problem illustrated a lack of awareness of infrastructural embeddedness and how it often redistributes its burdens onto those communities with little power. In response to environmental interventions and manipulations, Ashley Carse introduces the need to “attend to the hybrid nature produced and its lasting implications” instead of responding with harmful reactionary tactics. As another example of short-sightedness, the ICC’s solution to watershed deforestation sterilised swathes of forest, as observed by a local village leader; “in Los Cedros, 5 Alongside; water lettuce, elodea, coontail, cabomba grasses

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there is a project of reforestation with teak and now the ground is dead. You can pass buy the plantation and cannot hear any bird sing” (Rosales, 2007, p.181).

During the early years of the Canal, the watershed was earmarked for agriculture and forests were seen as economic barriers. The importance of trees, in aiding water storage and preventing soil erosion, were unknown concepts to the early ICC. Unlike the historic, sustainable and circulatory farming practices of the local campesino’s, the Panamanian Ministry of Agricultural financially incentivised programs such as Conquest of the Jungle. This initiative contributed to the burning of 35% of the watershed for pastureland, to maximise profits during the 1970-1979 cattle boom (Carse, 2014, p. 61). Loans were made to ranchers without environmental restrictions, which subsequently entrapped them between governmental agricultural ambitions and the sensibilities of the emergent watershed managers (Carse, 2012 p.557). This system of management was created as part of the ICC’s response to the extreme droughts caused by El Niño in the 1970s. As it effected Canal transits, the previous conceptualisation of the watershed as a passive backdrop was reimagined to recognise it as an active living support system for the Canal. Forester Frank Wadsworth’s 1978 report, Deforestation: Death to the Panama Canal, was pivotal in this reorientation and was acknowledged above others as it suggested that continued ignorance of the watershed’s hydrology would transform the famous waterway into a “worthless ditch”. He successfully reframed the watershed as a fragile organism, part of a regional hydro-ecological system that sustains Canal operations. From this moment the Canal’s perception as a thoroughly capable and controllable man-made system dissipated (Carse, 2012, p.550).

Mounting frustrations over ICC authoritarianism and their presence in the zone were given voice during the flag riots of 1964 [fig.21, 22]. The zone became a focal point for conflict and obsessed with the symbolism of flags, which Carmen Valiente’s “waterflow does not care for nations, conflict” entry retrospectively challenges [fig.23].

Historical Reductive Introduction Context Past || 21

Fig. 14 Project Plowshare - www.mragheb.com

Fig. 15 Nuclear test Nevada Desert - http://allday.com

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Fig. 16 The Smithsonian - https://www.ecocircuitospanama.files.wordpress.com/

Fig. 17 Barro Colorado biodiversity - http://www. http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/

Historical Reductive Introduction Context Past || 23

Fig. 18 Threat of hyacinth - http://www.vietnambreakingnews.com/

Fig. 19 Chemical spraying (Carse, 2014, p.214)

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Fig. 20 Connection with water (Carse, 2012, p.84)

Fig. 21 Unapproachable estate cartoon (Rosales, 2007 p.43)

Historical Reductive Introduction Context Past || 25

Rita Centeio’s image challenges the benefit of the expansion to Panamanians, by provocatively submerging all of Panama to create the “ultimate maritime route” - highlighting the domineering importance of economy [fig.13]. The reality is far from beneficial for watershed communities; “we are facing a monster behind a curtain of fog. One tentacle is the ACP and this is part of the strategy of globalisation” (village leader - Rosales, 2007, p.181). Endorsed by the edifice complex (Graham, 2005, p.4), the Canal’s role as a major node in the global corporate economy, has elevated it to an untouchable black box6. As a result Panama remains physically and socially disconnected, as one person’s benevolent infrastructure becomes another person’s burdensome barrier (Howe-et-al, 2015, p10). Panamanians only have access to two crossings and the Centennial Bridge, which carries the Pan-American-highway, is often grid-locked. Though framed as a phenomenon of pure connection, the Canal reveals just how important unspoken disconnection is in the globalised new world order (Carse, 2014, p. 129).

As a result of ignorance and ambition, the Canal’s reduction and portioning of the watershed resource, transposed political-economic agendas into cultural and environmental conflict. Tensions in the watershed were not simply a struggle between ‘global’ and ‘local’ actors over forests as a fixed natural resource, rather they turned on the different ways in which anthropogenic environments are constructed around and incorporated into infrastructures to serve different purposes (Carse, 2014, p.57). This calls the ACP to examine the ethics, ambitions and associated effects of future interventions in and around the Canal. And as a broader provocation to future infrastructures and constructs, it is clear we need to move beyond the question of ‘what nature?’ to ‘whose nature?’ and ‘why nature?’ in order to build in a more just and equitable manner for our natural neighbours (Carse, 2012, p.544).

6 Infrastructures that present their users with no other functional alternative (Graham, 2005, p.7)

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Fig. 22 Flag Riots - Life Magazine

ThreatHistorical and Introduction Competition Context || 27

what is good for panama is good for you propoganda

Fig. 23 Carmen Valiente (2010)

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Part II

Threat and Competition “Don’t build fields of dreams,’ because fields of dreams tend to go with the theory of build it and they will come” – ACP vice-president (Leff, 2011, p.3) The following exploration seeks to build upon the Canal’s heterogeneous environmental embeddedness, to further undermine its perceived infallible future. Through personal correspondence with ACP employees, an unwillingness to acknowledge or share in a future for the Canal beyond trade emerged; “the Canal will continue to maintain the vision of being the “global connectivity leader and driver of Panama’s progress”. And questions of potential redundancy and reuse were ignored or dismissed; “as long as there is business, the existing Canal will be open”7. When questioned about the as yet unbuilt and larger Nicaraguan canal, it was stated; “the ACP welcomes any new serious project that could represent a competition”8 - and that; “competition comes and goes; we have always had it and always will”9.

Chinese billionaire Wang Jing has recently reignited the Nicaraguan debate and it has been acknowledged that its construction could bring an end to Panama’s monopoly on interocenanic operations (Wong, 2015, p.1).

Robert Aguirre’s economic observations expose the Canal’s increasing susceptibility to unpredictable trade dynamics, by highlighting a fall in transits through Panama from the American mid-west, as a direct result of Brazilian soybean and grain competition (2010, p.55-56). Such a shift is representative of the rapidly growing influence of south-south trading routes. César Ducruet’s research on maritime network vulnerability suggests that these connections will begin to fundamentally challenge the “old-Atlantic world” which built the Canal - transforming perceptions of Panama as a facilitator into a trading bottleneck (2015, p.11-16).

Simulation models are currently exploring the North-west passage as 7 Personal correspondence - Jovanka Guardia – 02.02.2016 8 Ibid 9 Personal correspondence – Official ACP - 19.01.2016

ThreatHistorical and Introduction Competition Context || 29

a viable alternative as the receding ice around northern-Canada would offer the shortest and most efficient route between the Pacific and Atlantic (Somanathan-et-al, p.127-132).

As a symptom of commercialism, the 2016 Expansion demonstrates the ACP’s attempt to continue “serving commercial trade as long as the world demands it”10. However, before the historic locks were even completed commentators were predicting vessel growth and Canal obsolescence; “what a discreditable and calamitous thing it would be to have at Panama a canal through which our best ships could not pass. … The true policy is to remember that we are building this canal not for the present but for all time” (Carse, 2014, p.103). The shipyards of China, South Korea and India, in response to shipping companys’ demands, are certain to continue out-pacing Panama’s financial and environmental capacity for further expansion [fig.24]. And unfortunately the increased interest in economyof-scale is financially motivated, driven by high fuel costs, as oppose to genuine environmental concern.

The El Niño weather event presents the most immediate environmental threat to the Canal. The ACP claim they have adopted measures to overcome this phenomenon, thus continuing to acknowledge the environment’s temperament as a challenge and not as a constraint.

Regardless of the aforementioned threats, plans have been drafted for the fourth-lock expansion. This predictable progression, alongside Panama’s overwhelming political, economic and social reliance on the Canal, emboldens this discussion’s speculation on alternative futures and critique of infrastructures as not only justifiable but increasingly vital.

10 Jovanka Guardia

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Fig. 24 Scale of ships compared to Canal chamber

Part II

Threat andAnthropocene Introduction Competition Context || 31 Panama Canal andHistorical the

Panama Canal and the Anthropocene Nature has historically been viewed as a standing reserve to be consumed without thought and consequence. Martin Heidegger suggests that it is our modern technology that creates and dictates this perception.

Described as enframing, nature is not seen as a force but as raw material, to be imposed upon, reduced and extracted; “the revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such” (Bailey, 2014, p.44-62). Under this dictum of technology everything from rivers to cattle, appears as resource, blinding us to the true nature around us. Similar to Heidegger’s observations of the Rhine, the Chagres river was not revealed (as poetry would frame it) as a powerful, beautiful and raging hydrological system dictating its own route, flow and inhabitants. Instead, it was viewed as a controllable and organisable mechanism for transport and an opportunity for a canal system to reveal and unlock; “all things organic are dying in the grip of the vice of organization. An artificial world is permeating and poisoning the natural...We think only in horsepower now; we cannot look at a waterfall without mentally turning it into electrical power - Oswald Spenglar” (Bailey, 2014, p.44-62). Under this perception the Panama Canal can be viewed as an inevitable product of its environment whilst epitomising man’s becoming as a true geophysical force to create it (Steffen-et-al, 2007, p.164). Architecture and construction have become integral to sustaining this damaging perception. The industry cannot afford to continue accepting this as the norm or its exploitation of nature will become irrevocable.

The Anthropocene, popularised in 2000 by Paul Curtzen, is used to describe our current geological age in which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and environment. According to Will Steffen; “human activities have become so pervasive and profound that they rival the great forces of Nature...pushing the Earth into planetary terraincognita. The Earth is rapidly moving into a less biologically diverse, state” (2007, p.614). Anthropologists suggest this began after industrialisation

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in the 1800s as humans, empowered by machines, were able to extract, destroy and produce on an unprecedented, highly efficient scale. The writings of Bruno Latour eloquently typify the contemporary cultural profundity of this acknowledgement; “the Earth has become - has become again! - an active, local, limited, sensitive, fragile, quaking, and easily tickled envelope” (2014, p.3). The superficial increase in protection of the Canal’s watershed during the 1980s, was indicative of man’s slowly emerging awareness. Societies and organisations have been perversely documenting human impact, without reaction, since the late 20th century. Modernity, production, accumulation and technological advancement have become the world’s religion, and as a result the scale of the planet’s environmental strain has been obfuscated. The problems posed by the Anthropocene issue are highly controversial, as they challenge much of our modern world’s established socio-political structures, economic strategies and cultural values – established to support globalisation. The peasants from the mountains of Colon, Cocle and Panama have given voice to this challenge, but join the long list of unheard rural, indigenous residents daring to challenge the power of global capitalism (Rosales, 2007, p.237).

The Canal’s intense and dynamic relationship with its watershed environment, hydrology and geology illustrates the active and interdependent partnership with nature that man has unintentionally created. Modern infrastructures around the World are subjected to this connection in varying degrees of intensity11. As such, the aforementioned water hyacinth and its troublesome growth offers a poignant reminder that engineering marvels do not free us from the limitations of environments but bind us more tightly and contentiously to their landscapes and waterscapes (Carse, 2014, p.217). Societies in turn, continue to firmly bind themselves to such widely distributed, multi-layered and compromised infrastructural systems (Sims, 2007, p.94). The Canal’s joining of two oceans pays homage to infrastructures promise of human emancipation from natural constraints. However, its embedded environmental complexities and economic commitments reveal how infrastructures paradoxically 11 Difficult for architects to measure and therefore address (Turpin, 2013 p.22)

Threat andAnthropocene Introduction Competition Context || 33 Panama Canal andHistorical the

generate and magnify societal precarity in the Anthropocene (Howeet-al, 2015, p.9). Herein lies the most concerning threat to the Canal’s future whilst exposing the fallacy of its infrastructural invulnerability. As Latour’s actor-network theory suggests; it is vitally important to consider urban infrastructures as complex assemblages that bring all manner of human, non human, and natural agents into a multitude of continuous liaisons (Graham, 2010, p.11). Our future infrastructural trajectories will play a vital role in how these relationships develop, yet Panama continues to bind itself to the linear and weakening future of its transit orientated waterway.

Nature is inherently unpredictable, particularly when man has sought to harness or tame its agency and the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2005 poignantly deflated the assumption that wealthy, technologically advanced societies can handle natural forces (Sims, 2007, p.94) [fig.25, 26]. The Canal is precariously located on the Pedro Miguel seismic faultline, however similar arrogant confidence is entrenched in it’s engineered resilience; “all suggestion or speculation that these and the other locks might some day be destroyed by earthquake is unwarranted. They are as solid and eternal as the hills of Panama” (Barrett, 1913, p.55). However concern amongst geologists is increasing around the potential threat posed to the lock gates that contain Gatun’s vast water reserve (Coghlan, 2010).

To underpin the prevailing ignorance of the Anthropocene, Steffen identifies that any desire to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions is overwhelmed by global reliance on fossil fuels. Already this self-indulgence has degraded 60% of the planet’s ecosystem services.

Environmental protection, despite evident destruction, remains in the background and is often only triggered in response to crisis – such as water shortage. Reactionary responses, as societies default, fail to progress beyond causation, and only address immediate problems as easy political wins. John Dewey identifies that this is not caused by a lack of technological development, but the fault of those in control who utilise them for self-promotion and self-affirmation (Guy-et-al, 2007, p.9). In the Panamanian context, the supposedly proactive measures of forest guards

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and engineered dams, only succeed in underpinning a surface-level approach to environmentalism that permeates throughout contemporary construction and as dams typify, much of our advanced technologies are themselves generated from and contribute further to environmentally harmful practices.

Biomimicry has emerged as one of architecture’s key responses to environmentalism and sustainable design, seeking to mimic qualities of natural systems and constructs. However the architectural reality is often a slavish imitation, superficially employing organic forms or naturalistic mechanisms in search of environmental credentials (Aldersey-Williams, 2004, p.279). The New Singapore Arts Centre by Atelier One, embodies such a pursuit. Inspired by the regulatory qualities of polar bears fur, their responsive facade, whilst improving internal cooling, is symptomatic of an imitation that relies on standardised materials, construction and electricity to function [fig.27]. Reichert-et-al have also developed a responsive building skin through practical material research and computer-aided design. Unlike the Arts Centre however, the multi-disciplinary team developed a new material technology and production process, that capitalises on woods inbuilt hygroscopic actuation as a biomimetic approach to design. The result was a truly responsive facade system, that opens and closes without electricity (reacting to humidity) as naturally as a pine cone [fig.28]. Such experimental work is indicative of architectures potential to progress into an inherently sustainably conscious profession.

However as James Wiudhuysen identifies the majority of “architects much prefer fooling around in virtual space than in the real sort. There’s some vulgar ‘green’ thinking, but they can’t be bothered with the actual engineering.

There’s a latent interest in biology, but little actual knowledge” (AlderseyWilliams, 2004, p.279). In normative construction, this green thinking is contained further by politicised green agendas, ineffective building codes and standardised material specifications – compliance with which is often a tick-box exercise.

As Reichert-et-al’s biomimetic work progresses beyond imitation, it is more reflective of the dynamism, ingenuity and receptiveness of natural

Threat andAnthropocene Introduction Competition Context || 35 Panama Canal andHistorical the

Fig. 25 Floodwaters along Inner Harbour Navigational Canal - http://www.nbcnews.com/

Fig. 26 - Katrina aftermath - http://www.newsweek.com/

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processes and systems, and therefore more capable of coexistence. The work of bioengineer Michelle Oyen explores the properties of bone, eggshell, seashells and spider’s silk as alternatives to unsustainable steel and concrete. In a direct criticism to normative material creation, she states that; “where nature does these things cleverly, using information, engineers just throw energy at them” (Fleming, 2016, p.2). The beauty of Oyen’s material studies is their ability to grow in gentle and low-energy production conditions (similar to Biorock, explored shortly). Herein lies a vital and potentially revolutionary provocation to the construction industry, which is responsible for over a third of global carbon emissions.

It is clear from the proceeding precedents that in order to generate alternative material futures, architecture needs to stretch its crossdisciplinary potential to connect design with the expertises of; anthropologists, bio-engineers, humanists, geographers, foresters, geologists and botanists, in order to address the complexities and threats of the Anthropocene. Instead of notions of mastery and our technological enframing of nature, our future architectures and infrastructures will only become responsibly embedded, and adaptable to their environments when they accept that neither man or nature is in command.

Threat andAnthropocene Introduction Competition Context || 37 Panama Canal andHistorical the

Fig. 27 Atelier One’s automated facade - http://www.mero.de/

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Fig. 28 Reichert-et-al responsive facade - http://www.newsweek.com/

Threat andAnthropocene Introduction Competition Context || 39 Panama Canal andHistorical the

Fig. 29 Wenceslau Bombaim, Peter Bottle (2010)

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Part III

Ruin and Retrofit “Why did we build such big factories here? Why did this become the dream of the age? What made so many individuals willingly sacrifice themselves to realise it? Why did we want to create a world that has now collapsed” (Xinyu, 2005, p.132) It is clear from personal communication with the ACP and local Panamanians, that the idea of the Canal’s future failure or redundancy is unthinkable. The expansion project and “constant maintenance program” of the existing locks demonstrates the staunch commitment to their linear future. As described by the ACP; “the existing locks underwent a program of modernization including the operating system in the control rooms, new hydraulic cylinders to open and close mitre gates, replacement of damaged concrete to extend the life period, and many other significant upgrades”12.

Such retrofitting sustains the Canal’s futurological orientation, yet this is paradoxically constrained to the present by the use of presentday materials and technologies. The retrofitting of infrastructures also produces an ontological oxymoron; “retrofit is an attempt to bridge timelines - from the past to the present and from the present to the future but the need to retrofit, retool, and refurbish infrastructures makes clear that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual” (Howe-et-at, 2015 , p.7). The use of normative materials also prolongs the rigidity and permanence of established systems, and in light of the Anthropocene, precariously prolongs a reliance on unadaptable and unresponsive constructs. Modern infrastructures then, are not permanent but processual (Carse, 2014, p.219). As Hilbertz’s research will later highlight, materials and construction processes need to progress beyond the standardised palette in order to appease the apparent human inability to manage and engage with temporality. The notions of growing architecture and regenerative materials may begin to unlock this philosophical barrier.

12 Jovanka Guardia

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Without fundamental change in orientation, the Canal’s fixed and immobile capital may become enslaved by cyclical maintenance. The complexity of the required improvements are a result of the demanding environment13 created in the former Chagres basin. It is evident that Canal operations and fabric would quickly fall apart if its plethora of assembled technologies were left unmaintained. Once demanding environments have been established, a great impetus emerges to continue and even expand maintenance investment. Given Panama’s socio-political entanglement with the Canal’s symbolism and global commitments, the willingness to invest in alternative futures and other socially beneficial projects will continue to suffer.

Infrastructural networks, under their contemporary culture of normalisation, have sustained their characterisations of perfect order, completeness and internal homogeneity and thus have become guarantors of social and economic prosperity. (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.6). However to those who maintain them, they are indelibly leaky, partial and heterogeneous entities (Graham-et-al, 2005, p.8), thus frequent maintenance is often kept hidden as it exposes infrastructures as intrinsically vulnerable.

It is when such complex assemblages face unpredicted strain, that our traditional engineered solutions are exposed as, stiff, unresponsive and unadaptable. Through exploring the notions of redundancy and ruination, this thesis will hopefully aid in shocking the existing system into considering alternatives, in order to avoid history being repeated, as suggested by Isabel Guadix’s “open again” proposition [fig.30]. As Xinyu poetically explores in Ruins of the Future, many societies exist amongst architectural and infrastructural ruins, where decay and breakdown have replaced symbols of grandeur and optimism (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.4). The industrial decline in Germany’s Ruhr, Northern England and Northern China, the disuse of British canal-ways, the abandoned mines of Siberia [fig.32] and redundant military paraphernalia along the Canal, exist amongst 13 “They produce different experiences of control over, or separation from, the non-human world, while increasing vulnerability to its variability” (Carse, 2015 p.220)

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countless others as testaments to man’s fickle ambitions, wastefulness and insatiable expansion. However such phenomenons of fragmentation, devastation and despair have been developed and choreographed for fantastical entertainment. Films, video games and novels have become preoccupied with scenarios of environmental and urban collapse, replete with annihilated cities and societal breakdowns (Graham-et-al, 2005, p.19) [fig.33]. Societies have become saturated with dystopic visions and yet we continue to charge head-on towards their inevitabilities by ignoring clear natural and cultural warnings. In accordance, the Panama Canal may continue to dangerously and arrogantly thrive until the precipice, as Wenceslau Bombaim-et-al’s illustration suggests; “I was born a Canal. I used to be crossed by ship containers, from here and from there. Today, they go where I say, they do what I tell them” [fig.29].

Nature is constantly straining against its chains: probing for weak points, even a speck of rust....at either end of the scale, natural energies are capable of opening breaches that can quickly unravel the cultural order. Akin to the botany dominated future of Jefferies After London (Davis, 2002, p.371), it is the water hyacinth that would emerge as the initial protagonist in Panama. The locked gates, abandoned chambers and ship-less waters would be overwhelmed by predatory and unbounded growth – clogging mechanisms and overpowering marine life. Over time the water storage reservoirs would empty as their metal gates failed. Sediment would block undredged channels and the raging Chagres River would emerge from the Canal and follow its old channel to the Atlantic. As the Culebra Cut dried up, Panama would once again be reunited. The unleashed and ferocious waters would overpower the ecological and cultural systems of the watershed - this time without engineered mediation. The once drowned forests would re-emerge, and the intensity of Barro Colorado’s ecology would dissipate. The concrete chambers would be left as ironic monolithic monuments to infrastructures permanence and the result of nature’s return to dominance would be unknown; “would cities/infrastructures be reclaimed by the original ecology or by something else, possibly more like a chimera?” (Davis, 2002, p.362).

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Fig. 30 Isabel Guadix (2010)

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redundant structures

Fig. 31 Abandoned train depot, Poland - http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Fig. 32 - Abandoned diamond mine, Siberia - http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

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annihalted visions

Fig. 33 Manhattan Niagara - Tsunehisa Kimura’s (1970)

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Following global trends, Panama’s redundant waterway could become desirable to real estate, explored in Darién Montañez’s oppressive skyscraper vision [fig.34], or to eco-tourism, explored by Reinier Herencia [fig.35]. However such strategies would continue reductive construction practices and environmental oppression, whereas the engineered landscapes of Oscar Caro [fig.37] and Juan Gutiérrez [fig.36], suggest balance and mediation between natural and human demands.

When discussing possible futures for infrastructural redundancy Managing the Toxic Waste Problem; Lessons from the Love Canal (1981) must be noted as it exposes the horrendous capabilities and consequences of human ignorance and mindless opportunism, when abandoned constructed capital becomes disused [fig.39, 40]. The Hooker Chemical Company’s burying of toxic waste in the Love Canal, Niagara Falls, established a ticking “time bomb” (1981, p.146) which resulted in the dramatic increase of miscarriages and birth defects within the unaware surrounding community.

The notions of ruination have become romanticised thus undermining their impotence as a provocation for change. Its inevitability is therefore dismissed or misunderstood until its social, emotional and psychological afflictions become a reality. It is then we see “in the burned-out facades, not the blooming flower of romanticism, but the daemonic spirit of destruction, decay and apocalypse” (Davis, 2002, p.380). Such visions, whilst attempting to provoke engagement with futures, often fail to contribute strategies of prevention, mitigation or proactive reaction. The reality of a redundant Canal would be the systematic failure of the numerous entangled businesses, households, structures, workplaces and social infrastructures. The scale of tragedy and its potential therefore deserves far more consideration than Ulises García’s romanticised image of the Canal’s return to nature [fig.38].

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Fig. 34 Darién Montañez (2010)

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Fig. 35 Reinier Herencia (2010)

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Fig. 36 Juan GutiĂŠrrez (2010)

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Fig. 37 Oscar Caro (2010)

Introduction | 51

Fig. 38 Ulises GarcĂ­a (2010)

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Fig. 39 Love Canal http://www.postlandfill.org

Fig. 40 Affected communities - https://adamsmary.files.wordpress.com

Introduction | 53

Fig. 41 Autopia Ampere (1970)

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Part III

An Alternative Future An awareness of the Anthropocene offers architects, theorists and social scientists the occasion to focus their efforts on the struggle for greater socialenvironmental justice. The widely documented ecological turmoil should be mobilised to challenge the established cultural, social, economical and political modus-operandi. Construction professionals should not continue as spectators, but become agents of change. Our contemporary focus needs to be on developing; “formations adequate to the politics of hypercomplexity that accompany our post-natural inhabitations of the earth” (Dorrian, 2013, p.10). Within this space, this thesis has found the opportunity to explore the pioneering theories and experimental studies of Hilbertz and Goreau, to generate an alternative future for the Panama Canal.

As a precursor, there are three philosophical approaches to dealing with the future according to Steffen-et-al. The first, of which the ACP is pursuing, is business-as-usual. In light of the Anthropocene this approach is dangerously naive as it is conceivable that the irreversible thresholds, observed in cryospheric models of rising sea-levels, could be passed in the next few decades (Steffen-et-al, 2007, p.619). The second approach is mitigation which acknowledges the need to act proactively, to reduce the scale and rate of human impact on global environments, through changes in cultural norms. Though a vital step, this approach will become increasingly strained as the world population and its demands continue to grow. The third approach, geoengineering, sustains man’s arrogant belief that he can harness all natural agency and such powerful manipulations of global-scale Earth systems would only be able to stabilise atmospheric CO² concentrations. As Mark Dorrian identifies such utopian climatology is not a new phenomenon, but part of a long history of weather control; once a familiar objective of ritual practices (2013, p.145) [fig.42]. Modern technological capability has far outdated such reliance on spirituality. The principle of cloud seeding [fig.43], developed by Vincent Schaefer in the 1940s, could be employed during El Niño to ensure rainfall for the Canal

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Fig. 42 Apache’s rain ritual - https://whatsnewcontemporary.wordpress.com/

Fig. 43 Cloud seeding http://www.industrytap.com/

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- as considered by Zamboanga, Philipinnes14 to mitigate their effects of El Niño. However its US weaponisation during the Vietnam war, illuminated the ethical and environmental dilemmas of such an approach.

The ambitions, theories and experimentations of Hilbertz and Goreau, demonstrate an approach that progresses beyond mitigation into regeneration and envisages a much more subtle and natural response to climatic mediation, than the bluntness of geoengineering. Key to their philosophy, outlined in Hilbertz’s 1992 manifesto, was; architectures understanding and enhancing of life processes by tenderly marshalling natural cycles (i.e. carbon, oxygen, nitrogen) in order to keep our largest life-support systems as original and sound as possible (p.119127). They proposed that materials and constructs should be grown by artificial or natural means using only renewable energy for production.

They championed the natural growth of constructs, as it offers potential enhancement of biodiversity during growth, life cycle and recycling. Their ambitions for a new paradigm of ecological construction, was supported by their theoretical engagement with cybernetics and technological intelligence. Hilbertz and Goreau’s engagement with anthropogenic environments, material experimentation and futurist technological cooperation during the 1970-1990s, demonstrated a profoundly anticipatory and pioneering awareness of the then relatively unknown Anthropocene. And their work has become part of a progressive interest in growing architecture. Phil Ross is exploring mycelium construction, for a fungal grown future [fig.45] and Mitchell Joachim-et-al is exploring grafting willow and plants to form homes [fig.46] and the process of 3D -printing with organic matter.

Hilbertz established his theoretical vision for an appropriate architecture of the future in his 1970 paper, Towards Cybertecture [fig.44]. His research describes present-day buildings as being paralysed by “their linear thought process, the concepts of ‘cause and effect’, ‘energy and matter’, [as] the paradigm of the first industrial revolution” (p.97). In reaction to such 14 Proposed by the City Agriculturist Office in 2016

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Fig. 44 Cybertecture (1970)

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Fig. 45 Fab-Tree-House - http://www.archinode.com

Fig. 46 Mycelium arch - http://materiability.com

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inadequacies he developed cybertecture (CYBERnetics+archiTECTURE) as; “an attempt to formulate a conceptual framework for an evolutionary environmental system. The space-time continuum is organised ecosystematically, i.e as it relates to a complex ecological community and environment forming a functioning whole in nature. The effort is to explore an alternative to the wealth of romanticisms and piecemeal operations which are the generators of the ever increasing chaos of our habitat” (1970, p.98).

Hilbertz’s system consisted of three elements; the computer (comparable to the brain), material distribution and reclamation (described in current computation as topological material organisation) and sensing structures - able to respond to environmental fluctuations similar to the hygroscopic actuation of Reichert-et-al’s pine cones.

This visionary system seeks to blend bodies, technologies, social relations, and biospheric systems, into a cyborg architecture which has become a key focus of science-fiction (Graham, 2005, p.12). Yet beyond this festishising, the idea of merging such conventionally distinct entities and systems, is far more reflective of the complex ecological, sociological and biological entanglements our modern infrastructures have created with our environment. As the Canal and its watershed have demonstrated; “where infrastructure meets and conjoins with the organic, the ecological, and the hydrological, we find spots of corrosion, melt, and leakage where one becomes a part of the other” (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.11). Therefore a reciprocity of complexity would appear to be a far more capable approach to the future of our architectures than autonomous engineered solutions.

The philosophy of cybertecture also aims to reverse the historic process of man’s adaptation to and of the environment. Through engagement with natural responsiveness and adaptability, habitats would become environmentally and socially holistic, as encapsulated in Hilbertz and Fallis’s Autopia Ampere (1979) [fig.41] and Ross’s Fab-Tree-House. It is clear that the scale and complexity of such future orientations is demanding of multi-disciplinary understanding, cooperation and action - as an architect and marine scientist Hilbertz was himself a fine example. The traditional boundaries between construction, art, science and philosophy need to be thoroughly redrawn in order to enable architecture and construction to

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Fig. 47 Biofouling and ship protection

Fig. 48 ‘Grow Out of the Ocean’ (1979)

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become a trans-disciplinary practice and truly effective mechanism for progressing beyond theory. Therefore awareness of Hilbertz’s and Goreau’s practical work is deserving of recognition and can be used to illuminate a most inspiring future.

The use of electrolysis to protect ship hulls from the build up of organisms was the unusual origin of their research [fig.47]. Hilbertz saw this growth problem as an opportunity and developed the process into his patented Biorock technology. Inspired by marine organisms ability to grow highly specific architectures, Hilbertz found that under low electrical current he could grow extremely hard calcium carbonate limestone deposits around metal [fig.50]. As a professor at University of Texas Symbiotic Process Laboratory, Hilbertz was able to test their structural qualities and found that a year’s growth had the compressive strength of 80 MegaPascals - three times that of concrete. Hilbertz and his laboratory undertook field tests in different oceans to test the impact of temperature, salinity and marinelife [fig. 41]. Even after initial studies, Hilbertz believed that this mineral accretion process could become a strong primary building material (1979, p.6). He later merged his futurist architectural philosophy with Biorock’s theoretical ability to grow around complex mega-structures, to envisage cities emerging from the ocean [fig.48].

Hilbertz’s practical ambition was to grow prefabricated elements for construction and acknowledged shell structures as the most effective form [fig.49, 51]. As Hilbertz championed, the material and its production presents a viable alternative to the environmentally damaging concrete industry which produces over 2 billion tonnes annually (5% of global CO2 emissions). The process uses minimal electricity (1.23V), which can be generated by the motion of moving water. Though material production is slower than concrete, it is comparably cheaper, and able to grow complex geometries without the need for expensive form-works and intense labour (2012, p.289). However, the indoctrinated fixations on profit and efficiencies rendered Hibertz’s construction propositions unviable.

Nevertheless we cannot afford to allow such capitalist exasperations to restrict the type of pioneering research and experimentation that is being

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Fig. 49 Visualisation of growth process

birock images

Fig. 50 Grown over five years - Maldives, Hilbertz-et-al (2001)

Fig. 51 Palm Jumeriah - Hilbertz-et-al (2004)

test set up

Fig. 52 Electrolysis set-up - Hilbertz-et-al (2012)

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images from cureton

Fig. 53 Automated weaving, Autopia Ampere - Hilbertz-et-al (1970)

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topological organisation and bone images

Fig. 54 Topological material organisation - SolidWorks Inspire

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demanded by the Anthropocene.

The Biorock process exhorts the type of challenges that the construction industry will need to face if it is to pursue a future of coexistence, balance and natural adaptability. The benefits of Biorock that should embolden such preoccupation exist within its environmental and ecological qualities. Instead of just mitigating carbon emissions, Biorock acts as a natural sink for CO² - which is the cornerstone of any regenerative future.

The material also has an inherent plasticity, as it has the ability to be grown and adapted for purpose which forgoes the contemporary ills of overproduction and waste. Such plasticity, as a major principle of organic evolution, allows Biorock constructs to be augmented to ensure valid developments within evolving local or global environments. (Hilbertz, 1979, p.17). In conjunction, emerging computational algorithms, based on bone growth, could be employed to minimise density and maximise structure efficiency in Biorock growths [fig.54]. Futures, similar to those envisaged in Hilbertz’s cybertecture [fig.53], begin emerge as realistic alternatives.

Hilbertz and Goreau noticed that the accretion process also doubled as artificial reefs, enabling the visionary prospect of combing aquaculture facilities and building component factories. This duality identifies Biorock as one of the few building materials capable of enhancing and regenerating surrounding ecology, whilst producing for human ventures. A truly evolutionary socio-environmental future begins to emerge, that thrives on dynamic, stimulating interrelationships and rich connections with nature; “man, his extensions and nature simultaneously being; beginning and end, originator and result, producer and user” (Jensen-et-al, 2016, p.7).

As they were unable to realise their materials potential in large-scale building, their focused turned to marine ecology. The technology greatly accelerates coral settlement, growth, healing and survival. The process creates the ideal biophysical conditions that all forms of life use to make biochemicalenergy, and the replenished corals enrich surrounding marine-life [fig.55]. The net chemical reaction of the process is neutral

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coral images

Fig. 55 Biorock construction - Bali (2004)

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PH and can be employed to temper ocean acidification or alkalinity, and improve resistance to coral bleaching.

The potential of Biorock has received some noteworthy attention in contemporary architecture. The architecture firm Exploration in collaboration with Goreau, designed the Biorock Pavilion in 2014. Proposed as an amphitheatre, the growth is tailored to mimic a nautilus shell, but is a shallow and uninspiring demonstration of the materials potential [fig.56].

Rachel Armstrong envisaged the generation of a limestone-like reef under Venice as foundational supports to prevent its further sinking [fig.57].

However the reef would be artificially grown using protocell technology; an emerging field of synthetic biology, in which cocktails of non-living chemicals are combined to exhibit the properties of living organisms. An interesting interpretation of Biorock, but one that is limited to proppingup the old order.

As the threat of Canal redundancy develops, the Biorock process and its inherent rationality and capabilities could find an opportunity in crisis.

The Canal could be tailored to specifically support and repair, instead of extract, the unique and complex tropical environment and marine ecology that surrounds it. Such an ambitious proposal would stand as a global precedent and empower Panama to out-source an alternative future, instead of facilitating a present maritime trend. The required retrofit would progress beyond system upgrades, and be emboldened by its truly future conscious orientation. The obsolete lock chambers would be transformed into a production facility for the fabrication and growth of components or entire constructions. The water-filled-chambers, would provide a highly controllable environment for testing of large-scale growths, that would then progress into a configurable and multi-purpose production facility. Employment of Hilbertz’s “moveable articulated form generators” on gantries along the Canal walls, could be used to print or weave various wire-frame forms in the chamber below by “continuously unspooling cathodic material” (1979, p.17). Hilbertz’s anticipation of the current 3D-printing phenomenon in conjunction with mineral accretion, demonstrates a potentially ground-breaking merger of technology, artifice

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biorock pavilion venice

Fig. 56 Biorock Pavilion - http://www.exploration-architecture.com

Fig. 57 Growths under Venice - http://www.dezeen.com/

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and nature. In theory, the Canal could sustainably grow whole habitats or infrastructural components, with little human interaction beyond the design process. During the growing process the site would develop to occupy educational platforms seeking to advance the capabilities of the material through hybridisation and experimentation. In conjunction with fabrication, the site would develop to include Smithsonian marine labs. Their renowned expertise would be used to further fuse ecological concerns with construction based agendas. A true, multi-disciplined and symbiotic research environment would emerge [fig.58, 59,60].

As envisaged by Hilbertz and Goreau, the facilities could be used to create floating habitats and industrial islands, mariculture facilities, breakwaters, dams and jetties, bridges, tunnels, airports (1979, p.17). Such potential, suggests that Biorock could more sustainably realise contemporary interests in underwater habitats and oceanscrapers [fig.61, 62] – which share uncanny similarities with Hilbertz’s Autopia Ampere. Unlike Biorock constructs, these contemporary visions sit uncomfortably in their environments, as invasive objects that surreptitiously float as luxurious visions of submerged habitation constructed from standard materials.

Within the Canal’s proposed alternative future and through continued maintenance of the watershed, the previously displaced communities would be able to reconnect with their historically important waterways.

Biorock and the Canal would become a cheap and locally accessible facility for community projects - empowering life and livelihoods, instead of subjecting them to the whims of global economy. The potential in growing islands could specifically benefit the indigenous Kuna Yala in expanding their territory on the Pacific coast whilst enhancing their marine ecology as a sustainable source of food [fig.63, 64]. The ability of Biorock to selfrepair when a low-current is still active, also suggests a resilience greater than timber, steel and concrete to forceful weather conditions. Even in redundancy or ruin, Biorock constructs can be recycled or integrated into their environment, unlike contemporary materials that require large amounts of energy to re-appropriate or are left as wasteful stains.

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Fig. 58 Visualisation of factory

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my drawings

Fig. 59 Visualisation of laboratories

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Marine Laboratory Floating Rigs

Fig. 60 Visualisation of chamber

Growth Testing

Fabrication Lab

Observation Filtration Pods Cover

Testing Rig

Bridge Cranes

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The notion of growing a bridge perhaps offers the most profound and symbolically charged appropriation of Biorock [fig.67, 68]. Bridges could be grown in sections or in their entirety in the lock chambers, to reflect the qualities of human-guided growth of living bridges [fig.66]. Such growths would then be transported along the waterway and installed where required to span the Canal. In a reversal of its divisive and dividing past, the Canal could be used to restitch Panama’s divided environment, habitats and cities back together [fig.69, 70].

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oceanscrapers

Fig. 61 Vincent Callebaut’s floating eco-villages - http://edition.cnn.com

Fig. 62 Shimizu Corporation’s Ocean Spiral - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

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Fig. 63 Mariculture - Hilbertz and Goreau (1991)

Fig. 64 Kuna Yala islands

land bridges and natural bridges

Fig. 65 Natural land bridges - http://google.com

Fig. 66 Living bridges - India - www.rootbridges.blogspot.com

my bridge growth

Fig. 67 Bridge formations and Biorock growth potential

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my bridge growth

Fig. 68 Growing bridges in the Canal

Fig. 69 Biorock bridge - short section Pedestrian walkway

Cycle lane

Vehicle lane - x3

Service distribution

Vehicle lane - x3

Pedestrian walkway

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Biorock barrier

Drainage Road surface Reinforced Biorock

Fig. 70 Biorock bridge - elevation and details

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Conclusion This exploration of Cybertecture and Biorock has used the exciting potential of growing architecture to envisage an alternative, proactive, and regenerative future for the Panama Canal. Such an opportunity presents an inspiring precedent for construction in need of guidance through an increasingly murky and complex Anthropocene era. As an example of modern infrastructure, the Canal has provided a particularly poignant locale in which to explore the increasingly imposing challenges; given its environmental embeddedness, politicised symbolism and historic exploitation. The Canal’s unseen vulnerabilities, unspoken fallibility and overlooked environmental impact, have been explored in order to demystify the established and dangerously misleading faith in modern infrastructure and our technologically informed perceptions of nature.

Modern cultures self-inflicted entanglement and interdependency with natural agencies has been exemplified by the Canal’s complex relationship within its watershed. Under acknowledgement of the Anthropocene, humans are no longer submitted to the diktats of objective nature, since what comes to them is also an intensively subjective form of action. To be a subject is not to act autonomously in front of an objective background, but to share agency with other subjects that have also lost their autonomy.

It is because we are now confronted with those subjects - or rather quasisubjects - that we have to shift away from our historic dreams of mastery as well as from the overindulged threat of being fully naturalized (Latour, 2014, p.5).

Exploration of the Canal’s reductive past and politicised history has been vital in establishing a platform for speculation of an alternative future. It is only through learning how to see from the limitations of a particular place that we can appreciate human complicity in and responsibility for constructing and reconstructing the world (Guy-et-al, 2007, p.18).

The Biorock process, as a material output and architectural philosophy seeks to reorientate humanity from its “one way entropic me-first energy

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wastings, to its syntropic, circulatory, synergetical, you-and-we cosmic ecology regenerating functions” (Cuerton, 2013, p. 25). Mobilisation of Biorock’s qualities and opportunities, infused with Hilbertz’s technological speculations, has enabled this discussion to imagine future architectures and infrastructures as ecologically sensitive, adaptive and communicative constructs that are receptive instead of resistant to feedback from biological systems (Howe-et-al, 2015, p.12). As a result of Hilbertz and Goreau’s multi-disciplinary approach to practical prototyping and technological innovation, their work becomes far more relevant to the Anthropocene than theorists who contain their ideas to rhetoric, and practitioners who obsess with self-indulgent biomimicry.

The importance of material experimentation, biomimetics and crossdisciplinary practice also poses more of a specific challenge to architects’ established reliance on the virtual object. Unlike natural systems, growths and materials, modern tools and their material outputs inherently lack the qualities of becoming. The rigidity and predictability of mainstream computational systems therefore restrict, and are unable to anticipate and appropriate natural responsiveness to changing environments in their designs. The contemporary obsession with prefabricated components and standardised BIM-softwares, not only represent shallow attempts at environmentalism, but they fix construction into a predictably linear and reductive future. If we are to generate truly sustainable materials and responsive architectures, lessons lay in fluctuating variables, unpredictable experimentation and plasticity; principles which are inherent within nature’s intricacies.

The real challenge facing the Canal’s orientation beyond businessas-usual, is the required destabilisation and reconfiguration of the established and conservative norms of our modern World’s societies, politics, cultures and economics, that support the isolation of design and practice from multi-disciplinary research and experimentation (Guy-etal, 2007, p.22). Only when such systems have been broken down, can new modes of architectural philosophy and production proactively reorientate the profession into an instrument for socio-environmental cooperation.

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Able to inform and inspire ecological citizenship15, architecture and its inherent social conscience will become increasingly vital in facilitating such a transition.

Through observations of modern infrastructure and its potential redundancy, this speculative exploration will help provoke further discussion regarding alternative futures, not only for the Canal, but for all modern constructs.

Hopefully this thesis will contribute to a growing body of work, seeking to encourage our constructed futures progression away from reductive and mitigating environments, and towards the creation of evolutionary environments, as the most capable social, cultural and environmental response to the Anthropocene question.

15 Without substantial civic participation, environmental problems cannot be solved

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