Lunch9: Excess

lunch volume 9: in excess

IN EXCESS lunch | university of virginia www.uvalunch.com ISBN: 978-0-9894453-1-3

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THE DESIGN-RESEARCH JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

VOLUME 9

LUNCH9 in excess

lunch9: In Excess University of Virginia School of Architecture Campbell Hall PO Box 400122 Charlottesville VA 22904-4122 www.uvalunch.com EDITORS: Sarah E. Brummett, Sarah Beth McKay, Tammy Teng ADVISING EDITORS: Danielle Alexander, Nicholas Knodt, Clayton Williams LUNCH 9 TEAM: Alan Ford, Amanda Coen, Amanda Goodman, Arden Nguyen, Bella Purdy, Chad Miller, Chris Young, Katie Gleysteen, Katie Gronsky, Margaret Nersten, Margaret Rew, Marina Michael, Sam Manock, Stephen Hobbs, and Yishou Wang SPECIAL THANKS TO: Dean Kim Tazner, Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh, Iñaki Alday, Robin Dripps, Rebecca Cooper, Allen Lee, Nana Last, Matt Pinyan, and Paper Matters Press Copyright © 2014 Lunch Journal Copyright © 2014 University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia All rights reserved

ISBN-13: 978-0-9894453-1-3 ISSN: 1931-7786

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CITY OF TROPES AN EXCESS IN ARCHITECTURE Omar Ali, University of Michigan, M.Arch 2015 This drawing is born out of an affinity for hoarding and the collection of images, forms and processes. It hopes to push the limits of architectural assemblage to extremis. Forms are curated from a range of references: from contemporary architectural projects, to imaginary utopian schemas from the 1960’s, to the monumental architecture of the ancient world.

City of Tropes hopes to unveil the agency of hoarding in architecture as a means to pose a rhetorical stance on contemporary architectural design.

CONTENTS

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MONTAGE AND EXCESS Ryan Flener, Levi Hooten, and Samuel Mortimer The Planning Agency THE GREAT QUESTION IS NOW AT ISSUE Daniel Daou, Harvard University, D.Des BLURRING BOUNDARIES WASTE AS A VEHICLE FOR A SOCIAL METAMORPHOSIS Reza Nik, Dalhousie University, M.Arch 2013

42 TRANSDUCTION

CONVERSATIONS WITH NATLIE JEREMIJENKO

AND THE PARTNERS OF FUTURE CITIES LAB 50

AT HOME IN THE FOULED UNIVERSE ECOLOGIES OF EXCESS Alyssa K. Olson, University of Pennsylvania, MLA / M.Arch 2014

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COMPLEX TRANSPARENCY LOOKING THROUGH EXCESS Curtis Perrin, Ph.D, M.Arch

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SALT SAND SIEVE Katherine Jenkins, University of Virginia, MLA 2013 Parker Sutton, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013

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IS MODERNITY OUR ANTIQUITY? Jorg D. Sieweke, University of Virginia, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture

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ABSENCE | ABUNDANCE THE INFRASTRUCTURAL WILD Gwendolyn McGinn, University of Virginia, MLA 2014 Rachel Vassar, University of Virginia, MLA 2014

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CONSOLIDATED EXCESS RESIDUAL SPATIAL ARTIFACTS David Karle, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Assistant Professor of Architecture

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DIRTY ARCHITECTURE ARCHITECTURE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO TIME Darius Woo, Cornell University, B.Arch 2011

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF PERFECTION Gabrielle Piazza Patawaran, Harvard University, M.Arch 2013

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PATTERNED AND ELABORATED ORNAMENT Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh, University of Virginia, Lecturer in Architecture

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THE CRITICAL MASS FLOATING POPULATION & SELF-HELP HOUSING IN BEIJING Ida D. K. Tam, Cornell University, M.Arch 2012

THE ROLE OF EXCESS IN LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE AS A FORM OF CURATION Grey Elam, University of Virginia, MLA 2014

THERE AND THERE AGAIN A RULE: DERIVATIONS OF NATURE William DiBernado, Harvard University, MLA 2013

150 LOTS

EXCESS AS A WAY OF DISSOLUTION

Joana Polรณnia, University of Porto, M.Arch 2013

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DEEP TIME, WIDE OPEN SPACES, AND NUCLEAR AMERICA AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMIE KRUSE AND ELIZABETH ELLSWORTH OF SMUDGE STUDIO Emily Gordon, Harvard University, MLA 2012 Sara Jacobs, Harvard University, MLA 2012

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A FUTURE FOR PYRAMIDEN GHOST TOWN OF THE INDUSTRIAL ARCTIC Jennifer Livingston, University of Virginia, MLA 2015

172 COLUM(N)BA

A LIVING MONUMENT FOR THE DEAD

Natalie Kwee, Cornell University, B.Arch 2013

Caio Barboza, Cornell University, B.Arch 2013 176

THE FUTURE OF LAND USE IN VIRGINIA A GIS MODEL Luke Juday, University of Virginia, MUEP 2014

182 WASH

URBAN HYDROLOGICAL NETWORKS FOR

RESILIENT CULTURAL ECOLOGIES

Aja Justine Bulla-Richards, University of Virginia,

MLA 2013 / M.Arch 2011 194

OUT OF SITE Benjamin M. Gregory, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2014

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THE LAND OF ABUNDANCE SIX POINTS OF CONVERGENCE BETWEEN TERRITORY AND EXCESS IN SAN JOSÉ Natalia S. Meza, University of Porto, Ph.D Arch

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CITY OF BLUBBER A FANTASY Seth McDowell, Partner, mcdowellespinosa University of Virginia, Assistant Professor of Architecture

futures for sites unknown

IN EXCESS When we began to consider what conversation we wanted to provoke in the ninth edition of lunch, we found ourselves often returning to the question of excess. It is one of the most significant ethical questions we confront as designers, as our practice is inextricably linked to material, economic, and social resources. In this context, excess can mean many things: it can mean plenty, but it can also mean too much; it can mean profit, but also waste, and the difference is largely a matter of perspective. So how do we decide what is enough? Is enough the same for everyone? How do we measure, much less decide, what is — in quantity or quality — excessive? And how then, as designers, do we operate in response?

There are, of course, many answers to these questions. In this edition of lunch, designers, planners, and historians offer their perspectives on how this question manifests itself in various aspects of our built environment. As you peruse the pages of lunch9, we hope you will join this conversation, and consider your own perspective. For while there may be no consensus here on whether excess is good or bad, in the end it is always an opportunity.

Sarah E. Brummett, Sarah Beth McKay, Tammy Teng April 25, 2014

MONTAGE & EXCESS LEVI HOOTEN, RYAN FLENER, SAMUEL MORTIMER THE PLANNING AGENCY Excess can be defined as a system of valuation. The act of exceeding an understood standard is perceived differently amongst individuals and cultures with varying ideologies regarding these systems. Availability or scarcity of resources determine constraints that dictate the rhythm of our day to day lives. This is and will be the case unless we reconceive scarcity and begin to fulfill our anthropocentric needs in new ways.

Imagine a hypothetical world in which there is limited scarcity. There are no shortages of materials, oil embargos, energy audits, building codes or zoning.

Perhaps windmills only serve as aesthetic objects in idealized landscapes.

Humans live freely in whatever manner and place they please. In a world free of scarcity and material limitations, how would we live? What would the size of our homes be? Would we shun community infrastructures like the neighborhood that are used to overcome the effects of scarcity, or retain them? Perhaps we would surround ourselves with once cherished technological relics in remembrance of times passed. Although this is a speculative scenario, it may provide designers and visionaries with a new lens for understanding the built environment by examining an evolving dichotomy regarding human desire and needs.

Examined through a historical context, we may also discover how our contemporary ways of living continue to define and shape a world built with the goal of fulfilling human pleasure, rather than satisfying the fundamental standards for subsistence: survival.

While we continue to deal with the limitations of scarcity, many indicators suggest that as a species we are continually reshaping the context by which our “needs” are defined and evaluated. Lifespan continues to increase while global poverty and infant mortality rates are steadily decreasing. These socioeconomic shifts demand a redefinition of “excess.” Humans change their standard for satisfaction when fundamental concepts of subsistence, safety, affection, empathy, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom are evolving in regards to excess in society.

So what do humans want? What are our fundamental values? These broad questions inform an understanding of excess — that which must be evaluated in the context of personal priority and worth. The values that shape our definition of excess are derived from the questions we seek to answer and the context of our own immediate narratives. We must seek to question everything, to seek a conscious evaluation of that ultimately makes us happy and satisfies us as humans.

We must not fear excess in design or the physical world, but rather seek to understand its origins and basis in our cultural evolution.

In discovering a contemporary understanding of excess, the craft of collage and montage

motions, and rhythms into a singular frame similarly to the way we perceive the world around us. The following four montages serve as a commentary on the increasing variety and context of “collisions” created today.1 As landscapes, each scene exists in various times and places; suggesting that excess is timeless and ambiguous.

References 1. Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form / Essays in Film Theory and The Film Sense , (New York: Meridian Book, 1957)http:// www.lumen.nu/rekveld/downloads/ideogram.pdf (accessed January 10, 2014), 37.

2. World Health Organization, “Life expectancy: Life expectancy by country.” Accessed January 10, 2014. http://apps. who.int/gho/data/node.main.688?lang=en.

3. World Bank, “Remarkable Declines in Global Poverty, But Major Challenges Remain.” Last modified April 17, 2013.

Accessed January 10, 2014. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press/release/2013/04/17/remarkabledeclines/in/ global/poverty/but/major/challenges/remain 4. United Nations, “UNdata / Infant Mortality Rate.” Accessed January 10, 2014. http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3A77 5. Pinker, Steven. “The surprising decline in violence.” TED. Recorded September 2007. The Sapling Foundation. film strip, http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html.

6. Allen Weiss, The Aesthetics of Excess, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 154.

Hooten, Flener, Mortimer Montage & Excess

realizes a new fantasy. We search for patterns within them and reconcile assorted scales,

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serves as an ideal vehicle for exploration. Images evoke new meaning and their composition

Planning Agency, “External Lovers,” 2014. Montage of pasted papers. 57.2cm x 38.7cm.

Man and machine now have a long complex history. It’s a love-hate kind of thing, but mostly love. The machine that has made mankind so efficient has now tied him down in economic shackles. Man’s ability to navigate, reap, and harvest land, or intimately love is made easier. That priceless knowledge of these processes, which was once free, is no longer. Confidence to ask a girl on a date has been replaced with a fee in return for your email address and a password. Has our infatuation with the machine made the relationship ever more seamless or does the pace of technology move us further away?

17 Hooten, Flener, Mortimer Montage & Excess Planning Agency, “Copy/Paste,� 2014. Montage of pasted papers. 57.2cm x 38.7cm.

As we shape our culture through the virtual window, we are disengaged from the land that shapes our natural and built environments. Places and things with cultural value often come at a higher cost, and therefore highly priced commodities may be misunderstood as valuable. In order to achieve value at a low cost, some form of imitation is often employed. For example, floors made of vinyl are engineered to look and function nearly the same as a natural hard wood but come at lower prices. What is more valuable, a hardwood floor, or the idea of one? Wood frame structures clad in ornate masonry may represent Georgian or Federalist histories, while adding additional cost to the building. The lifespan and value of the building, however may be relatively insignificant.

Excess is defined by the degree by which meaning is reduced and ultimately replaced by style.

Planning Agency, “Living Room,� 2014. Montage of pasted papers. 57.2cm x 38.7cm.

Our understanding of the world is affected by the information broadcasted to us. We no longer have an overarching need for a public marketplace or forum. The living room, whose hearth has transformed from fireplace to television, is now the location in which commodities are bought and sold. The living room is much smaller in scale than a public square, but the television has produced a far more diverse array of conflicts than the town square ever did. In this condition, crisis becomes the norm, news becomes background noise, and experience is forever paused.

19 Hooten, Flener, Mortimer Montage & Excess Planning Agency, “Myth and Pleasure,� 2014. Montage of pasted papers. 57.2cm x 38.7cm.

As human progress marches ever onward, we constantly (and usually unconsciously) redefine the threshold of excess. Limits are dictated by our own personal narrative, but as our standards of living continue to increase it is easy to criminalize one side or the other. Are we drowning in our excess or is it keeping us afloat? Are we terrified to fill our lungs with human wants for fear of never returning to the surface, or will we happily go down with the ship?

It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement; or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remains still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for goal.

— Robert T. Malthus (1798)

[George Jevons] warned that “to disperse so lavishly the cream of our mineral wealth is to be spendthrifts of our capital — to part with that which will never come back” might lead to the sudden collapse of British civilization. Yet he noted that much of that civilization, such as “our rich literature and philosophy,” might never have existed without “the lavish expenditure of our material energy” that “redeemed us from dullness and degradation a century ago.” To reduce coal consumption might only bring back stagnation, he cautioned, and he ended his book with a sentence in italics: “We have to make the momentous choice between brief greatness and longer continued mediocrity.”

— John Tierney quoting George Jevons (1865)

But one thought has persisted in my mind ever since I became interested in the entropic nature of the economic process. Will mankind listen to any program that implies a constriction of its addiction to exosomatic comfort? Perhaps, the destiny of man is to have a short, but fiery, exciting, and extravagant life rather than a long, uneventful, and vegetative existence.

— Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1972)

The present historical situation is defined by a complete disconnect between two great alternative narratives — one of emancipation, detachment, modernization, progress, and mastery, and the other, completely different, of attachment, precaution, entanglement, dependence, and care.

— Bruno Latour (2004)

THE GREAT QUESTION IS NOW AT ISSUE DANIEL DAOU HARVARD UNIVERSITY, D.DES

METANARRATIVE GRIDLOCK These four quotes span the four centuries elapsed since humanity escaped what historian Gregory Clark refers to as the “Malthusian trap”1 and set itself on a path of uninterrupted growth.

The question they pose remains virtually unchanged. Even if philosopher François Lyotard noted that the postmodern condition is characterized by its aversion to grand narratives,2 the world, as Latour observes, is dominated by two opposing ones.3 The first favors growth over development and equates the economy to a perpetual motion machine. It is the argument of the boomster4 and the technological optimist who do not see

logic behind TINA (the Thatcherist mantra of “There Is No Alternative”6,7) — our current politicoeconomic system’s totalizing narrative to which Mark Fischer refers to as “capitalist realism.”8 The second grand narrative favors development over growth and views the world as a closed zero sum game.9 It is the commonsensical argument of the doomster,10 the neoMalthusian,11,12,13 and even the moderate Luddite14 of the small-is-beautiful tradition.15 It is the thermodynamic fatalism of the ecological economist who rails against ‘uneconomic’16 growth trying to chart “a prosperous way down”17 relying on a Calvinist ethic of self-restraint and contentedness.

Four centuries of impasse should attest to the futility of both positions. And yet, the potential spaces between the two remain exceedingly narrow if not uncharted. As the metanarrative gridlock grows in relevance given the current perceived socioenvironmental crises, different sectors begin voicing their disenchantment with the potential offered by current intellectual frameworks. Neil Smith recognized that “the strengths of left analytical antisepticism have not left much room for the reconstruction of a powerful anti-ideology of nature that takes seriously the realities of the production of nature interwoven with deep emotional significance.”18 For him, the project for re-enchantment — the spinning of an effective alternative narrative — likely begins at what Kristin Kroptiuch brilliantly referred to as the “desolate junction of poetics and political economy.”19

A SUSTAINABILITY OF SCARCITY Today, much of the debate regarding sustainability centers either on the vagueness of its definition (i.e. Sustain what? By whom? For how long?) or on the subsequent way it is misappropriated by different, sometimes opposing, interests (e.g. corporate green wash).

Architect Panayiota Pyla warns that one of the risks is that the sustainability narrative, in the hands of technocrats, could override politics eliminating critical thinking and draining design of its agency.20 Vaclav Smil famously denounced the idea of sustainable growth as an oxymoron

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for collective emancipation (or individual self-realization — a matter still unsettled).5 It is also the

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any limits that cannot be overcome by human ingenuity, technology, and science in their quest

promptly provoking advocates to talk about sustainable development instead.21 But even then, scholars like Wolfgang Sachs question the very idea of development itself22 since, as Jacobus Du Pisani lucidly observes, the institutional idea of sustainable development is nothing more than the latest incarnation of the myth of progress.23 On this matter, the words of historian J. B. Bury are representative of the most stringent skepticism: “The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith.”24 Outside academic circles, in the mainstream, the term seems to have been decidedly co-opted by the limitsto-growth school of Malthusian descent. After all, the argument is pretty commonsensical: in a materially closed

“. . . the institutional idea of sustainable development is nothing more than the latest incarnation of the myth of progress”

world, growth (the physical increase of net resource consumption) can only last so long. As John Tierney recounts25 the argument seems sound enough that an improbable bet against it famously caught the world’s attention. The wager took place between Paul Ehrlich, a biologist, and Julian Simon, an economist, and consisted in trying to preempt whether the price of a certain set of commodities would increase or decrease over time a period of ten years. Ehrlich, in line with the scarcity idiosyncrasy of Malthusians, reasoned that, as resources became rarer due to overconsumption, their prices would rise. He memorably lost the bet to Simon in 1990 (though many economists have later shown that Ehrlich would have won in almost any other ten year period during the last century). On what grounds did Simon dare make with so much confidence such a counterintuitive bet?

Simon’s reasoning follows that even if a population increase represents an increase in resource consumption, it also represents an increase in what he deemed to be the “ultimate” resource: brain power.26 The more people there are, the higher the chance that someone comes up with an innovation to solve any particular problem. For example, in Power Perestroika, landscape urbanist Pierre Belanger shows how every energy crisis has been followed by the development of a newer more efficient energy economy — “coal saved the whales.”27 But the argument is not new to Simon. Astronomers Nikolai Kardashev and Carl Sagan thought of a similar measure to assess the level of development of any particular civilization.28 Buckminster Fuller famously suggested every person should get a research stipend: for every hundred thousand at least one would yield a significant enough breakthrough to make up for the rest.29 Even Marx and Engels (but more particularly Engels) brought up a similar argument when formulating their rebuttal to Malthus’s economic ideas.30 This diametric take on resource availability (and by extension human freedom and emancipatory potential) is sometimes referred to as Cornucopianism (in honor to the horn tore from Amaltheas head — the goat whose milk quenched the insatiable appetite of the Gods). It is a particularly difficult position to hold since, at its heart, Cornucopianism relies either on its faith in human ingenuity or in some quasi metaphysical “autocatalytic” (i.e. emerging, self-organizing, autopoietic, etc.) properties of technology.31 Notwithstanding the seemingly precarious grounds on which Cornocupianism is founded, it is a position worth entertaining if only to provide a counterbalance to the currently lopsided understanding of sustainability.

INTERMEZZO: THE PEOPLE OF SENTINEL ISLAND For all the praise given modern globe girdling infrastructure networks get or all the worrying triggered by the ever increasing pervasiveness of a politico-economic system that threatens to swallow the Earth whole, there are still some 160 or so isolated human groups in the world.

Of these, the people of North Sentinel Island are the most remote. What little is known about the island and its people is thanks to modern aerial imagery, anthropological inference, and historical recordings of a sparsely populated timeline beginning with the first mention by a surveyor onboard an East India Company vessel in 1771 who simply noted a “multitude of lights” while passing by at night.32 North Sentinel Island lies westward of the southern tip of the Great Andaman Archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. From migration patterns, anthropologists believe the island was first colonized 60,000 years ago. The differences between the Sentinelese dialect and those of the rest of the Andaman tribes suggest they have remained uncontacted for thousands of years. The island itself, more or less square in shape, is roughly the size of Manhattan and covered almost in

pre-agricultural stage of technological development in which its inhabitants remain. Regardless of the accuracy of the estimates, the Sentinelese longest enduring human group living in what John Stuart Mill described as a stationary state;33 the embodiment of the mainstream definition of sustainability.

In 2004 a massive tsunami claimed the lives of 350,000 and redrew entire coastlines in the region. Sentinel Island did not escape unscathed. Its landmass tilted, raising one of its corners several meters above sea level creating new sand banks in the process. Luckily, the Sentinelese seem to have survived the event with no apparent harm. But the story could have been different; several other local tribes in the archipelago have gone or are close to being extinct as a result of their interaction with outsiders, the most common case being the spread of disease for which they have no immune resistance.34 Be it gigantic tsunamis or microscopic pathogens, the Sentinelese are testament that figuring out an internal dynamic to enable a steady state is not enough to ensure endurance or permanence. If in the mainstream, upper limits to growth are discussed to avoid environmental overshoot, minimum levels of development should also be discussed to ensure appropriate response capabilities exist in the face of larger-scale “outside context” threats. There is a fundamental asymmetry to precautionary principles: it is arguably easier to calculate upper limits to growth (based, for example, on known and estimated available resources, maximum theoretical efficiencies, and hard biophysical constraints such as our own metabolic needs) than it is to preempt unknown unknowns.

EXISTENTIAL RISK In an essay titled “The Future of Humanity,” philosopher Nick Bostrom introduces the notion of existential risk as anything that threatens humanity with extinction (which unlike collapse, is an irreversible state).35 Existential risk can come in many guises. Some civilization-threatening events are either known knowns or known unknowns, but others are what Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls Black Swans or unknown unknowns.36 Science fiction author Iain Banks writes

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individuals and a maximum population of roughly 400 given the available resources and the

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its entirety by forest. The island is estimated to sustain a median population of barely 250

about a fictional civilization which finds itself under the threat of an unidentified object detected without warning ominously orbiting their planet. He refers to this situation as an Outside Context Problem.37 Unknown unknown risks (some of which are existential) is what complicates (as it should be) the current mainstream definition of sustainability based solely on the establishing of

“Cannot there be an idea of sustainability or lastingness, based on the opposite, on excess?”

ceilings or upper limits. The reasoning would go as follows: if growth is one of the factors that drives technological innovation and if some risks can only be staved off through technology, then curtailing growth would also stump crucial technological innovations potentially putting civilization at risk. This is by no means a plea for some form of technological determinism.38 After all, Bostrom is quick to admit that technology might be in itself the most worrisome of existential risks.39 Still, the question raised by the introduction of risk and how it recasts one of the many roles of technology is worth being asked: does sustainability (or the indefinite preservation of conscious life) need to be defined in terms of scarcity and constrain? Cannot there be an idea of sustainability or lastingness based on the opposite, on excess?

THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF ENTROPY One of the biggest hurdles in changing the natural tendency to fall for the commonsense fallacy of the limits to growth argument lies in the widespread general misperception of thermodynamics. To understand why this is the case, it is useful to keep in mind that the relationship between thermodynamics and economic theory (particularly the one behind the Limits to Growth line of reasoning) is almost as old as the discovery of thermodynamics itself in the early nineteenth century. The modern field of Ecological Economics was founded by several economists and ecologists among whom were Herman Daly and Howard T. Odum. Daly, author of the 1977 Steady State Economics, was a student of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen who in 1971 completed his magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, a work that provided some of the conceptual foundations of the field.40 But Georgescu-Roegen was not the first to attempt to bridge both thermodynamics and economics. In the 1920s, Nobel chemist Frederick Soddy coined the term ergosophy to refer to the economics of energy, and from 1921 to 1934 his writings aimed at a radical restructuring of economics based on a deeper understanding of physics — particularly in thermodynamics.41 In his 1971 Environment, Power, and Society and his 1974 Energy, Ecology, and Economics Howard Odum follows in Soddy’s vein. But even further back in the nineteenth century, as Bellamy Foster recounts,42 economist Sergei Podolinsky wrote letters to Marx and Engels suggesting how their economic ideas could be modified to take ecological energetics into consideration.

The second law of thermodynamics which states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases because such systems have a natural tendency toward thermodynamic equilibrium.

The understanding of entropy as a change from order to disorder (and therefore seeing the selforganized patterns that characterize life as contrary to entropy) stems from Ludwig Boltzman’s 1898 summary of his own work and has been a dominant misconception throughout the 20th century.43 Kevin Kelly called exotropy44 the “force of life” — ordered and indefinite — “that runs counter to entropy.” Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize the term negentropy; syntropy was first introduced by Schrödinger in his popular science book What is Life. The term is used by

biologists to refer to goal seeking or purpose oriented behaviors observed in living systems.

The second law’s true insight is that energy, if unhindered, spreads out in space. But as Dorion Sagan explains, the dispersion tendency does not have to happen right away.45 Life does not in fact defy the second law of thermodynamics, but blocks its immediate action in pursuit of more efficient energy gradient dissipating mechanisms. Life is not that which opposes entropy, but that which is thermodynamically valuable. In other words, the idea that life is a phenomenon in opposition to the natural tendencies of the universe, that life is in some sort of struggle and in that struggle it has a losing hand, should be dissipated. Architect Kiel Moe is among the first in the field to catch upon this revised understanding, writing that, in fact, life is about a nonstruggle for maximum entropy.46 Revising the understanding of entropy is the first step in doing away with the sort of thermodynamic fatalism that permeates several relevant areas in environmentalism, ecology, and economics. Physicist Frank Tipler was bold and succinct in stating what is at stake: “Being too frugal with our resources today in the mistaken belief that they are forever finite may prevent

In this regard, the relatively obscure but visionary ideas of George Bataille exposed in his 1949 economic treatise The Accursed Share present themselves as an alternative to the litanies on scarcity and austerity that govern the current conception of sustainability in the mainstream.48 Bataille had read Vernadsky’s Biosphere in 1929. The influence of the ideas presented in that book can be seen reflected in the way Bataille envisions the sun’s role in the economy (he actually had written The Solar Anus shortly after being exposed to Vernadsky’s ideas). He wrote: Solar radiation results in a superabundance of energy on the surface of the globe. But, first, living matter receives this energy and accumulates it within the limits given by the space that is available to it. It then radiates or squanders it, but before devoting an appreciable share to this radiation it makes maximum use of it for growth. Only the impossibility of continuing growth makes for squander. Hence the real excess does not begin until the growth of the individual or the group has reached its limits.49 Bataille’s is a vision based on the expenditure (as opposed to waste) of the energies of excess — the accursed share — produced by humans. Bataille differentiated between homogeneous nature-produced energy that lends itself to work and is quantifiable and heterogeneous energy that is “sovereign, not servile”50 and escapes classification for it is neither useful nor purposeful.

In distinguishing between types of energy he anticipated Odum’s conception of emergy — a concept developed to measure quality differences between forms of energy essential to the field of energy accountability. For Bataille, the idea of expenditure necessarily entails an ethics of gift giving, where the unintended consequences of a generous squandering of excess energy are what redeem lavishness. In other words, his is a post-sustainable vision where endurance or lastingness is an after effect rather than the main goal of civilization. As Allan Stoekl writes: Another model of spending based on what Bataille called an “economy on the scale of the universe” seems appropriate at a time when certain human profligacy has revealed itself to be an ecological and cultural dead end. Bataille’s importance, however, stems from the fact that he puts forward a model of society that does not renounce profligate spending, but affirms it. What is affirmed, however, is a different spending — a different

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A SUSTAINABILITY OF EXCESS

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us from developing the unlimited resources permitted by the laws of physics.”47

energy — and that difference perhaps means the difference between the simple meltdown of civilization and its possible continuation, but on a very different scale.51 But what does Bataille mean with an “economy on the scale of the universe”? It is not clear, and Stoekl’s exegesis is not comforting or satisfactory either. He simply admits: “We do not know.”52 In the closing remarks of his book, he concludes: Does this mean that we should despair, and use this “ignorance” to do nothing? Not at all; we know the difference between sustainability and catastrophic destruction …. But we also recognize, with Bataille, the inseparability of knowledge and non-knowledge, the tilt point at which, rather than cowering with fear, we throw ourselves gaily into the future, accepting whatever happens, embracing everything, laughing at and with death.53

THE GREAT QUESTION IS STILL AT ISSUE The wide expansion of the reach of “market organizations” along metrological chains has created a global domain of transcendent reality — second nature — that is now clashing with another mundane, immanent globe, that of planet Earth, namely Gaia, that is different from nature since it has its own historicity, reactivity, maybe sensitivity, and certainly power. The new fight between the two globes defines our time! 54 — Bruno Latour (2014)

We have a “Problem of the Whole.” For environmental studies there is still the notion of nature in general that has been still insufficiently grounded because there is still the notion that modernity or capitalism acts upon nature rather than develops through nature. On the other hand you have the broad theory of social change has been virtually immune to any rethinking along the lines of nature matters. Part of the reconstructive project [as opposed to reconstruction] is to offer and propose a conceptual vocabulary that can unify these two supposedly different processes of human and extra human natures, … to move beyond this Cartesian sorting out of the world. … What we need is a sufficiently dialectically synthesized view. 55 — Jason Moore (2014)

As useful as Bataille’s ideas are in affirming expenditure in times of depletion, their conclusion is hardly the kind of response called for in Smith’s plea for re-enchantment. We can come full circle now: the great question is still at issue. But the issue is clearer now.

In formulating a much needed counter ideology of sustainability we cannot be either naïve (as the moderns), nihilistic (as the postmoderns) or lukewarm (as the mainstream litany). Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker have suggested the possibility of a “metamodern” position that, while recognizing that metanarratives are inherently problematic, still does not do without them. Instead metamodernism — romantic, but pragmatic — does nothing more but to accept the need to long for a narrative.56 In this regard, the first step would then be to develop an explicit theory of the future. As Tipler argues in There Are No Limits to the Open Society: The average person has no explicit theory of the far future. I say “explicit” theory, because if the far future is ignored, it is tacitly assumed that the present value of the far future is negligible. It is better to adopt explicit theories rather than theories we are unaware we are adopting because only the former can be tested to see if they are true.57 Each one of the contending narratives described by Latour in the opening quotes of this essay presupposes a very different theory of the future. In their 2013 Manifesto for an Accelerationist

Politics, Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek point out that Neoliberalism with its “paralysis of the political imaginary” has canceled the future.58 On the other hand, the managerialism of ecological economics reduces it to an extinction waiting game. As the issue comes more sharply into focus, we seem to be getting closer to the very problem of philosophy.

Bertrand Russell reminds us that, since the dawn of civilization, mankind has been confronted with problems of two different kinds. The first is the problem of mastering natural sources. For this we mobilize science and technology. The second, vaguer and therefore overlooked, is how to best use our command over the forces of nature.59 For this we should mobilize philosophy. It is the motto theme of Bruce Mau’s optimistic Massive Change: “Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”60 But it is not, as it is usually characterized, a matter of Promethean hubris (an issue, by the way, settled by Walter Benjamin’s careful wording by stating that the question is not about the mastery of nature itself, but about the control of our relationship with nature).61 On the contrary, it is the very purpose of emancipation, of the liberation of men from the environment and from fellow men. It is, as Smith would put it, “the end of natural history and the beginning of true history, the end of societal laws experienced in the form of natural laws and

The current mainstream definition of sustainability — so much criticized for it vagueness — was

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the beginning of truly social control over history.”62

Our Common Future.63 Its title echoes, not gratuitously, that of another lesser known text. Our Common Task,64 a posthumous anthology of the writings of Russian futurist Nikolai Fedorov, states, in its boldest form, a more radical acceptation of sustainability, namely, “the collective abolition of death.” For Fedorov, the reality on which such a statement can be made is neither subjective nor objective, but projective.65 In this regard, design, with its inherently speculative inclinations and synthesizing capacities (the mêtis which goes beyond poesis and techne66) is arguably the area of intellectual activity best suited to explore the narrow space between apparently mutually exclusive narratives and populate the “desolate junction” between poetics and political economy.

References 1. Clark, Gregory. 2007. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

3. Latour, Bruno. 2004 Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry, Volume 30, Number 2, pp. 25-248.

4. The term “boomster” was used by journalist John Tierney to set aside so-called “optimists” from catastrophists or “doomsters.” See: Tierney, John. 1990. “Betting on the Planet.” The New York Times, December.

5. Pisani, Jacobus Du. 2006. “Sustainable Development: Historical Roots of the Concept.” Environmental Sciences 3 (2): 83–96.

6. Latour, Bruno. 2014. “On Some of the Affects of Capitalism”. Lecture February 26, Danish Royal Academy of Science. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/fr/node/550.

7. “The very possibility of critique has, as a number of thinkers have remarked, been placed in question in the context of a capitalist system able to present itself as something like the final and indisputable form of the social to which there is, apparently, following the collapse of state socialism, and faced only with alternatives defined as archaic, fundamentalist, and undemocratic, no realistic alternative. To question through critique the existing order of things is thus typically characterised as ‘unrealistic’.” See: Spencer, Douglas. 2012. “Architectural Deleuzism II: The Possibility of Critique”.

Blog. Critical Grounds. March 24.

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first articulated in its present form in the 1987 Bruntland Report, a document officially known as

8. Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero Books.

9. Hornborg, Alf. 2003. “Cornucopia or Zero-Sum Game? The Epistemology of Sustainability.” Journal of WorldSystems Research 9 (2): 205–216.

10. Tierney, John. 1990. “Betting on the Planet.” The New York Times, December.

11. Ehrlich, Paul R. 1975. The Population Bomb. Rivercity, Mass.: Rivercity Press.

12. Meadows, Donella H., and Club of Rome. 1972. The Limits to Growth. Potomac Associates Books. New York: Universe Books.

13. Emmott, Stephen. 2013. 10 Billion. New York: Random House.

14. Lindblom, Jon. 2013. “Techno Cultural Acceleration: A Few Initial Remarks.” Accelerationism: Cosmism, Promethianism, New Enlightenment. May 15. http://accelerationism.wordpress.com/readings 15. Schumacher, Ernst F. 1973. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered. Harper Torchbooks, 1778. New York: Harper & Row. 16. Daly, Herman E. 1977. Steady-state Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

17. Odum, Howard T, and Elisabeth C Odum. 2001. A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado.

18. Smith, N. 1998. “Nature at the Millennium: Production and Re-enchantment.” In Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium, edited by B. Braun and N. Castree. London: Routledge 19. Ibid.

20. Pyla, Panayiota. 2008. “The Counter Histories of Sustainability.” Volume 18: 77–79.

21. Smil, Vaclav. 1993. Global Ecology: Environmental Change and Social Flexibility. London; New York: Routledge.

22. Sachs, Wolfgang. No Sustainability without Development. Vol. 2012. 09/24.

23. Pisani, Jacobus Du. 2006. “Sustainable Development: Historical Roots of the Concept.” Environmental Sciences 3 (2): 83–96 24. Bury, John Bagnell. 1955. The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth. New York: Dover Publications.

On the matter of change and progress, Bertrand Russell, quoted further below, said: “Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.”

25. Tierney, John. 1990. “Betting on the Planet.” The New York Times, December.

26. Simon, Julian Lincoln. 1981. The Ultimate Resource. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

27. Pierre, Belanger. 2009. “Power Perestroika: Economy and Ecology of Energy over Time” In New Geographies: Landscapes of Energy, edited by Rania Ghosn, 2:152. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design : Harvard University Press [distributor].

28. Kardashev, Nikolai Semenovich. 1964. “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations.” Soviet Astronomy 8: 217.

29. Fuller, R. Buckminster, and Jaime Snyder. 2008. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Baden: L. Müller.

30. Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press.

31. Arthur, W. Brian. 2009. The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. New York: Free Press.

32. Weber, George. 1998. Lonely Islands: The Andamanese. Liestal, Switzerland: The Andaman Association.

33. Mill, John Stuart. 1848. “Of the Stationary State,” Book IV, Chapter VI in Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, J.W. Parker, London, England.

34. Goodheart, Adam (2000). “The Last Island of the Savages”. The American Scholar 69 (4): 13–44.

35. Bostrom, Nick. 2009. “The Future of Humanity.” In New Waves in Philosophy of Technology, edited by Jan-Kyrre Berg, Evan Selinger, and Soren Riis. New York: Palgrave McMillan.

36. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2007. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. 1st Ed. New York: Random House 37. Banks, Iain. 1997. Excession. New York: Bantam Books.

38. McCarthy, Daniel. 2013. “Technological Determinism and ‘the International’, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Determinism” Millennium Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 470–490 39. Bostrom, Nick. 2008. “Where Are They? Why the Author Hopes the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing.”

Technology Review: MIT’s Magazine of Innovation.

40. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

41. Zencey, Eric. 2009. “Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy.” New York Times, April 11, sec. Op-Ed. 42. Foster, John Bellamy, and Paul Burkett. 2006. “Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Beyond the Podolinsky Myth.” Theory and Society 35 (1): 109–156.

43. Sagan, Dorion. 2013. “Thermosemiosis: Boltzmann’s Sleight, Trim’s Hat, and the Confusion Concerning Entropy.” In The Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science. Minneapolis ; London: University of Minnesota Press.

44. Kelly, Kevin. 2010. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking. In an interview for The Guardian, Kelly was quoted: “I call it exotropic force. We can’t describe it without supernatural language. It is the force that runs counter to entropy – the force of life if you like.” See: Adams, Tim. 2010. “Kevin Kelly: Technology Is as Great a Force as Nature.” The Guardian. October 23. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/24/my-bright-idea-kevin-kelly.

45. Ibid.

46. Moe, Kiel. 2014. “The Non-Struggle for Maximum Entropy” In New Geographies: Grounding Metabolism, edited

by Nikos Katsikis and Daniel Ibanez, 6:88. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design : Harvard University Press [distributor].

47. Tipler, Frank. 1998. “There Are No Limits to the Open Society.” The Critical Rationalist 03 (02)

50. Stoekl, Allan. 2007. Bataille’s Peak Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Latour, Bruno. 2014. “On Some of the Affects of Capitalism”. Lecture February 26, Danish Royal Academy of Science . http://www.bruno-latour.fr/fr/node/550.

55. Moore, Jason W. 2014. “Metabolic Rift or Metabolic Shift?: From Dualism to Dialectics in the Capitalist WorldEcology.” In Projective View son Urban Metabolism, Doctor of Design Conference Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YjqKi5ai9c&list=PLqxr4aBubkPbW0ytIvUgGzSelums3K y69&index=2.

56. “[…] we contend that metamodernism should be situated epistemologically with (post) modernism, ontologically between (post) modernism, and historically beyond (post) modernism.” See: Van den Akker, Robin, and Timotheus Vermeulen. 2010. “Notes on Metamodernism.” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 2: 1–14.

57. Tipler, Frank. 1998. “There Are No Limits to the Open Society.” The Critical Rationalist 03 (02) 58. Williams, Alex, and Nick Srnicek. 2013. “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics.” Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political. May 14. http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-anaccelerationist-politics/.

59. Russell, Bertrand. 1950. “Philosophy for Laymen.” In Unpopular Essays, New York. Simon and Schuster.

60. Mau, Bruce, and Jennifer Leonard. 2004. Massive Change. London; New York: Phaidon.

61. Brennan, Teresa. 2000. Exhausting Modernity: Grounds for a New Economy. London: Routledge 62. Smith, Neil. 1984. Uneven Development : Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. New York, NY: Blackwell.

63. World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press 64. Fedorov, Nikolai, Elisabeth Koutaissoff, and Marilyn Minto. 1990. What Was Man Created for?: The Philosophy of the Common Task. London: Honeyglen.

65. Young, George M. 2012. The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

66. Singleton, Benedict. 2013. “(Notes Towards) Speculative Design”. Blog. Accelerationism: Cosmism, Prometheanism, New Enlightement. May 15. http://accelerationism.wordpress.com/readings/

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49. Sagan, Dorion. 2013. “Thermosemiosis: Boltzmann’s Sleight, Trim’s Hat, and the Confusion Concerning Entropy.” In The Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science. Minneapolis ; London: University of Minnesota Press.

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48. Bataille, George, and Robert Hurley. 1988–1993. The Accursed Share: An Essay on the General Economy. New York: Zone Books.

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waste as a vehicle for a social metamorphosis REZA NIK DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, M.ARCH 2013

In 2001, Argentina suffered an economic collapse that almost wiped out the middle-class, leaving thousands homeless. This resulted in the growth of informal settlements and informal sectors of employment in and around the formal city of Buenos Aires, the Capital Federal.

The collapse put 52 percent of the population below the poverty line and the urgency for survival led to the rise of many waste-pickers, the urban recyclers who became known as the cartoneros. Many are educated individuals who once had their own businesses and never thought they would be picking through trash for money. Initially prosecuted by the police and government, they are now officially registered and entitled to uniforms and gloves; however, they are still highly discriminated against and generally ignored by society. This thesis aims to address two complex social issues — disparity and waste — with a long-term architectural initiative that hopes to use the cartoneros as agent to ultimately blur the social boundaries that exist in the “Paris of the South.”

The lack of an efficient waste management system in Buenos Aires means that much of the 5,000 tons of trash produced daily languishes in the streets. In 2005, the city adopted a Zero Waste policy to address the serious trash problem, and the cartoneros will play a large role in this transformation.

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BLURRING BOUNDARIES

While formal attempts to implement recycling practices have generally failed due to lack of promotion and education, the informal recycling sectors of Buenos Aires have been making a difference. Today they are the primary recycling program in the city.

An estimated 20,000 cartoneros operate in Buenos Aires. They travel from many different parts of the province by truck, train, bike, or on foot into the city to collect recyclables. This informal system can be broken down further into the formal (cooperatives) and the informal (working independently). Twelve cooperatives currently exist in the city, providing their members a small but steady income (as much as triple that of the independent cartoneros) as well as uniforms, gloves, and logo bags. Cooperatives process an increasing fraction of the city’s recyclables.

The site for this thesis is the most controversial formal/informal condition that currently exists in Buenos Aires. The formal is the bourgeois neighborhood of Recoleta, the most expensive real estate in the capital; the informal, across the railway tracks, is Villa 31 and 31 bis, one of the city’s largest and fastest growing informal settlements. Its unique location in the wealthy northern part of the city is the result of fifty years of growth, beginning with mostly Italian immigrants working in the nearby port. Now it houses an estimated 30,000 mostly Argentine inhabitants. Both neighborhoods are in a prime location; only one really reaps the benefits.

The informal city is quite separated from the formal and currently there is no direct access across the tracks. The residents from Villa 31 have to walk about 50 minutes in order to access Recoleta, where it would be a five-minute walk via a direct route. This trip is significantly longer for the cartoneros travelling with their carts.

The diversity of users in the area (artisans, students, businesspeople, art lovers, the rich, the poor, and many travellers visiting some of the most popular tourist destinations in the city), along with the availability of many wasted spaces and the variety of existing vehicular and pedestrian routes made this site the perfect location for the execution of this concept. The

Abstracting this complex social issue resulted in a series of drawings and models that served as a way to tap into the subconscious for intuitive inspiration. The experiments were executed in order as follows:

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1. If there are two different elements and no parameters set, then the result will be chaotic and unresolved.

2. If there are two elements and certain strategic parameters set, then the result could be more controlled, while allowing the freedom for growth on both sides.

3. If there are set parameters, and a third element is introduced to blur the boundaries between the two elements, then over time the differences will become invisible.

site is only a testing ground for the grand idea of blurring social boundaries; the concept could essentially be applied to other sites throughout Buenos Aires with varying results. Both Recoleta and Villa 31 are crucial parts of Buenos Aires and this proposal aims to expose their interdependence through the cartoneros and the various architectural phases.

PHASES OF THE METAMORPHOSIS The social metamorphosis begins by identifying the existing formal and informal elements within the city. The seed from which the transformation grows already exists within this system.

In order to effectively make a difference in the larger city scale these changes have to start from the individuals. The cartoneros, although invisible, are the individuals who have already crossed the social boundaries and the first phase begins with highlighting their importance in the formal city and building on their identity as contributing citizens. They are the third existing element that has already started to blur the boundaries between the two opposing ends.

This proposal aims to initiate this bottom-up transformation by trusting the energy and creativity of the individuals involved. The following five distinct phases of the project are imagined for a ten- to twenty-year period of continuous metamorphosis, beginning with rooftop bugs and leading to a large public plaza — Plaza la Cartona — over the existing train tracks. These structures are understood as taking on their own life after their formal construction.

PHASE 1: ROOFTOP BUGS The garbage is disposed on the rooftops rather than the streets. Each resident is introduced to the cartonero in charge of their building block. The residents, no longer throwing everything on the streets in opaque black garbage bags, will become more conscious of what they throw out and how they dispose of it. The person who handles their waste is no longer unknown but someone they see on a daily basis. By exposing the afterlife of their trash, residents have an increased sense of responsibility toward their community and the city.

The rooftop is fully equipped with separate bins for different types of waste: paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, and food. The cartoneros gather the separated waste and lower it down to the street using cranes. The rooftops become their place of work, customized to their needs. They

build onto the frame of these rooftop bugs; they share an origin and purpose, but each one is different. Some become sleeping shelters, while others are a shaded refuge to escape the hot summer days of Buenos Aires. Slowly many city rooftops are occupied with these structures.

What becomes visible from street level are bags full of recyclables being hoisted down by these creature-like structures.

PHASE 2: THE CO-OP The rooftops have now been occupied by the initial stage of this metamorphosis. Both the cartoneros and the city residents are adapting to their more frequent interactions. The next phase further recognizes the cartoneros’ hard work by building a highly accessible co-op facility in the middle of the train tracks while also providing a semi-direct bridge between the two sides.

The co-op follows the language of the rooftop bugs by growing around what already exists. The building site is on an unused triangular patch in between an existing road and the train tracks.

The cartoneros can access the co-op from the formal city through an existing tree-lined path that is extended to the new structure, or by an extension of an existing road from Villa 31. There

of this social transformation.

PHASE 3: PLAZA LA CARTONA The cartoneros and their new spaces evolve throughout the years. The cleansing of the city is apparent to all the residents and the co-op facility is now a bustling headquarters for the various recycling organizations. Recycling has slowly become a part of everyday life for the residents of Recoleta and the rest of Buenos Aires. This next phase is in response to three main needs: a public recreational space for Villa 31, a space for the co-op and the cartoneros to sell their recycled products, as well as a more direct connection between the two sides of the track. The existing paths leading to either side are expanded into bridges with a dedicated bicycle lane leading to a large public plaza over the train tracks called Plaza la Cartona (inspired by carton, meaning cardboard in Spanish). There will be a new public feria where local artisans can sell their goods made from recycled materials. The locals as well as tourists will get a glimpse of the

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establish the cartoneros in the formal city while providing the foundation for the following stages

35

will also be vehicular access from the ground floor via an existing road. This phase will further

process involved in recycling goods and what the cartoneros accomplish within the city. There will also be concerts, performances, plays, and many different activities taking place on this large open plaza.

PHASE 4: VIEWS TO THE OTHER SIDES The cartoneros, the co-op and the Plaza la Cartona have become a part of the city fabric. Many locals are using the new public spaces and the bridges for recreation or simply for circulation.

The interaction between the residents of Recoleta and Villa 31 has increased dramatically. At this stage, many of the current social preconceptions have been forgotten because of the increased level of comfort between the two sides. This next phase takes this interaction to other heights through a viewing platform and a solar hot air balloon ride. The intent is to show the users and tourists the reality of the contrast across the tracks, in hope of creating a dialogue between the two. The hot air balloon will become a tourist attraction for the best view of the “Paris of the South.� It will also become a symbol of what the cartoneros have accomplished and what the city has done regarding their waste management. The viewing platform will be built on top of the new co-op headquarters, also the new stage for Plaza la Cartona.

PHASE 5: BLURRING BOUNDARIES The social boundaries that once existed between the two opposing sides are beginning to blur.

The cartoneros and the residents have developed a respectful relationship, working together to keep the streets of Buenos Aires clean. Recycling is no longer a foreign concept, but a daily routine for everyone. The local artisans have workshops and studios to experiment with different materials collected at the co-op and sell their goods back to the public in the weekly market at Plaza la Cartona. The viewing platforms and the balloon ride have opened peoples’ minds by showing them the city from a different perspective. The final designed elements are two more bridges joining the public to the industry below, completing the circulation paths for the cartoneros as well as the general public. After decades of being stigmatized by the formal city, the cartoneros can now comfortably walk beside the locals with no shame. They have private spaces on the rooftops of the formal city as well as their communal work and public leisure spaces at the co-op and the Plaza. The formally built structures have and will continue to activate informal growth. The bridge has not only activated its built surfaces but also the surrounding areas within Park Thays and the connecting nodes in Villa 31. This growth is anticipated but unplanned.

The case of the cartoneros within the formal city of Buenos Aires and the problem of waste management is a means by which the project explores a more complex concern: social imbalance that exists within Buenos Aires and many cities around the world and designers and architects who consciously stay away from this topic. There should be no difference in designing for the poor and the rich; unfortunately, often the boldest and the most acclaimed structures and designs are for the wealthiest. Are we comfortable with what this says about the society that we live in? Do we continue on the path towards more inequality and injustice, or can we as architects, designers or citizens be the one seed within the system that is needed for a social metamorphosis?

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The architect is a designer of space, not of living. The spirit of invention demanded by perpetual transformation thrives best in space shaped by its own invention.

— Lebbeus Woods, Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act (1992)

(top) Rooftop bugs on site in the formal city. (right) Rooftop concept collage. (top opposite) Section through rooftop “bug.” (bottom opposite) Cartoners using the rooftop crane to hoist and sort recyclables.

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View from train tracks, with the formal city of Recoleta to the left and the informal settlement of Villa 31 to the right

Longitudinal section through co-op building, view toward formal city

Co-op building, view from train platform

TRANSDUCTION Led by Professor Cassandra Fraser, Transduction is an interdisciplinary lecture series at the University of Virginia supported by the Page-Barbour Fund, a 100-year-old invitation that promises fresh aspects in the department of thought.

Transduction refers to the process by which materials, devices, and organisms convert one kind of energy or signal into another. Across macro- and micro-scales, this lens was used to compare the complex nature of system interactions. During this investigation, faculty and students from many disciplines met with prominent thought leaders visiting within the university and from across the world.

The material world is commonly conceived as collections of stable objects, fixed boundaries, and predictable properties. Our practical imagination is often limited to what we can see with our eyes and hold in our hands, not the full extent of our multidimensional ecologies. Humans refashion their brains and their communities by their technological interdependencies constantly. The ways that that we sense, adapt, and respond to the infinite array of signals happening together in the universe defines our biology, experience, environmental health, and well-being.

Material chemistry, urban design, and cultural research increasingly illustrate ourselves within complex networks. At the edge of our categorical concepts is an opportunity to connect them: perhaps it would be something like transduction. — McCutcheon Morecock, University of Virginia B.Arch 2014

XDESIGN ENVIRONMENTAL HEATH CLINIC, DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF VISUAL STUDIES AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY The following excerpts are taken from an interview with Natalie Jeremijenko, one of the guests of the Transduction series. Jeremijenko’s work straddles the boundary between art and engineering, creating provocative ways to think about the world differently and inspire action that has an impact.

Sarah Beth McKay: What do you see is the role of radicalism in your projects?

Dean Dass: You’ve used the word spectacle many times.

Natalie Jeremijenko: I think spectacle and conviviality are ways to organize social movements.

The whole rhetoric of traditional environmentalism doesn’t work to invite and to excite, or to impress students. This is the great design challenge of the 21st century, and how you can play a powerful role in actually doing; this is your invitation to contribute. That is so enlisting. Rather than depressing with that kind of paralysis, it’s that crisis of agency. It’s just not interesting to compost at home. It’s just not fun, and you don’t learn anything. If you do it socially, and you bring together stuff and you do bits around it or have dinner parties where you see how much your food decomposes or you race each other, you learn so much more by the social sensemaking that comes out of spectacle, out of conviviality. So I actually think creating local events to collectively think through problems is a research methodology. You can Google things, or you can get your permaculture certification, but it doesn’t actually create the kind of party you want to go to.

Jorg Sieweke: I have a lot of respect for what you do and I think in a way it can be understood as the far end of what we could even be achieving. I think it’s interesting to understand how also there’s the artist’s component sensuality and event and how to engage people that may be much more effective than ways that we make drawings, to some degree. With all due

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natalie jeremijenko

respect, I have a question, given our similar interests: How you position yourself within the predominant culture? Do you think of this work as a subculture or counter-culture, or are these even categories that are useful? In the end it’s still stunning what we are facing, what we are up against, in terms of the scalability of these operations. To say it very drastically, are we the clowns of this larger, late-capitalist game?

NJ: We might be, but it’s the only thing I know how to do. In terms of my position, professionally I have a very hard time finding a place, certainly in the master planning world. Which I would love to work well with landscape architects and master planners and be able to do these experiments. In the public art realm they get caught up as little exceptions, pretty little decorative things — “Oh, there are some lighting buoys in the water” — they don’t get seen as, “Here is an experiment where we can learn something collectively and potentially extend it across the entire waterfront of Manhattan.” Frankly, with the mussel culture I can support on those bouys, we could variegate the shoreline. So to me, to be able to go from a small and exceptional public art project to the scale of something larger, it needs to conspire and collaborate with people that have professional credibility and legibility. It also requires involvement with other design professions who understand what my work is about, because the city agencies don’t.

Bill Sherman: Remember it was the jester in the court that was the only one that could speak the truth. It’s actually a role that is an important one, and I think it’s also the one where you can pierce through all of the layers in the normal chain of authority to get to somebody that has the authority to make a major change. That’s where the spectacle, the public engagement, but also the grounding in real science come in.

MELBOURNE MUSSEL CHOIR: Jeremijenko and her team fitted mussels with effect sensors to capture the opening and closing of their shells. By converting data into sound, the actions of these marine organisms — which can filter impurities from as much as 9 liters of water per hour — moves from biological process to public spectacle. The sounds transform information such as water depth, presence of pollutants, and mussel activity to sound pitch, timbre and tempo.

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JASON KELLY JOHNSON AND NATALY GATTENGO The following excerpts are taken from a written correspondence between the lunch editors and Future Cities Lab’s Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno. Since 2002, Jason and Nataly have collaborated on a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of art and design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems, and public space. They currently teach at the California College of the Arts and UC Berkeley. > Could you describe the development of the Hydraspan project? Why the Bay Bridge? Why the mechanisms for the capture of the fog? How does the reuse of fog-water support the waterbased ecologies and economies your project supports?

Jason Kelly Johnson: We initially developed the idea of the San Francisco Hydramax1 projects for the Utopian Impulse show at SFMOMA. Hydra means water, and max, of course, means maximum. The idea is to create a new kind of architecture that maximizes its relationship with water. Instead of San Francisco’s edge being used mostly for tourism, we wondered if it could be more and do more. We wondered, especially in the context of impending sea-level rise, if the water’s edge could be productive again.

Nataly Gattegno: Could this threshold become a site where wetlands, parks, and urban farms could coexist? Could it be a place where tourists, citizens, and farmers converse and collaborate? Hydaspan is a part of this project, but is situated on the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland. The project was developed around rows of suspended dynamic

Transduction

future cities lab

HYDRASPAN

catenary ribbons that both catch fog and protect inhabitants from wind. Large bladders hold water that is eventually distributed to a network of suspended gardens, aquaponic growing units, and pools. The overall system supports both agricultural, commercial, and leisure based economies. > Your work places a primacy on the human-scale, through Hydraspan’s living units and its moments of “social, political and commercial exchange”, and also on architectural projects as installations. Each are ways of relating people to a design — why is this so important?

JKJ: We like to work back and forth between scales and to embed details in our models that only particular visitors might actually appreciate. There is the global mega-structural form that refers to the overall scale of the bridge and its site, and there is the scale of the individual ribbon and the dwelling unit. For the gallery show, Hydraspan was installed in the ‘urban gallery’ space of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The gallery is cantilevered over the sidewalk and highly visible along Mission St. When you are inside the museum it is more intimate and you can catch glimpses of it from various galleries. So the Hydraspan installation has both a heroic formal scale that is legible from afar, and also an intimate scale where you might peer through the layers and see a family of lonely human figures and their domestic robots gathering on a suspended domestic unit.

47 Transduction

> Your online description of Hydraspan calls it a “radical reuse and re-colonization of the bridge infrastructure.” We are interested in the juxtaposition of radical and reuse — each are concepts of excess, albeit of quite different connotations. How does the project address the bridge as excess, as in need of a new use? Is it its excessive structural capacity; its as-is singular purpose? How is the design of the project itself informed by this interpretation?

JKJ: While we were developing the project the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge was being dismantled and shipped to China to be recycled. A new adjacent replacement bridge was already in place. Perhaps we were being nostalgic, but we felt that the bridge could be renovated and reused in some creative manner. In the immediate future it could certainly have been reused as a park, a zoo, a market, a fairground, or a hybrid of these things.

NG: As a response to this, we situated Hydraspan in the year 2050, when the western span will be deteriorating in a similar fashion. The site is even more spectacular and latent with excessive energy resources like water and wind. The proposal seeks to capitalize on these resources and experiment with a new way of living in extreme but latent environments. > What, on the other hand, is the effect of the project’s radicalness? Could this radicalness be interpreted as a kind of productive excess? What role does radicalness play in your design process?

NG: As a part of our design practice we are interested in exploring radical extremes. The hottest, the coldest, the dryest, and the wettest. My interest in robotic ecologies is similar. It is not so much that I personally want to live in a world made entirely out of intelligent machines, but I see the value in using design and architecture to explore and render these narratives with as much intensity as possible.

JKJ: These contemporary narratives, including the idea that robotics and technology will eventually solve the worlds health and climate problems, are espoused by the Silicon Valley elite. In many ways we are merely experimenting with these narratives, whether utopian or dystopian, and rendering their spatial, ecological, and political dimensions. > The pairing of the stoic, mono-functional suspension bridge with the erraticism — the multifunctionality among dwelling, agriculture, aquaculture, fog/water-catching, and gathering — of the project seems a celebration of the excessive. Do you agree?

JKJ: It is certainly a celebration, but in a way that is slightly perverse and unique to our future beyond 2050. In a sense, the project is pessimistic in that it accepts that global climate change is inevitable and technological developments will irreversibly alter civilization as we know it.

NG: On the other hand, the project forecasts that we’ll survive, that we’ll adapt and find a way not to just live, but to live in a spectacular fashion. Even though our urban centers may be ravaged by rising seas, extreme weather and drought, we’ll somehow engineer a new world. > What is the capacity of technology, and the new fabrication and building systems we associate with technological innovation, to re-imagine excess? To re-imagine efficiency?

JKJ: The internet of things, including sensing objects and embedded technologies, will create an excess of data and potential. This data will open up new ways to understand, engage, design and fabricate, but we’ll need to find ways to translate and materialize this data into forms that are clear and meaningful. As a way to explore this idea we are currently developing a project that is looking at how we might mark geotagged datasets back onto the city using robotics. One of our mobile GPS guided robots can take mapped symbols from the web and go out and spray paint these symbols on the city itself. For example, there are several intersections in San Francisco that are hotspots for bicycle accidents. As part of the mayor’s Open Data / Smart Cities initiative, police officers record the exact GPS coordinates of each accident. This data has been mapped thoroughly on Google Earth and on various data visualization websites. Our robot harvests these datasets, and physically goes out to the locations and spray paints a symbol on the road exactly where past accidents have occurred.

In this way, data is superimposed on the city, informing citizens in a relatively non-biased and legible manner. So the next time you are riding a bike in San Francisco you might see one of our bright yellow symbols spray painted on the asphalt. If you do see one — watch out — it means our robot has visited and you are in danger!

www.future-cities-lab.net, HYDRAMAX CREDITS: Design: Jason Kelly Johnson & Nataly Gattegno Project Manager: Ripon DeLeon; Project Interns: Gavin Johns, Cameron Eng Collaborative Sponsor: MIGA Motor Company (Dr. Mark Gummin).

Commissioned by: SFMOMA

HYDRAMAX Transduction

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AT HOME IN THE FOULED UNIVERSE ecologies of excess ALYSSA K. OLSON UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, MLA / M.ARCH 2014

Landscape ecologies and humankind adapt to each other through shared anthroecologies. As humans have become free-ranging inhabitants of the earth, however, our continued attempts to take command have forced the global landscape to become the default maid. Humans relentlessly hustle earthly resources across our increasingly fouled nest while its terrains and oceans exhibit a peculiar patience, stocking nooks and crannies with the resultant human detritus. Although the inevitable counterpart of economy is waste, we have yet to fully accept responsibility for the refuse human economies generate. As citizens of the Anthropocene, our collective anthroecology offers opportunities for engagement hidden in plain sight. Imaginative design methodologies can identify these opportunities and empower under utilized ecologies of excess to embody innovation for our collective future.

Natural laws guiding non-human ecologies have minimal tolerances for loitering excesses. Systemic balance is facilitated through material cycling as if set on autopilot. Human-based systems have not yet developed such efficiency and thus generate excesses laden with unresolved potentials. Human economies made spatial by the landscapes they utilize — economies of landscape — facilitate the processes underlying anthroecologies.

Powerful industries operating within megaregions have a large-scale influence over landscape economies whose effects ripple across the environment to profound extents.

Two large-scale contributors to anthroecological excesses are the cruise and cargo shipping industries. Regulatory and ethical standards governing the cruise and cargo corporations are a displaced responsibility for third party groups, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency and national coast guards. Records of environmental stewardship reported by cruise and cargo corporations, however, are unreliable measures of their environmental impacts.1, 2 As the renowned cruise capital of the world and the cargo gateway of the Americas, Port Miami is a global hub for sea travel and trade. On an average day two cruise vessels and nine cargo ships frequent either side of its port, as situated between Miami and Biscayne Bay, reached from the Atlantic by way of Government Cut.3 Over half operate within the Caribbean and approximately one-third cross between Miami and the Asia Pacific region.4 Aboard these vessels are collections of people, goods, and undocumented quantities of the “3Bs” of conflict discharges: Ballast, Black and gray water and Bilge oil.

quarter of an Olympic-sized swimming pool to Port Miami on an average day.5 The ratio of black to gray water in each cruise cocktail is four to one. The cargo ships are each loaded with anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000 containers, collectively storing enough ballast (seawater combined with runoff from upper decks, stored to balance a ship) to fill an average of 216 Olympic-sized swimming pools daily.6 Mixed in with the ballast are exotic stowaway species and anywhere from 15 to 100 gallons of highly toxic bilge oil.7 The amount of contaminated liquid in the port equals the same amount of water that pours over Victoria Falls in one minute.8 Although stored within vessel hulls and rendered invisible through incineration and casual dumping at sea, these noxious substances are far from innocuous.

Vessels may legally dump blackwater (with a supposedly limited ratio of oily bilge) three miles from almost any shoreline.9 Sea territories inside the three-mile jurisdiction allot vacancy for gray water if it has not already been discharged at sea. In Miami, which does not offer dumpout facilities to help treat the toxic concoctions stored in these vessels, this geographic jurisdiction line precisely traces the shoreline of Miami Beach.10 Considered annually, the amount of blackwater likely discharged adjacent to Miami Beach equates to one inch of sewage per every six feet of water. As the Atlantic gyre spirals clockwise about the ocean this discharge is diligently whisked northward up the shore of Miami Beach.

Imagine if oceanic flow didn’t seduce and dilute this discharge each day. Miami Beach and others might become sewage vortexes where rare debris democracies fester ashore because jurisdictions — ineffective against the ocean currents —

make the discharge of waste

acceptable. Neither the ocean nor humans want that to happen, yet distribution and dilution are the default solutions. Increased economic demand is persuading larger and more frequent vessels into the port, and potentially creating an overwhelming amount of undocumented environmental detriment to ecological systems and cycles. If Port Miami and others like it are unwilling to accommodate vessel discharge and ships continue to dump at sea, what is an appropriate alternative solution?

Olson At Home in the Fouled Universe

Cruise ships bring 1,200 to 5,000 passengers and enough black and gray water to fill one-

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The 3Bs proliferate daily in scale and frequency by cruise and cargo vessels around the world.

My tactic in approaching these discharges — amorphous, enigmatic creatures — focuses on the productivity they offer as liminal machines, performing an explicit function within transitional conditions specific to Miami.11 The liminal machine offers a unique way to approach larger issues of the landscape by facilitating ideation, exploration and interaction with multiscalar systems and cycles. These systems and cycles, inherent to our anthroecological world, hinge upon economic and environmental conditions as well as the interactions between them. The conceptual framework supporting the liminal machine favors the system-environment and encourages technological engagement with the landscape. By conceiving of the potentials of the liminal machine in balancing the symbiosis between landscape and technology, designers may effectively capitalize upon anthroecologies to productively reconfigure their underlying conditions.

Typically, vessels treat wastewaters using on-board equipment for sludge storage, incineration, and overboard pumping. Sludge is treated with chlorine or bacteria solutions or thickened; its solids removed and incinerated or ground into one-inch chunks to be spat overboard.12 Ballast water coming into Miami is known to contain some of the most dangerous invasive marine species as identified by the International Marine Organization. These range from cyanobacteria, or algae, to certain species of crabs, starfish and jellyfish.13 Although vessels are required by law to exchange their ballast at least 200 miles before arriving at every shore there is no guarantee they successfully expel these gregarious species. This open system of exchange allows threatening species from novel ecosystems to colonize local ecosystems, disrupting closed-loop systems. A more productive facilitation of the 3Bs, which are otherwise discharged as waste materials, could become instead advantageous to these systems — not only to the cruise and cargo industries, but also the marine environments they encroach upon across the world.

If waste and ballast from ships were collected and stored in a choreographed sequence, these substances could become neutralized through naturally occurring ecological processes while floating in Biscayne Bay. As a first input, filtered ballast transferred from a hull would likely only contain algae and few small mussels. A second input of wastewater from vessels would spur increased algal growth and asphyxiate any mussels in order to maximize the algal growth. Algae becomes a natural output from the wastewater and in turn cleans it by using only sunlight and carbon dioxide, two year-round excesses in Miami. The new cycling process between inputs and outputs could also be short-circuited to exploit specific resources. Research is quickly being conducted across the U.S. exploring algae and hydrogen as viable fuel alternatives for oil. State of the art processes for converting wastewater to hydrogen fuel using sunlight are currently in development.14 This type of technology could be developed at Miami’s wastewater treatment plant, which is in need of an upgrade to handle urban demands, to harness the economic potential of ecological excesses at once from vessels and the city of Miami.15 The activation of these resources could catalyze facility upgrades to further harvest excesses of algae and oil. Waste and ballast can become instrumental resources capable of demonstrating

ons can directly approach and lock on to vessels, collect filtered waste and ballast, and finally with the vessel’s wake. Cling-ons are a mechanized interface between vessel discharge and anthroecological systems and cycles. They internally house the 3Bs to usher closed-loop systems generated by vessel inputs. Sufficient studies do not yet exist to calculate the lifecycle of a cling-on with precision, though an estimate, based algal growth studies and wastewaterto-hydrogen breakdown cycles, suggests a 30-day time span between input repetitions. This allows enough time for ecosystems to regenerate within the cling-ons as they float about the bay. Sixty floaters, sized at twenty-five feet in width and less than two feet in depth, would be filled per day. A total of eighteen hundred floaters would solve the issues of the 3Bs in Miami.

Olson At Home in the Fouled Universe

My concept for a mechanism to collect and store these substances is a cling-on. The cling-

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how ecologies of excess can become productive and attractive as alternative energy sources.

CLING-ON MECHANISM Aluminum extrusions are assembled into a large conduit, housing mechanized parts within a shape-shifting hexagonal frame, which cinches a hypalon membrane to store liquid inputs. Its shape maximizes both sun exposure to increase algal growth and spatial efficiency to allow cling-ons to nest together. At the six points where the buoyant aluminum extrusions meet — a universal joint designed to allow structural flexibility for ease of deployability and the ability to negotiate their form in erratic tidal fluctuations — check valves are sandwiched between gasket seals to allow for bilge oil collection within the frame. The check valves filter the oil from the liquid as it floats, initially, on the surface of the ballast; after leftover oils sink within the clingon, wastewater is input to disturb the oil.16 This brings the bilge oil back to the surface and reactivates the check valves. Flexible photovoltaic cells clad the upright surface of the aluminum extrusions to convert the oils stored inside into electric energy and power LED lights internally secured next to each universal joint.

55 Olson At Home in the Fouled Universe

These lights, placed above the surface of the water, have three purposes. Primarily they signal the location of the cling-ons to other traffic. Secondly, the brightness of the lights indicate the amount of oil extracted from each floating pod. This registers the frequency of how often bilge oil, and subsequently its inherent toxicity to marine environments, is kept out of the bay.

Thirdly, the formal variations achieved through their aggregations would create a unique visual spectacle across the bay. Aggregations of cling-ons create a shifting stratum to dampen sonic waves generated by vessels in the bay, which encourages vitality in ecosystems below.

These assemblies are achieved via swarm navigation with accelerometers and gyroscopes, technologies found within smart phones that allow for positioning by GPS. By night they transform into candelabras visible from within the city and aboard water and aircraft.

Olson At Home in the Fouled Universe

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Extreme anthroecological conditions instigate further challenges for cling-ons. As the environment and human culture adapt to one another, the lessons we continue to learn can intelligently inform how liminal machines engage future enterprises of ecological excesses. For the cling-ons, this includes maximizing productive potentials through new technologies and scientific explorations to tackle larger recurring issues. Algae blooms and oil spills are two of the most common recurring conditions in Biscayne Bay. Before oil sinks through tidal dispersion cling-ons can scoop, skim and collect the oil for conversion into light energy instead of allowing it to cloud over marine habitats. Cling-ons can swarm to encircle, sift, and harvest sporadic algae growths spurred by external forces. Individual cling-ons would aggregate through specific formations as required to hold the algae captive. These larger efforts to maintain the livelihood of the bay expand the potential for anthroecological excesses to become future commodities.

The cling-on is a mechanism capable of using the relationships between black and gray water, ballast and bilge oil to yield productive outcomes. Relationships among cruise and cargo industries, port city municipalities, the EPA, local coast guards, tourists and local ecologies would also be transformed. In these ways, cling-ons can provide widespread economic and anthroecological benefits. Aggregations of cling-ons create a landscape mosaic of castaway substances typically expelled and thoughtlessly rejected, and reveal otherwise invisible ecological processes through their ironic spectacle of anthroecological excesses. Simply by shifting and containing industrial waste processes, the cling-ons create new productive cycles capable of benefitting larger cycles of anthroecologies. Cling-ons embody the potential post-human resolution for the vast anthroecological excesses that will extend beyond the Anthropocene. As a conduit between landscape economies and waste, they identify an ecology of excess as an opportunity to seize responsibility for the anthroecological effects of human economy.

References 1. Key issues of cruise ship waste streams, laws and regulations for the industry, Claudia Copeland, “Cruise Ship Pollution: Background, Laws and Regulations, and Key Issues.” Congressional Research Service, Updated February 6, 2008.

2. Breakdown of standards, management practices and procedures for cruise industry waste, “CLIA Industry Standard: Cruise Industry Waste Management Practices and Procedures.” Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), 2006, accessed October 16, 2013, http://www.cruising.org/sites/default/files/regulatory/pdf/CLIA%20Waste%20Management. pdf.

3. Full listing or cruise schedules and carriers at PortMiami, “Cruise Guide 2013-2014,” PortMiami, accessed October 16, 2013, http://www.miamidade.gov/portmiami/library/brochures/cruise-guide.pdf 4. A listing of trade-based cargo facts from Miami-Dade County, “Cargo Facts,” PortMiami, accessed October 16, 2013, http://www.miamidade.gov/portmiami/cargo-facts.asp.

5. Overview of largest industrial ship sizes, “Biggest cruise ships (industry overview)” Largest Ships in the World: The biggest ships ever built… accessed October 21, 2013, http://www.largestships.com/biggest-cruise-ship/.

8. The number of cubic meters falling over Victoria Falls was assumed to be an absolute average and was assessed against the average amount of waste and ballast water housed within average-sized vessels during one average day at Port Miami. “Victoria Falls,” SA Places, accessed October 18, 2013, http://www.places.co.za/html/victoria-falls.html.

9. An assessment of sewage, solid waste, toxins, oil, air pollution and ballast water produced by cruise ships but not yet legalized via equivalent jurisdiction to other equal industrial production. Protect Our Oceans: Stop Cruise Ship Pollution, Cruise Ship Waste—U.S. Laws and Regulations, accessed October 18, 2013, http://oceana.org/sites/default/files/o/ uploads/cruiseshipwaste_uslawsandregulations.pdf.

10. Nautical charting of soundings of bathymetry in Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Miami Harbor, Chart 11468, NOAA Raster Navigational Charts, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2008.

11. This graduate design studio was conceptually framed through studio critic Karen M’Closkey’s idea of the liminal machine and was conducted via a site visit of greater Miami and a methodology for initial investigation followed by individual studio project explorations. M’Closkey, Karen. “Miami Vice: Selling the Sunshine State.” Design studio, Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, Fall semester 2013.

12. Categorized assessment of cruise ship waste streams and potential detrimental environmental impacts. “Cruise Ship Discharge Assessment Report.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Oceans and Coastal Protection Division, Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds. (December 29, 2008): 2-3, accessed October 19, 2013, http://water.epa.gov/ polwaste/vwd/upload/2009_01_28_oceans_cruise_ships_0812cruiseshipdischargeassess.pdf.

13. A diagram of the ten most harmful marine bio-invaders. Steve Raaymakers and Liz Gould, “Ten of the Most Unwanted” Global Ballast Water Management Programme, International Marine Organization, accessed October 20, 2013, http://globallast.imo.org/poster4_english.pdf.

14. UCSC chemistry researchers demonstrate hydrogen production through the use of wastewater and sunlight. Cat Ferguson, “Sun Turns Dirty Water into Clean Fuel,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www. santacruzsentinel.com/santacruz/ci_24316243/sun-turns-dirty-water-into-clean-fuel.

15. Charles Rabin, Miami-Dade proposes spending $1.5 billion over 15 years to cure sewer system woes, December 02, 2012, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/02/3124200/miami-dade-proposes-spending-15.html.

16. Diagrams of processes during and following a spill, “Oil Spills,” accessed December 09, 2013, http://earthsci.org/ mineral/energy/gasexpl/spill.html.

Olson At Home in the Fouled Universe

7. Definition of oily bilge and descriptions of law applications, technologies for management and potential environmental impacts, “Cruise Ship Discharge Assessment Report: Section 4: Oily Bilge Water.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Oceans and Coastal Protection Division, Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, December 29, 2008, accessed October 19, 2013, http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/vwd/upload/2009_01_28_oceans_cruise_ships_section4_ bilgewater.pdf.

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6. Chart of ballast water capacities for varying ship types and diagrams of how ballast exchanges function, “The Problem” GloBallast Partnerships, accessed October 19, 2013, http://globallast.imo.org/index.asp?page=problem.htm.

Photo credit: Luuk Kramer

COMPLEX TRANSPARENCY looking through excess CURTIS MAXWELL PERRIN PH.D, M.ARCH

Architects’ rhetoric almost never has words to describe the shame of the excessive detail that fails. We are so accustomed to the oratory of success. We hear about how an architect solved the problem and design overcame the odds of the situation. Take for instance the description that ran in architectural periodicals of a house made entirely of glass built in Leerdam, Holland. This house was repeatedly praised in leading architectural journals for transforming the fragility of glass into a structure “stronger than concrete.”1 In the magazines’ eyes, the architects were heroes — problem solvers who were able to manipulate the physical properties of glass beyond reason. This 21st-century glass house took five years to develop, but ironically stood fewer than eight years before it was demolished due to insoluble weaknesses in the construction. These failures were not reported in any of the architectural journals that previously covered its success. What caused the structural failure of the super thick, super strong glass walls? The failure that the glossy magazine accounts overlook is as interesting as the project’s initial success. This oversight reveals is a deformation in the discourse of architecture that occludes a whole netherworld of failures.

1. “Laminata House.” WikiArquitectura. (2010). http://en.wikiarquitectura.com/index.php/Laminata_ House (Accessed January 4, 2013).

In 1995, the Leerdam Housing Corporation (CWL) decided to celebrate its 40th anniversary by organizing an architectural competition calling for residential designs that used glass in unprecedented ways. The young Amsterdam duo Gerard Kruunengerg and Paul Van der Erve were selected for an idea just crazy enough to spark interest: a house made entirely of glass. Their design involved the conceit of cutting rooms out of a mammoth glass block on site.

Although there was no site for the project, the CWL committee persisted, “Let’s do it!”2 In fact, the project only proceeded because of a last minute offer made by the Netherlands office of the multinational Saint Gobain glass manufactory.3 The materials the company provided totaled 80 m3 of glass weighing 200,000 kg.4 Those transactions occurred in 1995, but the project didn’t break ground until 2000. The intervening five year period was intensively filled with ‘research’.

The original concept of carving rooms out of a giant glass block was not feasible,5 but eventually what seemed to be a workable concept grew toward realization.

One of the architects stated that the final design “solution” was inspired by a van carrying a stack of glass panes through the city.6 They realized that the proposed ‘solid’ block could be built of individual sheets of glass laminated together, appearing to be almost solid and

common practice to prevent breakage.7 The sheets could be pre-cut to varying dimensions and sandwiched together in such a way that the original idea of the interior being hewn from block was conceptually preserved.8 What resulted was, at least visually, a triumph of excess: over 13,000 10mm layers of glass were put together, resulting in a shimmering, emerald-like surface that was transparent to light but thick enough to provide privacy from outside eyes. Glass was transformed from its inherent planar fragility into a structural mass.9 The glass’s green color changed with the thickness of the walls, varying in width from 20 to 170 cm.10 There was a feeling of variability, changing color, and intensity in the light of the spaces. Reflections shimmering deep inside the material made the glass seem like a glacial palace or an underwater fairytale.11 One of the architects Paul Van der Erve expressed, “We imagined … that when you passed through the passage in the wall … that you look into the wall.”12 2. Wortmann, Arthur. “Material Differences: Aluminium Centre and Glass House.” Archis 2001:4 (April, 2001), 54.

3. Whitehead, Ingrid. “Living the Laminated Life, in a Prototype House of Glass.” Architectural Record 190:4 (April, 2002), 74.

4. “Huis van 200.000 kilo glas in Leerdam geopend.” De BOX: Architectuur Nieuws Online. (January 30, 2001).

5. Hulsman, Bernard. “Box of Tricks.” World Architecture 101 (Nov./Dec., 2001), 71.

6. Van der Erve, Paul. “In Leerdam.” Bauwelt 93:37 (October 4, 2002), 15.

7. Pavlovits, Daniel. “Laminated Glasshouse.” Interiors Now, 245-48. Mulgrave, Australia: Images Publishing Group (2004) 245 8. Pavlovits (2004), 245 9. “Maison,” (2002), 94 10. Zillich, Carl C. “Specific Transparencies.” Paper presented at the conference Transparency & Architecture: Challenging the Limits, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece, (June 3, 2006). Reprinted in Transparency & Architecture, eds. Fani Vavili & Evanthia Dova (Thessaloniki: ZITI Publications, 2007), 479-84.

11. “Wonen in een Glazen Huis is niet alleen Hosanna.” Het Kontakt. (September 28, 2001). http://web.archive.org/ web/20020228194038/http://www.hetkontakt.nl/4leerdam/2001/09/lh25glazenhuis.html (Accessed January 5, 2013).

12. Miley, Gary. “The Glass House, Netherlands.” Building the Ultimate House (television series). October 24, 2007 http://www.ultimatehouse.tv/article.php?id=6.

Perrin Complex Transparency

a monolithic mass was also inspired by the lamination of polymer foils to glass sheets, a

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inspiring the name of the project, “Laminata House.” The lamination of glass sheets to create

In theory, this was the intention of the project: that one could live in a glass house and feel private and secure, and that the deep reflections in the wall and the flood of illumination coming through would be intensely satisfying. That was the magical idea that inspired Kor and Yvonne Poelstra, a retiree and his artist wife, to take a bike ride along Queen Emma Lane one day after they saw the drawing for the house in the newspaper, only to be disappointed because nothing had been built. A few weeks later, however, a broker they spoke to called them to say that if they were interested, they could come see the finished basement. They were impressed by a sensor for electric heating that they saw in the basement level garage, and within a quarter of the hour they made the decision to buy the house.13 Yvonne Poelstra explained in a television interview, “Only the basement was ready, so we couldn’t see anything; but we thought, ‘It’s practical, it’s modern, so let’s go for it!’ … Just crazy.”14 They went ahead and signed an agreement to purchase at the end of October 2000, thinking they would be able to move in just a few months later. They were disappointed when the building experienced construction difficulties that put it almost a year behind its already lengthy schedule.15 The difficulties centered around the same aspect of the house that would make it intriguing: the bonding of the glass plates. As the architect Kruunenberg remarked, “Although the concept in a way is very low-tech, it was extremely difficult to have it realized because we had to cope with a lot of technical problems. The most difficult part in a technical way was actually to find the right glue to glue the place together. It should be waterproof, it should be UV-proof.”16 For one thing, to maintain the illusion of looking into the wall, the glue needed to be transparent and not discolor.17 The glue also needed to play a key structural role. Glass sheets on their own are brittle and fragile; in order for glass to function as a wall without the individual sheets shattering, the glue needed to be flexible enough to ensure an amount of movement between the panels.18 It needed to accommodate the expansion rate of the glass at different temperatures. Since the assembly would be exposed and impossible to replace without disassembling the house, it needed to be completely UV resistant and permanently flexible.19 Thus the five-year research period between the competition and the beginning of construction had little to do with the glass itself, which was common and cheap soda lime glass. The delay was primarily due to the time spent by Den Braven Sealants Company of Oosterhout inventing suitable glue.20 This was a major undertaking that was only possible because of funding that came through from the Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).21 It is sometimes the most obvious and simple components that are the most intractable, and the two-component silicone adhesive they devised proved no exception. Developing suitable 13. “Wonen” (2001) 14. Miley (2007) 15 “Wonen” (2001) 16. Miley (2007) 17. “Droomarchitectuur.” RTL. http://www.rtl.nl/%28/huistuinkeuken/vktk/%29/huistuinkeuken/vktk/components/ aflevering2/articles/home_mh_glazenhuis.xml (Accessed January 4, 2013).

18. “Laminata” (2010) 19. Richards, Brent, and Dennis Gilbert. “Laminata House.” New Glass Architecture. London: Laurence King, 2006.

20. Richards & Gilbert (2006) 192 21. “Maison” (2002)

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glue proved to be scientifically challenging and the application of the glue was fraught with problems. The architects were disappointed that the glue was not as transparent as hoped and impossible to apply without avoiding small air bubbles.

Kruunenberg claimed this led to a new effect that was not altogether aesthetically unpleasing: “Once we were used to the idea we said, ‘Well, this is actually very nice.’ … We achieved a result which we had never really thought about before we started this experiment.”22 Ours is a culture that fetishizes metrics and quantifiable results; Kruunenberg’s diction relies on terms like “results” and “experiments.” In this vein, accounts of the project published in the leading architectural journals and on the web, stress the developments, innovations, and breakthroughs of the project. A+U raved that the project was “a monument to glass … a beautiful functional residence.”23 The web site WikiArquitectura, itself a distillation of the comments from many of the major publications, hailed the house as a “revolution” in its economic and scientific performance: “The thick walls absorb the increase and radiate heat inside the house, eliminating temperature fluctuations and the need for air conditioning in the summer.”24 Another assessment gushes: “The glass sheets refract the light in such a way that provides sufficient privacy while still flooding the interior with natural illumination.”25 Further: “The glass and silicon were bonded together under heat and pressure, producing a thicker, stronger, acoustically superior, and safer glass product. If broken, the glass will tend to adhere 22. Miley (2007) 23. Kruunenberg, Gerard, and Paul Van der Erve. “Laminata: A House of Glass (fact sheet).” Kruunenberg Architecten.

(2002). http://www.2xu.nl/pdf/KE9638NL11v08_laminata.pdf (Accessed January 4, 2013).

24. “Laminata” (2010) 25. Bell, Victoria Ballard, and Patrick Rand. “Laminata Glass House.” Materials for Architectural Design, 22-25. London: Laurence King, 2006.

Perrin Complex Transparency

Hallway of emerald glacier ‘ice.’ Photo credit: Luuk Kramer

Lamination detail. Photo credit: Luuk Kramer

to the silicon, qualifying it as a safety glazing material.”26 This type of rhetoric willfully conceals a whole untold story, one that in fact is so suppressed that it can only be pieced together from the inadvertent scraps of its presence that creep in around the edges of the official journal celebrations.

To be fair, one cannot deny the structural accomplishment of the Laminata house: bringing to glass a major load-bearing capacity is a real achievement. A single material is organized so that its normal fragility is instead incredibly powerful.27 The glass walls in Laminata House have been termed “planar columns,” the glue between each of the sheets acting as a continuous lateral bracing system.28 There is no doubt it was incredibly strong in terms of load forces.

However, the glued-panels that were described as stronger, superior, and safer-involved incredible complications of assembly that were ignored in the published success stories. Only two of the ‘official’ architectural journals mentioned this difficulty at all;29,30 only one, Archis, included a process picture but its account did not elaborate on the difficulties. Instead, the caption illustrated a process pursued with typical Dutch precision: “The glass house was built in conditioned surroundings inside a hangar placed on the site. The numbered glass plates were glued into place one by one.”31 It sounds almost meditative rather than the frantic reality.

It was initially assumed that the bonding could take place at the factory with rapid assembly on site. The plates, however, needed to be glued together on site. A special hangar was built because the glue could only cure at a specific temperature and needed to set under constant pressure for several days.32 Only small portions of the house could be constructed at a time.

26. Bell & Rand (2006) 27. Zillich (2006) 28. Bell & Rand (2006) 22 29. Wortmann (2001) 62 30. Whitehead (2002) 76 31. Wortmann (2001) 62 32. “Wonen” (2001)

The construction is not mentioned in any architectural journals and only turns up in a newspaper article from the local Leerdam paper Het Kontakt.

Kruunenberg alludes to these difficulties, in entirely neutral terms, in a television interview: “The glass contractor … they glued together 10 or 15 sheets of glass, after which those sheets of glass were pressed with air pressure and kept in place for one or two days, and then they could move on with the next piece of glass.”33 He neglects to mention that this procedure significantly delayed the construction.

The Poelstras will never forget. They related to the local paper that life for them became a “dull misery” as they waited for over 125 construction issues to be resolved. They waited for “even the most basic things” to be corrected: doors that did not close properly, windows protruding incorrectly, walls developing cracks, cables jutting out of walls, and electricity incorrectly installed. “You name it,” they said.34 Lest there be a misunderstanding, these were also the same people who appreciated the beauty of the idea. Yvonne Poelstra raved about the qualities of the sunset coming through the walls, “Almost indescribable color games every moment”, as

public to see their art and the home of which they were so proud.36 In many ways there was a comfortable quality, something very livable to the place, with two massive glass chunks on the ends that were pulled apart in the middle to create the living spaces. A hallway sliced down the length of one of the lateral solid chunks, cutting through like a ripple that became thinner and thicker in places, giving full play to optical effects. It stood in an unassuming neighborhood on the outskirts of Leerdam, with two floors: a garage and a main floor incorporating two bedrooms, a study, a living/dining room with terrace and a courtyard.

The Poelstras, however, were dissatisfied, admitting the design was beautiful but accusing the architects of having gotten caught up in “mainly aesthetic thinking” and not sufficiently dealing with practical issues of livability.37 Using one material to bear loads, provide lighting, and act as insulation forced the architects to circumvent the traditional composite approach to building. Without a place for utilities in the wall, the foundation became the means for running conduits and the supply for heat. Because the house was monotonous in concept and material, laminated glass is its single structural detail.38 It did not even require a joint to link it to the ground: the enormous weight of the glass made it unnecessary to fix the glass to the concrete foundation. The plywood roof was attached by anodized aluminum tubes that were clamped directly into the sandwiched panels of glass, and a rubber cuff isolated the roof joists from direct contact with the glass.39 The windows were frameless, literally “of a piece” of the wall — places where the thickness of the wall reduced to a single pane of glass. The project’s use of 33. Miley (2007) 34. “Wonen” (2001) 35. Van der Erve (2002) 16 36. Whitehead (2002) 76 37. “Wonen” (2001) 38. Klose, Xaviera Burón, Renaud Clermont, and Tim van der Grinten. “Production & Parts.” Renaud Clermont - Portfolio.

(2009). http://www.student.tue.nl/X/r.f.p.clermont/_competenties/Laminata.pdf (Accessed January 4, 2013).

39. Bell & Rand (2006) 22

Perrin Complex Transparency

In the beginning, they were so excited about their new house that they held visiting days for the

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well as of the house’s practical qualities: “It’s big, comfortable, and easy to clean.”35

a single material — perhaps in the end monomania — undermines the idea that one detail can join the different materials of a building and reconcile them into a unified whole.

The Laminata House was an exercise of its conceptual research. The glass houses of the 20th century, whether Mies’s or Johnson’s, pursued transparency by thinness; the Laminata House’s transparency has “perceptive uncertainty” accentuated by thickness.40 Above all else, its architects pursued optimal thickness and what one group of Korean critics calls “visual tactility.”41 This project used glass to create differential optical and thermal circumstances. The 13,000 plates of laminated glass proved to have nearly no thermal transmission across its huge thicknesses. Resulting in a virtually constant interior temperature regardless of exterior climate.42 There was no need for air conditioning in the summer, and the house was well suited to retain heat in the winter. The interior courtyard also served as an ideal means to create a constant flow of air up and through the house as a passive source of climate control.43 But again, these positive outcomes cloud over the unmentioned negative ones that resulted from this “abuse of material innovation.”44 The same solidity that yielded excellent thermal properties proved an unconsidered barrier to the dissipation of moisture. In the wet and lowlying Netherlands, nature quickly took its toll. The natural ventilation benefited the house in the summer when the whisking of the wind through openings under the roof cooled the house.

In winter, however, when the house was closed off, cool and humid air hung thick outdoors, causing thermal transfer that left behind condensation on interior surfaces of the glass.45 With moisture collecting on the beautiful emerald walls, algae blooms grew in the glass assembly’s microscopic cavities. The damage was irreversible; moreover, the basement had major drainage problems.46 The basement, the only visible component when the Poelstras impulsively decided to buy the house, was yet another complication to the design. It was added as an afterthought to the original conception when it was discovered that the site had a substantial upward pressure of subsoil water unable to support the heavy glass.

The Poelstras put the house on the market due to their dissatisfaction with its livability by 2003.

Not one of the accounts published in architectural journals as late as 2010 mentioned this problem with the house. Only in Dutch news postings is there a glimpse of this deeper, sadder story that is concealed by the excessive rhetoric of success.

Because the Poelstras could not find a buyer for the house that was now coming apart at its 13,000 seams, they sought to demolish it and sell the land as three plots for detached houses to recoup their losses.47 Even though an effort was mounted to prevent the demolition 40. Zillich (2006) 41. Kim, Sung-Wook, and Do-Sik Kim. “The Tactility of Architectural Glass: Perceptual & Sensible Tactility - Focused on the Analysis of Laminata Glass House.” Architectural Research 12:2 (December, 2010), 23-30 42. Whitehead (2002) 76 43. Kneller, Liz. “Laminata Glass House.” John Quale Building Integration Workshop, University of Virginia. (Fall 2010/ Spring 2011). http://www.lizkneller.com/laminata.html (Accessed January 4, 2013).

44. Zillich (2006) 45. Kneller (2010/2011) 46. “Kleurrijk Wonen moet eigenaar Glazen Huis betalen.” de Architect. (August 4, 2010). (Accessed January 4, 2013).

47. Aanen, Dick. “Save the Glass House.” Materia. (December 11, 2007). http://www.materia.nl/563.0.html?&tx_ ttnews[tt_news]=119&tx_ttnews[backPid]=570&cHash=35c8b506e6 (Accessed January 4, 2013).

with a petition,48 the municipality found no legal reason to object to the owners’ request for a demolition permit.49 With scarcely a remark from any but one news source, the house was finally taken down in November 2009.50 This account reveals to us is the intensity of investment we place in our desire for projects to succeed; we market ourselves as problem solvers and conceal the problems our solutions may cause. Even in cases where failure is dramatically present, such failures are rarely presented.

Only initial euphoric accounts are retained in the printed records.

The disparity might give us pause. This is not to say that architects should not pursue research, though the extent that such research describes itself within a norm of positivism and productivity, we see it as a reflection of architects’ own desires to be relevant in terms that are depressingly circumscribed by notions of marketability.

At the moment, all that exists at 118 Queen Emma Lane is the empty hole where the Laminata House once stood, and nothing new yet built. The project was an exercise in bridging binary oppositions: solid/void, private/public, fragility/ strength, and now that it is destroyed, presence/ absence. At the center of these oppositions and often overlooked is the slash (/), standing for a gap that we try to bridge, or more often avoid seeing, by stressing the success of research and design innovation.

Translations are the author’s own.

48. “Save the glass house in Leerdam! (petition form).” Materia. (2007). http://www.materia.nl/fileadmin/websitedata/ Publications_images/Laminata_House/save-laminata.pdf (Accessed January 4, 2013).

49. Aanen (2007) 50. Ibid.

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Magnitude of lamination demonstrated in cut out apertures. Photo credit: Luuk Kramer

SALT SAND SIEVE center for architecture + design KATHERINE JENKINS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2013 PARKER SUTTON, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, M.ARCH 2013

What if 280 came down? In Spring 2013, Mayor Ed Lee announced an exploration of the potential of removing Highway 280 north of 16th Street in San Francisco. The tradition of removing freeways is not a new one for our city– two neighborhoods, the Embarcadero and Hayes Valley, have enjoyed a renaissance through freeway demolition that healed scarred communities. Competition participants are invited to submit concepts that are made possible through the replacement of the elevated Highway 280 with a surface boulevard.

— 280 Freeway Competition Brief

CONCEPT Salt Sand Sieve addresses three forms of excess generated by coastal urbanization: the subaqueous mountains of dredge scraped from the San Francisco Bay, the proliferation of impervious surfaces in post­industrial SOMA, and the abundance of neglected space beneath Interstate ­280.

MODERN HISTORY In 2011, 3.27 million cubic yards of dredged sediment was excavated from the San Francisco Bay. The removal and disposal of this dredge is energy ­intensive and costly. Millions of tons of sediment travel over 60 miles to deep­ocean dumping sites or move via truck to “upland sites” on the California mainland. Salt Sand Sieve utilizes this misallocated asset as the foundation of its design: a field of urban dunes amidst the ruins of the 280 Freeway ­constructed with dredge waste ­to generate a porous and ecologically diverse shoreline along the Mission Creek Channel.

The pre­modern landscape of San Francisco was one of tidal marshes, mud flats, and dunes.

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PREHISTORY

highly performative ecologies: dunes were flattened, wetlands — like those at Mission Bay — were filled. Highly porous, ecologically and morphologically diverse areas along the city’s shore became impervious and flat.

OPERATIONS [columns] The Mission Bay section of the 280 Freeway covers over twenty acres of neglected space on the margin of San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. It is an area punctuated by the 161 reinforced concrete columns that once supported the elevated interstate: 10 – 12’ diameter, 20­– 50’ height, 40’ apart. This column grid not only registers the site history, it generates the rhythm and meter of the site as the columns catch sand and ballast the dunes.

Jenkins, Sutton Salt Sand Sieve

Industrialization and speculation in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to the loss of these

This residual approach to coastalinfrastructural mediation was selected as a winning entry of the 280 Freeway Competition.

[cisterna] The urban dunes of Salt Sand Sieve borrow formally and functionally from the Venetian cisterna: sand­-filled filtration cisterns used to collect and cleanse rainwater in pre-20th century Venice. The dune morphology mirrors the form of Venetian cisterns and performs in much the same way: sand and native plants filter storm water that is channeled to freshwater wading pools along the edge of Mission Creek before entering the bay. [buffer ecology] The dune landscape provides a valuable buffer zone to remedy the loss of ecosystem services once provided by the Mission Bay wetlands and tidal flats: protection against storm surge and rising sea levels, habitats for birds, wildlife, and native vegetation, and storm water filtration. [key species] Ammophila arenaria (Marram grass), Elytrigia Juncea (sand couch­grass), Cakile maritima (sea rocket): Grasses responsible for the formation and stabilization of dunes through the binding and trapping of sand. [dune] The dune field renders an immersive counterpoint to the noise of urban San Francisco.

The troughs between dunes offer refuge from noise and wind. Runoff percolates through the dunes, resurfacing as pools and wetlands.

laterally and longitudinally between the dunes.

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[paths] The Salt Sand Sieve landscape is traversed by walkways and bikeways that wend

pools disrupt the unbroken geometry of Mission Creek to enable multiple access points and a variety of programmatic possibilities along the water’s edge, including launching platforms for boats, kayaks, and swimmers.

Volatile, fluctuating, and stable habitats are coincident in sand dune ecosystems, making them particularly biodiverse. This collision of complex systems tempers the excesses of coastal urbanization at the Mission Bay Channel Operations.

Jenkins, Sutton Salt Sand Sieve

[pool] Fresh water is filtered and channeled to gravity­-fed pools along Mission Creek. These

Jenkins, Sutton Salt Sand Sieve

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Photo by Marcus L. Brooks.

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preserving the los angeles river as ruins JORG SIEWEKE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

The Los Angeles River provokes contemplation. Following severe flooding in 1938, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers replaced the existing pre-modern wash — an arid seasonal river typology — with an enormous trapezoid concrete channel, best known as a staging ground for illicit car chases in popular media. How will future generations evaluate these massive infrastructural projects of the 20th century?

In a proposal coinciding with the structure’s seventy-fifth anniversary, the same Corps of Engineers pitched a half-billion dollar proposal to undo eleven of the project’s 51 miles. This proposal demonstrates that these critical considerations are no longer distant musings for future generations but budgeted projects currently under public review.

In January 2013, after being fenced off as a flood channel for decades, the Los Angeles River was once again designated as a publicly accessible river. Going to the river is no longer considered trespassing.

What are the cultural implications of facing the next intervention at the infrastructural scale? Can we still relate to the ideas and beliefs of the project’s heydays? Can we appreciate the ruins of modernity as we do the Roman aqueducts in their original intent and function but as of a time period distinct from our own?

Sieweke Is Modernity Our Antiquity?

IS MODERNITY OUR ANTIQUITY?

TITLE TITLE TITLE TITLE TITLE TITLE: subtitle subtitle subtitle AUTHOR

Originally an alluvial river that ran freely across the floodplain, the Los Angeles River’s 51-mile path was unstable and unpredictable, though a dry wash for most of the year. Photo taken from the “Examiner” balloon, 1887.

77 Sieweke Is Modernity Our Antiquity?

In March of 1938 a great storm flooded Los Angeles and killed 115 people. In response, the Army Corps of Engineers began the 20-year project to create the permanent concrete channel we inherit today. Photo by Herman Schultheis, taken from the Los Angeles Public Library.

The nature of the water is well understood by the Los Angelenos due to the accessible position of the river’s effluent discharge point at the Los AngelesGlendale Water Reclamation Plant. Photo by Jorg Sieweke.

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The emergent forest on accreting sediment in the soft-bottom portion of the river allows for escape within the city, shown here in the Bywater neighborhood. Photo

by Jorg Sieweke.

The next frontier folds in on itself. This cowboy contributes to civilizing the territory. Photo by Marcus L. Brooks.

ALTERNATIVES Richard Haag’s Gasworks Park and Latz’s Duisburg-Nord Park are iconic projects reinterpreting the heritage of early modern industry as quasi-archeological artifacts. These projects allow us to reinterpret the inherited structure of early 20th century industry as ruins of a seemingly remote past society. In Duisburg, a coal bunker is now utilized by an alpine climbing club; the gas tank by a diving club. In each of these spaces, the sublime nature of the infrastructure provoked reimagination instead of demolition, their bulk far exceeding the scale and scope of what would be commissioned for a park project built from scratch today.

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Adjacent parks accommodate the domestic use of the former mono-functional storm sewer channel. Photo by Jorg Sieweke.

The sublime scale of the concrete banks are reinterpreted as a glamorous backdrop.

Photos by Jorg Sieweke.

These modes of reuse offer inspiration for reimagining the Los Angeles river. The everyday appreciation and appropriation of the citizen can actively drive this reinterpretation forward.

Occupants (the Los Angelenos) understand the obscured and artificial ecology of their river yet still embrace it: there are no clean getaways.

Sieweke Is Modernity Our Antiquity?

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zenaida macroura

peromyscus leucopus

ABSENCE | ABUNDANCE the infrastructural wild GWENDOLYN MCGINN, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2014 RACHEL VASSAR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2014 [The] aesthetic for the third landscape [undeveloped plot, leftover fragment] is yet to come …

It resides in the astonishing biodiversity, the wonder and enchantment that these transitional and underdetermined spaces inspire . . . It is precisely the moment when we grasp the purpose and meaning of the Third Landscape and its transformative potential that we discover a new sort of beauty.

— Gilles Clement Abandoned infrastructure litters the American landscape, but for many people these spaces are devoid of meaning, or worse, held in distain. Where the casual viewer sees nothing, industrious “weeds” put down roots, introducing ecological abundance to discarded lands. A closer look reveals the unseen biological forces at work in landscapes of the urban margins, exposing the chasm between the anthropocentric perception of absence and the reality of spaces full of species diversity and temporal variation.

An inverse relationship exists between excess and scarcity in terms of infrastructure and the urban wild — as the intensity of building and maintaining infrastructure increases, the opportunity for animal and plant life to exist in these places is extinguished; conversely, as infrastructure is decommissioned or maintenance neglected, these sites become fertile ground for increased biological richness.

This richness may be heartbreakingly beautiful, but it is rarely pretty. Sadness is embedded in the ruderal landscapes of abandoned infrastructure. There is an inherent optimism in the construction of infrastructural networks; railways and roads become symbols of ingenuity and the limitless possibilities of what can be achieved through hard work and determination.

When abandoned, this infrastructure becomes a reminder of lost hope, human frailty, and impermanence. To many who see this abandonment, the histories that shaped the current form of these forgotten spaces are more significant than either their understated, unscenic beauty or the biological processes at work on them in the present.

PROLIFERATE Infrastructure is built; momentous engineered systems of movement and innovation, physical manifestation of the American will, the pioneer spirit. Constructed waterways, staggering engineering feats, change the flow of mighty rivers. Mountains are moved to make way for the path of the train and the automobile. Human ambition at work, shaping and reshaping the American landscape.

stations to fuel those cars, more pipes to carry that petroleum. More jobs. More money. More things. Goods from far and wide, carried via road, rail, and water. Over 140,000 miles of freight rail lines crisscrossing these United States1 make for a system “universally recognized as the best in the world.”2 Typological Case Study: Road When then Lieutenant Colonel, later President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the patron after whom the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is named, traversed the country in 1919, his convoy averaged a speed of six miles an hour. The majority of roads west of the Mississippi River were unpaved, and long hauls across much of the country were deemed “impracticable until the roads are improved.”3 From its inception in the 1950s, the Eisenhower Interstate System has been promoted as “the Greatest Public Works Project in History… not just [a] a means of travel, but [as] a part of our culture and the American way of life.” Since that time it has grown to over 45,000 miles in length.4 Despite its formidable size, the Interstate System accounts for only one percent of America’s vast highway network.5 The impact of the nation’s roadway system is incalculable. It is what makes the difference between a four-hour commute from Washington D.C. to New York City and a forty hour one, or the difference between just over a full day’s drive from Dallas to San Francisco and just under a two-week one. This compression of space in time not only changed how we travel in this country, but also forever altered how we do business, the options we have regarding where we settle, and ultimately, how we live.

Is there a time though, when we reach a point of “enough?” By continuing to build more are we increasing the quality of the system or just the quantity of its parts?

McGinn, Vassar Absence | Abundance

More infrastructure. More highways, more cars to drive on those highways, more petroleum

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And if some is good, then more is better.

DETERIORATE Once it is built, infrastructure must be maintained; it is constantly falling apart, deteriorating, and changing. As a society, we become entangled with our infrastructure. We depend on it, but we must maintain it.6 The immensity of our infrastructural networks provides a challenge in this feat of maintenance. To function properly, infrastructure is kept purposefully sterile, a place of biological scarcity. When rejected by society as infrastructural excess, either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, resourceful organisms take the opportunity to slowly create biological abundance on these sites.

In this balance of excess and scarcity, society depends on functioning infrastructure.

Infrastructure allows a society to grow, but this growth demands a constant fight against elements of wear. Developments created by the success of one form of infrastructure allow for the development of another. In this technological version of evolution, failed systems are forgotten and replaced.

Typological Case Study: Canals Our nation’s inland waterways and rivers carry the equivalent of about 51 million truck trips each year7 traveling through 12,000 miles of channels with over 200 lock chambers8. Much of the inland waterway system has not been updated since the 1950s, which has resulted in increasing reliability issues and an average of 52 service disruptions per day throughout the system7. Maintenance endeavors to improve and repair existing locks and dredge channels often take decades to approve and complete.

This form of transportation is often forgotten and out of sight, but provides the most efficient means of moving products. Barges can move one ton of cargo 576 miles per gallon of fuel, while rail and truck transport would move that ton only 413 and 155 miles per gallon respectively9. Inland waterway transport produces fewer emissions of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxide than rail or truck.9 Trains and trucks are ubiquitous in both the urban and the rural landscape, while inland waterways function quietly in the background. Many lie neglected already; abandoned channels can be found hidden in eastern forests, filled with soil instead of water. Is this the fate of the entire system or will their efficiency provide a strong argument for their repair and adaptation?

REGENERATE Inherent weaknesses in construction — everything has a joint — are opportunities for spontaneous vegetation. The process of life and growth accelerates infrastructural deterioration.

The process of life and death creates soil. Abundance creates more abundance. Quick life cycles transition to longer lifecycles until a storm, a fire, or some other form of disturbance changes everything and the process begins again. Asphalt and concrete are simply rocks, adopted and transformed in the process of primary urban succession.

Typological Case Study: Rail The first railroads on American soil preceded the founding of the nation.10 New industries and new towns expanded the network: wooden tracks, ballast substrate, steel rail and fasteners­­

Ascia monuste Poa annua Capsella bursa-pastoris

ASPHALT SURFACE COURSE typically 1¼ — 1½ in ASPHALT BASE COURSE typically 3 in or greater spreads loads for high stability PRIME COAT

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liquid asphalt penetrates voids, hardens top, and

McGinn, Vassar Absence | Abundance

helps bind overlaying asphalt course AGGREGATE BASE COURSE provides stability by spreading loads IMPROVED SUBGRADE when subgrade requires improvement by using granular materials or stabilizers

Plant roots find moisture in pavement cracks and asphalt becomes rock in an urban form of primary succession

SPONTANEOUS DIVERSITY [potential species]

yarrow achillea millefolium

tansy tanacetum vulgare

frost aster symphyotrichum pilosum

queen anne’s lace daucus carota

goldenrod solidago spp

milkweed asclepias spp

The decayed detritus of plants begin to form soil and protection for those that follow. Succession moves forward as shrubs and perennials replace the first herbaceous ruderal plants.

McGinn, Vassar Absence | Abundance

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— mile after mile. Along with rail construction, the unprofitability of early passenger lines in the 19th century.11 and competition from federally subsidized automobile and air travel in the 20th century create a long and continued history of rail abandonment. Forgotten wooden tracks, forgotten ballast substrate, forgotten steel rail and fasteners — mile after mile.

The very material required for rail functioning becomes the basis for biological regeneration once rail management has ceased. Even when actively maintained and treated with the wood preservative creosote, wood ties only average a 35-year service life.12 After that they are little more than nurse logs, decaying matter, nutrient-rich breading grounds for new plant growth.

Lichens and wood-eating organisms, like black carpenter ants (Camponotus pennsylvanicus), oak bark beetles (Pseudopityophthorus species), and various termites, speed up the decomposition of the ties. Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota), oxeye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum) and other industrious herbaceous plants grow in the rotting wood.13 In life and death they are a source of new life — first as food and habitat for wildlife, then as soil for other plants found in later stages of ecological succession.

Not only is there beauty in scarcity, but also, paradoxically, there is excess. In the landscapes of infrastructural wilds, where there is a lack of human commitment, there is an abundance of resolve on the part of plants and animals. The shepherd’s purse (Caspella bursa-pastoris) that implants itself in the smallest crack of asphalt displays commendable determination in its will to live. The yellow jacket (Vespula germanica) that nests in the weep hole of a forgotten river channel shows no want of resourcefulness. The sweet clover (Melilotus alba) that colonizes nutrient poor railway ballast – a material chosen specifically to block plant growth – exemplifies a hardy can-do attitude.

[I]nvasive plants are, by definition, ecologically successful, and there’s something admirable about that.

— Robert Sullivan

References 1. “Overview of U.S. Freight Railroads,” National Atlas of the United States, accessed January 26, 2014, http:// nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freightrr.html 2. “High-speed Railroading,” The Economist, July 22, 2010, accessed January 23, 2014, http://www.economist.com/ node/16636101 3. Pfeiffer, David. “Ike’s Interstates at 50: Anniversary of the Highway System Recalls Eisenhower’s Role as Catalyst,” Prologue Magazine 38, no. 2 (Summer 2006), accessed January 19, 2014, http://www.archives.gov/publications/ prologue/2006/summer/interstates.html 4. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System Web Site, accessed January 19, 2014, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/ homepage.cfm 5. “Our Nations Highways: 2011,” Office of Highway Policy Information, U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, accessed January 23, 2014, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/ chapter1.cfm 6. Hodder, Ian. “Human-Thing Entanglement: Towards an Integrated Archaeological Perspective: Human-Thing Entanglement,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17, no. 1 (March 2011): 154–177 7. “Inland Waterways,” Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, accessed January 24, 2014, http://www. infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/inland-waterways/overview.

8. “Inland Waterways Infographic,” Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, accessed January 24, 2014, http://www. infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#e/inland-waterways-infographic-01.

9. “Sustainability,” Heart of Illinois Regional Port District, accessed January 24, 2014, http://portdistrict.com/content/ sustainability.

10. “History of Railroads and Maps,” Library of Congress: American Memory, accessed January 21, 2014, http:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrintro.html 11. “History of Railroads and Maps,” Library of Congress: American Memory, accessed January 21, 2014, http:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrintro.html 12. Journal of Transportation Technologies, 2013, 3, 149-161 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jtts.2013.32015 Published Online April 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jtts)

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13. Del Tredici, Peter. Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide. Cornell Paperbacks. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Spontaneous vegetation first takes root in the small spaces between shifting tracks.

These plants provide shelter for a diversity of insects

CONSOLIDATED EXCESS spatial artifacts of the great plains DAVID KARLE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE Most coastal residents consider the Great Plains to be fly-over country. To the casual observer the vast in-between space of the American interior is a spatial leap from departure to arrival: the American checkerboard of agricultural fields experienced during a cross-country road trip or through an airplane window. This contemporary attitude relates back to the mind-set of early westward pioneers trailblazing through the American frontier. The speed and scale of migration patterns through this region had significant impact on the land, ranging from small traces to large scars of which some are still visible today. In recent decades these traces and scars have been consolidated, abandoned, or demolished in an attempt to establish a more resilient settlement pattern in the infinite-seeming expanse of the Great Plains.

With few natural boundaries to guide expansion, forms of settlement in the Great Plains continue to respond to a seemingly boundless availability of land. Over the years, efforts have been made at various scales of engagement to attempt to manage the U.S. interior. Affected by large booms and devastating busts, each cycle reaped the rewards and then suffered the consequences of consolidation.

Private, corporate, and government intervention on the land aimed to utilize the extreme excess. Attempts included organizing, controlling, connecting, and harnessing the excess at different scales.

The 1785 Land Ordinance by Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress subdivided the land west of the Appalachian Trail into one square mile grids; the extension of these grids across the horizon of unclaimed land gave rise to an idealized American landscape covering over three-fourths of the continental U.S. To this day, the Euclidean perfection influences zoning and land use throughout the region. The 1785 Land Ordinance also would lay the framework for the 1862 Homestead Act, one of the most unique and influential forms of urbanization in United States history. This government-incentivized migration produced the first wave of massdeployed built environment. The county post office, schoolhouse, and church were built ason a reasonable travel distance, ranging between three to five miles. This produced a field-

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needed throughout the infinite landscape. The distribution of these artifacts was based primarily

railroad sliced through the region that some spatial hierarchy was established, although similar spatial patterns also influenced the location of the train depots.

The railroad set into motion a series of irreversible architectural and spatial patterns which generated a specific form of Great Plains urbanism. Moving beyond the waterways as an infrastructural device to facilitate settlement patterns, the railroad provided the ability to connect the seemingly infinite productive land of the Great Plains to early city-density settlements.

Thousands of communities were spawned and nurtured by the railroad, with accompanying train depots that established a regular interval of stations spaced every 10 miles along the tracks, with as-needed post offices and general stores. (Figure 1) Larger spatial implications were also impacted by cross continental trails and a variety of infrastructure projects such as the Oregon and Mormon Trails, the Railroad Act and the Highway Act. A case study was conducted on four counties in central northeast Nebraska to show the influence of settlement patterns related to infrastructure over time. The four-county region of Rock, Holt, Loup, and Garfield counties were populated with the aid of the Homestead and Kinkaid Acts. In addition, these counties show the historical infrastructural influences of the river, railroad, and highways on population shifts and location of settlements from before 1881 to the present day. Focusing specifically on the typologies of post offices and schools we see these artifacts among the first typologies built when a settlement is established, and in most cases the settlement will fail shortly after these establishments are closed. (Figure 2) Initiatives like the 1934 Great Plains Shelterbelt, corporate farming, wind farms, and ethanol plants have tried to harness the bountiful resources of the land. Each historical attempt to manage the land leaves residual spatial artifacts; what these artifacts have in common are the speed and scope of their deployment. Although some development was paced appropriately, many misjudged the speed and scale of growth that could be supported, causing an overabundant built environment.

Karle Consolidated Excess

like arrangement — self-referential, wide-spreading, and non-hierarchical. It was not until the

Rail Line in Town, Joe Kotulak

CONSOLIDATED EXCESS We continue to see the residual spatial and architectural relicts formed by these rapid patterns of urbanism in the Great Plains, however today many of these historic artifacts are underperforming. With decommissioned regional railroad tracks, fewer farms and farmers, and reduced local dependencies on agriculture for human consumption, the region has created small, isolated towns and communities — disconnected from the state infrastructures — that slowly are becoming ghosted. Should efforts be made to engage large regional consolidation strategies as a means of survival? Over the last century, the Great Plains has seen unstable growth and consolidation cycles resulting in a Great Plains urbanism of consolidation.

Consolidation tactics are not uncommon in other regions of the U.S, but what makes the Great Plains unique is the mass deployment of repetitive architectural and infrastructural forms that are now obsolete, consolidated, retrofitted, abandoned, or demolished. To balance this downward cycle, Great Plains regional networks are voluntarily and involuntarily materializing through the consolidation and decommissioning of industrial, civic, and governmental infrastructures.

New spaces and relationships within the region are being developed, and reanalyzing these relationships to project new futures will permit emerging patterns to inform new spatial models at a micro-regional scale.

Outside the mega-region, new spatial strategies are needed that will start thinking strategically and acting locally. Micro-regional networks have established a distributed model of economic, social, and cultural codependency beneficial to sustaining communities within 30 to 60 miles of each other with populations below 5,000 people. A major factor influencing the development of regional linkages is the consolidation of civic, governmental, and consumer-based resources.

The small towns of the Great Plains cannot afford to simply consolidate. The vast scale of the region prompts various communities to consider a codependency of development rather than the historic build-as-needed mentality.

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Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

In 2011, the government planned to consolidate 3,700 rural U.S. Post Office branches, 90 of them in Nebraska. (Figure 3) The USPS hoped to generate micro-regional networks of postal service needs and remove redundancy. The post offices slated for shuttering had little to no foot traffic or had other post offices nearby; still, the plan would have had a large social impact on the culture of those communities due to workforce reductions and delayed mail delivery. After much debate, the small rural communities were able save their post offices but will face another type of consolidation in the form of reduced hours. In addition to rural consolidation, the Postal Service has reviewed over 4,000 facilities for potential sale and identified over 600 buildings earmarked for disposal. Most of these 600 buildings were built during the height of the New Deal under the Works Progress Administration from 1934-1939.

Paralleling the federal government’s post office consolidation tactics, states in the region continue to consider and consolidate school districts. School districts throughout the Great Plains have been consolidating for over a century. School districts in Nebraska peaked in 1920 with 6,734 districts; in 2012 the number of school districts had dropped to 252. The consolidated educational model has established a framework for testing other distributed spatial models of shared amenities and resources. Norris School District has consolidated three times since 1964, and currently serves a total of nine communities. Rather than being embedded in the fabric of an existing town, the academic campus is centrally located on a 270acre tract adjacent to rich agricultural land 12 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Historically, the excesses of the Great Plains have proved challenging for permanent, sustainable settlement. Attempts at permanent settlement in the region have often met with failure after a brief period of opportunity and prosperity. Only time will tell if current attempts to manage its excess prove viable, or fall victim to the harsh realities of the Great Plains landscape.

Communities are adjusting rapidly to the uncertainty which has characterized the region since the first westward settler. Moving beyond the blunt instrument of consolidation, communities seek the potential of a more resilient model built around shared cultural amenities. Thus the Great Plains spatial condition provides an opportune testing ground of strategies for cultural, civic, and infrastructural resiliency in the face of consolidation.

Crete Church, Lauryn Noble

15th Street, Joe Kotulak

THE ROLE OF EXCESS IN LANDSCAPE maintenance as a form of curation GREY ELAM UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2014

We are a culture obsessed with excessively maintained landscapes.

To illustrate this point, consider the abundance of leaves that fall each autumn.

Many of them land on roads or in drains where they need to be removed, but many others fall on lawns, where if left alone they would decompose into beneficial nutrients for the soil. And yet, every fall hundreds of thousands of Americans spend countless hours raking leaves into tiny piles, bagging them up and hauling them off somewhere far away, only for them to be sold back to the same Americans as fertilizer for their perfectly cultivated lawns. What does this cultural practice say about our conception of maintenance and its role in portraying care?

(above) This project employs a tending strategy to convert a road, flanked by demolished lots, into a spontaneous urban meadow. The logic is simple: instead of re-paving potholes in an effort to fight the deterioration in a neighborhood with 70% vacancy, why not engage it by drilling the potholes deeper?

As cracks in the paving emerge, they are jackhammered, seeded, and annually mowed to staggered heights encouraging varied species proliferation.

According to the Institute for Facilities Management (APPA), the standard of care’in landscape operates on a linear scale. This means that the more frequently maintenance operations are performed, the more care is perceived.1 It is important to note that what I am critiquing is aesthetic, not functional, maintenance.

Clogged drains, slippery roads, corroded pipes: these require a high degree of attention and maintenance in order to continue functioning. However, raking leaves or mowing the lawn is aesthetic maintenance: not a necessity, but rather a choice based on perception. Now is the time to question management standards and ask ourselves whether maintenance regimes built on increased intensity are desirable for our future.

Returning to the question of the linear model’s impact, I assert that the linear model is problematic for three reasons. First, suppressing change promotes a false sense of permanence in the landscape by erasing all evidence of site systems. Second, it results in the sanitization and homogenization of landscapes, thus obliterating site character. Third, it associates care with investment, resulting in an increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots. This is not to say that high intensity management is not appropriate at times, but it should be a decision; not given assumption that such management will or should be carried

If we agree that a linear model that rewards excessive maintenance is less than ideal, where does that leave us? Can we still design using excess?

Excess has long played a role in landscape; most notable is the plethora of affordable labor that marked America beginning in the 1900s, enabling a culture of intensive maintenance.

New types of excess continue to come to the forefront. Landscapes already generate an abundance of leaves, puddles, trash, logs, soil types, and much more; how can we harness these byproducts in order to generate better design? What role does accumulation play? This argument calls for a nuanced form of excess that considers the full cycle of a system.

The New York Times recently published a piece about the residents of Westchester, New York, who, understanding that the leaves strewn across their lawns were a resource, proudly shredded them in place so as to speed up the process of decomposition and fertilization.2 The residents dealt with excess by flipping the abundance of leaves from nuisance to resource and in doing so reducing the dependence on labor.

Power Wash One Season Yr 1

Yr 1

Rain

Leaf Blower Yr 3

Yr 2

Rain Yr 6

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Encourage Moss Growth Concave Joints

Leaf Pigment Leaching

Graffiti Removal

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out.

THE LOGIC OF SUCCESSION WORKING W/ THE LOGIC OF SUCCESSION BACKYARD BERM: SEGMENT 9|YEAR 1 SUMMER

ROVER SPREADS HERBACIOUS SEED MIX BETWEEN TRACKS FOR WALKING TRAIL

BLACK LOCUST

TRANSPLANT WILD APPLE TREE IN SPRING EXISTING HORSEWEED CREEPS IN

ROVER SPREADS SEED MIX OF PIONEER PLANTS ON EAST SIDE OF RAIL GOLDEN ROD, HORSEWEED, MUGWORT

ROVER SPREADS HORSETAIL SEED ON WEST SIDE OF RAIL

ROVER MOWS TRACKS TO PROMOTE HERBACIOUS GROWTH

WORKING WITH THE LOGIC OF SUCCESSION BACKYARD BERM: SEGMENT 9|YEAR 2 SPRING

ROVER TRIMS HORSETAIL TO 4’ HAND TORCHING AROUND WILD APPLE TREE

ANNUAL BURN ALONG TRACKS TO MAINTAIN WOODY PIONEERS

WORKING WITH THE LOGIC OF SUCCESSION BACKYARD BERM: SEGMENT 9|YEAR 3 FALL

ROVER MOWS HERBACIOUS GROWTH TO CREATE DENSE RESILIENT MAT

PRUNE WILD APPLE TO PROMOTE SPREAD

PROLIFIC HORSEWEED AND GOLDEN ROD GROWTH ROVER TRIMS HORSETAIL TO 1’6”

(Above) This series demonstrates the relationship between planted form and its careful curation through maintenance.

Note the change from year one to three, between Wild Carrot flowers and Winged Sumac, both existing on site.

(Opposite) This project employs a strategy of curated excess and enhanced accretion in order to obscure the site-line of park users into abutting residences. The strategy shown here is a two-prong approach, operating at starkly different speeds and levels of maintenance intensity.

Building on the existing pattern of accretion flanking the berm, fast growing, dense understory shrubs are planted with the intention of fast turn over and integration as biomass to build the edge. Meanwhile, the existing mature canopy is maintained to migrate from mohawk to bookend formation, providing a longer-term strategy to ensure resident’s privacy.

BIOMASS ACCRETION USED TO CREATE PRIVACY BOUNDARY

EXISTING

PRIVACY BARRIER

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PRIVACY BARRIER

PRIVATE SHED 10” NEW SOIL (1”/YR)

9’0”

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mof s ^` v=ba dbW_f l j ^pp=^` ` obqf l k

RESIDENCE

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DEBRIS

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BIKEWAY FILL

DEBRIS

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PRIVATE SHED

20’0”

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RESIDENCE MULCH LIVE STAKES

17’0”

PRIVATE SHED

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8’0” 2’0”

DEBRIS

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DEBRIS

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MULCH POLAR

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Elam The Role of Excess in Landscape

RESIDENCE

17’0”

FORMS OF MANIPULATION

SUNLIGHT + SHADE

MOISTURE

COMPACTION

MACHINE

WEEDING

BURN

SOIL AMENDMENTS

(Above) These thumbnails outline the various forms of minimal intensity maintenance that can be employed to manipulate planted form. The operations shown in the left column take advantage of existing site processes, such compaction from foot traffic, to alter plant growth. While higher intensity, the operations in the right column have the potential to intercept and engage with processes.

(Opposite) The sequence displayed is a closer look at what is happening in The Logic of Succession drawing (page X). It aims to clarify how maintenance can engage and alter succession and planted form.

SCALES OF SUCCESSION + DISTURBANCE

EXISTING

BURN WILD CARROTS TO

CONSTRUCTED

ENCOURAGE GROWTH

YR 1 TRIM WILD CARROTS SURROUNDING SUMAC

YR 2

YR 3

Advisors: Julie Bargmann, Jorg Sieweke, University of Virginia References 1. APPA, Maintenance Level Definitions, 2009, Ohio University 2. Lisa Foderaro, “Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them,” The New York Times, 2013.

3. APPA, 2009. Maintenance Level Definitions. Ohio University: APPA. 4. APPA, 2011. Operational Guidelines for Educational Facilities. 2nd edition. United States of America: APPA. 5. Lisa Foderaro, “Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them,” The New York Times, 2013.

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OF SUMAC

DIRTY ARCHITECTURE architecture and its relevance to time DARIUS WOO CORNELL UNIVERSITY, B.ARCH 2011

Architects participate in the process of erecting buildings but often disregard how they transform and readapt over time. While life is ever-changing and unpredictable, contemporary architectural discourse seems unwilling to surrender the fallacy of permanence. This project critiques the notion of timelessness and imagines an architecture that constantly derives new meanings for both itself and its context.

Architectural theory, since Vitruvius, has often listed permanence firmitas as one of architecture’s three most important qualities. Modernism in the early twentieth century casted an overly idealistic prescription for contemporary architects, where building forms are often fantasized to be timeless. In contrast to these approaches, Dirty Architecture recognizes the paradoxical tension between architectural permanence and the impermanence of life. If architecture is supposed to house our way of living, then naturally architecture should also reflect the dynamism of life. In this rapidly changing world, permanence is the last thing architecture should purport.

Burdened by its glorious past, the city of Rome becomes a testing ground for such an architectural idea. The Eternal City, a collage of monuments frozen in time, reveals the city’s wariness toward contemporary architecture and cultivates a stagnant and inflexible architectural environment.

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OM

ARTIFACTS

ARTIFACTS

GABIONS GABIONS

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GLASS GLASSBOTTLES BLOCKS

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ALUMINUM BLOCK

ALUMINUM BLOCK

BALER BALERBLOCKS BLOCKS

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COMPOSITE BLOCK

COMPOSITE BLOCK

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The storage system for these modules draw inspiration from various day to day organizational techniques —candy dispensers, stationaries, cemeteries, etc. The materiality and permanence of these modules range and vary.

While most civic entities strive to petrify masterpieces through immense efforts of preservation and restoration, Dirty Architecture proposes a type of architecture that embraces the everchanging conditions of a contemporary city such as Rome. If all buildings are susceptible to change through time, how can we utilize this unavoidable phenomenon as a design opportunity?

The proposed project acts as a temporal holding facility for the recyclable trash of Rome, where trash is reconceived as a found artifact and constructive element. Recyclable materials such as paper, cardboard, and aluminum are transported to the site and either compacted by a baler or inserted into gabions to create 1´x 1´ building units. This new monument constructed of garbage reflects the cultural and sociological implications of the city through the display of its consumption pattern.

Collecting physical traces of human activity and re-using them as an architectural material, Dirty Architecture is an opportunistic architecture providing both a physical shelter and a sublime reflection of society. Something as mundane as garbage can be an unprecedented source of information on the nature and changing patterns of modern refuse — and thereby, human society. In beauty or disgust, garbage is indeed a collective reflection of ourselves; Neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, driveway by driveway, every morning the remnants of our consumption create beauty in the formation of line, volume, color, and texture.

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Time lapse elevations

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF PERFECTION GABRIELLE PIAZZA PATAWARAN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, M.ARCH 2013

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The legacy of architecture owes a great deal to the pursuit of perfection. Defined by Aristotle as “that which is complete, flawless, and has attained its purpose,� perfection motivated the definition of the Classical Orders: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. The Orders are the first standards of perfection in architecture, defined such that all architecture follows a measurable set of mathematical norms. In doing so, the Greeks also inherently defined all other forms not as orders; as not perfect. Thus, imperfection in architecture was born.

Since the end of the 19th century, artists, architects, philosophers, and theoreticians had all turned their back on the pursuit of perfection, deeming it humanly impossible to achieve. In the modern age, perfection is widely acknowledged to be immaterial and therefore unbuildable or realizable as an architectural condition. The value of perfection is not in perfection as the goal.

The true value of a perfect architecture is not the state of perfection itself, but the infinite variety of imperfect and aberrant conditions that emerge as a result of the failure to attain perfection.

This thesis critiques architecture’s contemporary obsession with digital precision and challenges the notion that computational design methods generate necessarily legitimate forms. The use of computer modeling to achieve seemingly random forms exemplifies a contemporary contradiction: as architectural form becomes freer, blobbier, andmore irregular, the need for exactingly accurate digital modeling increases. Instead of rationalizing irrational forms into numerically dimensionable computer models, herein lies an alternative: use highly regular, well-behaved, rational forms and define a context for this systematically defined geometry to be deployed via a matrix of rules, intended to generate perfectly imperfect forms alongside moments of near perfection and extreme aberration. The study of perfection requires the acknowledgment that nothing can be described as perfect without having numerous imperfect forms. The Architecture of Perfection is not, then, a perfect architecture, but rather one which uses perfection as a structure through which to generate its own imperfection.

Patawaran The Architecture of Perfection

Perfection.

System A

Volume split into eight irreducible segments

Cubic forms attract each other.

Circular forms repel each other

A | CELLULAR LOGIC First, the Architecture of Perfection begins with the definition of a cellular system. The cell is the essential irreducible matter of all things, architecture included. System A begins with two basic planometric cellular forms: circle and square. Next, circle and squares are divided into quadrants and recombined to define four new shapes, thus there are six possible shapes including the original two.

From plan in xy model space to axonometric in xyz model space, the circle and square translate to the sphere and cube. The six profiles defined planimetrically are applied to each of three elevations, describing 56 unique volumetric figures. Then, subdivision occurs again, as before, along quadrants in three dimensions, yielding eight partial figured from each singular volume. The part-to-whole relationship set up here is essential to a logic of recombination and deployment of figures at a greater scale.

All permutations of 6 circle/square profiles arranged orthogonally in three dimensions

The form is 2-cube parts, 1-cylinder part, 4-groin vault parts, and 1-sphere part

115 (left) Model studies of cellular systems exploring figure and ground (right) Massing

Each volume can be described by its eight component forms and/or its three cross-sectional profiles.

Shown is the volume split into 8 irreducible segments.

Patawaran The Architecture of Perfection

Model notating each of 56 volumes, arranged according to profiles.

Isolating a cell within the field

Field condition expressed as three orthogonal sets of cells. Planar cellular distribution is analyzed, cross-sectional profiles are applied, and the aggregate is recombined in three dimnesions

B | CELLULAR MASSING This system explores the interaction of figures deployed in a field. John Conway’s classic Game of Life is adopted in this case to iterate infinite permutations of cellular organization, each for which only an initial condition be predetermined. Originally intended to simulate emergence, here the successive cellular iterations are adopted as plans, with each successive generation stacked vertically to describe a three dimensional massing strategy.

117 Patawaran The Architecture of Perfection

Field condition of threedimensional massing with cellular profiles applied

A+B | CELLULAR AGGREGATE SEGMENTED AND RECOMPOSED For this thesis, The Architecture of Perfection is defined by a combination of A (form) + B (massing). First, note that system B produces five different cellular arrangements: the grid, the diagonal, the linear, the circumscribing and the solo. Apply each of the six profiles from system A to the categorical clustering of system B, arranged in terms of a gradient, from square to collective and from to circle to singular. Note that the linear arrangement uses two profiles, one for linear extensions and another for turning corners.

These profiles are applied to each of three dimensions, meaning that a volume can be defined by the relationship between three cross sectional dimensions. This maps the cellular volumes of System A within the field of System B. Considering each volumetric cell as a conglomerate of eight partiallyenclosed shell forms, the conglomerate segments are analyzed in relationship to one another. Square is attracted by square, circle repels other forms. System C deals with these basic combinations, but also those in between; those that do not perfectly satisfy the system as a whole but instead fulfill the system at the segmental level.

Advisor: Mack Scogin

For a given massing condition, each encapsulated volume can be decomposed orthogonally such that its segments can be understood in the context of their adjacent segments. Segments can either remain, are obliterated, or are rearranged based on comparative edge conditions.

119 Patawaran The Architecture of Perfection Each segment has three edges, whose form can be described as either ‘L’ (Orthogonal forms) or ‘C’ (Circular forms). By examining two adjacent segments, and identifying the overall count for L and C profiles, it is possible to determine either an L majority (combinatory), a C majority (non-combinatory) or an equal distribution of L and C. For those adjacencies, there are three sub-types, each of which has its own agency for change.

THERE AND THERE AGAIN a rule: derivations of nature WILLIAM DIBERNARDO HARVARD UNIVERSITY, MLA 2013 Landscape architecture has an anxious relationship with site. The identity crisis happens when we model design methods on scientific ones; ecology, as used to model designs for conservation and sustainability, engages this model and requires consideration of the interdependent global factors that transcend the traditional demarcations of site. This project, called A Rule: Derivations of Nature, is a global model used to inform decisions made at a local scale, relegating site as a proving ground for a larger methodological machine. I propose a methodology for the parametrization of nature and site and makes a clear distinction between the valuation and evaluation of nature.

Current design methodology in landscape architecture can be seen in two parts: the definition of a problem, and the process used to, in some capacity, solve or mitigate that problem. While the former has seen a broadening of scope, the latter has failed to evolve simultaneously. New tools, namely big data, provide us new lenses through which we define and view landscape. These tools seem only to assist in broadening the definitions of our design problems; our solutions have failed to evolve simultaneously. In testing a new methodology, this project holds the apprehension and interpretation of data as central to its thesis.

Allowing new tools to dictate actual spatial intervention can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of data-driven design. More importantly though, is what the development of an alternative design methodology says about our current design paradigms. Operating outside of current paradigms removes us from a selfreferential discourse. Can the crafting of data help us negotiate the space between virtual lens and physical condition?

Somewhere, Sometime

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A Rule: Derivations of Nature uses a global model of climate and ecosystems as a starting point of the transposition of one ecosystem onto another, related ecosystem, without regard to of geographic proximity. It matches the climate (wind, precipitation, temperature, and elevation) of the Western Himalayan Temperate Broadleaf Forests with those of Lake George, New York, and specifies a planting schedule for ninety-nine sites around Lake George, each divided into a minimum of 6 zones. Each site was mathematically determined, using the headwaters of all streams that were situated in a bowl topography. Based on existing vegetation, sun, shade, soil composition, groundwater, proximity to water, and other variables, this project determines zones for planting and selects appropriate species native to the Western Himalayan Temperate Broadleaf Forests, assembling the essential vegetative pieces of an ecosystem. In this infinitely revolving carousel of information and automation, a similarly endless amount of operations arise. It is upon the designer to cull not only the information that is unnecessary to the purpose of the project, but to explore all permutations related to it. This process, however, can yield an overwhelming number of results. It is the designer that must find a metric to measure the fitness of a result. Though deterministic results can exist (i.e. correct or incorrect), fitness calls for nondeterministic yields, which measure it relatively (i.e. good, bad, better, or worse).

Fitness predicts the success — or lack thereof — of a permutation, but in an ceaseless cycle of testing and modeling, the possibility to improve fitness always exists. The objective of the designer then expands to recognizing a moment to eject the design from the model: when to turn the carousel into a traffic circle, an exit strategy, a threshold at which excess appears. The excess though is not discardable waste. The excess is error, the indicator that points to the miscalculations in the model. What we can search for in methodological machines, however perversely mathematical and logical they may be, are lapses in our intuition. By recognizing the inherent flaws in our knowledge, we can at least hope to prevent flaws in our reality.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

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125 DiBernardo There and There Again Site zones are delineated by color and hatch.

Surface water, groundwater, existing vegetation, soil composition, soil moisture, light penetration, and topography were among of the conditions used to determine a site’s vegetative zones. Exposing the mathematics and the geometrical operations that create the zone forms can reveal lapses in those operations.

For instance, knotted curves or points in proximity can indicate faulty data or a condition not yet considered.

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Vegetation for each of the sites’ zones is identified. The selection of vegetation is automated, referencing databases to find the most fit vegetation mix for each zone and site.

The collection of the most suitable vegetation for a zone is illustrated by using three lines that form a “Y”. One branch represents the conditions for light another soil pH, and another soil moisture content, information which was derived from publicly available spatial data. The “Y”s then form an illustrative symbol for the zone’s conditions and can be shown as a hatch, a common means of representing mixes of vegetation.

448.1 448.1

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SUB-CANOPY Sub-canopy

CANOPY Canopy

SUB-CANOPY Sub-canopy

CANOPY Canopy

SUB-CANOPY Sub-canopy

SHRUB LAYER Shrub Layer

SHRUB LAYER Shrub Layer

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

SHRUB LAYER Shrub Layer

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

GROUND COVER Ground Cover

The above series of diagrams represents only one logic for selecting vegetation. Hierarchically, the stream zones (yellow) are established as of primary importance, and so any appropriate species are chosen for a canopy. Using those potential canopy candidates, another match is made for the sub-canopy, choosing species that work in the zone’s conditions, but also with the vegetation of the canopy. This process repeats for the shrub and herbaceous layers and again for the remaining zones in the site. Changing the initial hierarchy can produce variation and errors in the results, and often points to holes in the model or data. Testing different hierarchical logic is a way of exposing these holes; the excess is a computational litmus paper.

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CANOPY Canopy

Somewhere, Sometime

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PATTERNED AND ELABORATED ornament GHAZAL ABBASY-ASBAGH UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, LECTURER IN ARCHITECTURE While ornament was shunned in the 20th century, as of late it has captured the attention of artists, architects, scientists, and the literati alike as the site of ideas that effectively span the boundaries of discipline and culture.

Nearly a century ago Adolf Loos posited the “evolution of culture” as “synonymous with the removal of ornamentation.”1 He did so, however, by first recognizing the role ornament had played in the making of culture: “The urge to decorate one’s face and anything else within reach is the origin of the fine arts.”

What Loos seems to suggests is the evolution of 19th century man towards a modernity disconnected from a past which no longer has the capacity to maintain the present or support a future. Ornament, he writes, is a sign of a culture that has come to pass: “In economic respects it is a crime, in that it leads to the waste of human labor, money, and materials. That is damage time cannot repair.”

If Modernism was in fact interested in timelessness, social engagement, and becoming the “art of the classless society,” it had to do so by distancing itself from the very classes who had supported the arts, crafts, and ornamentation.2 Perhaps in an oversimplification of the place of the decorated object within a specific class lies the logic of separating oneself from it, and hence the claim to the “art of the classless society.”

Ground floor Plan DiBernardo There and There Again

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Muqarnas under reconstruction in Yazd, Iran (Aga Khan Archive, Harvard Fine Arts Library, date unknown)

The role of ornament — as excessive or as “origin” — will remain a topic for debate. In recent years, however, the extent to which ornament has engaged the discipline of architecture has surpassed the notion of the decorated object and its cultural connotations.

Farshid Mousavi’s 2006 book Function of Ornament provided a glossary of projects that use ornament as surface effect. Mousavi’s book considered ornament as it relates to “cultural affect,” and sets forth the use of ornament in contemporary architecture. The 2012 symposium at the Harvard Graduate School of Design titled “Ornament as Portable Culture” focused mostly on ornament in the arts, with the exception of less than a handful of presentations that elaborated on the use of ornament in contemporary building facades.

I would argue, however, that the presence of patterns and their engagement with contemporary architecture goes beyond elaborate surface effects and their cultural affects. The internal structure and geometric logic inherent in ornamental patterns can produce bottom-up processes where a specific detail, node, or component becomes a starting point for producing systems and ecologies beyond architecture’s formal tendencies. Computation and digital fabrication have increased our ability to mass-customize and to produce variations elaborated a return to ornament at the smaller scale.

This method, while contemporary, has roots as far back as the Renaissance. In a 1999 essay “Diagram, An Original Sense of Writing,” Eisenman refers to a process that he calls “superposition,” a partial tracing of an earlier diagrammatic imprint of a certain type-form, such as the basilica.3 “These lines,” Eisenman states, “[are] the traces of an intermediary condition (the diagram) that exist between what can be called the anteriority and interiority of architecture,” representing the summation of the history of the type-form as well as the projects that could exist in the traces.4 Similarly, Wittkower’s work on the Palladian Villas — the proposition of the 9-square grid — considers the villas as variations on the theme of a particular type-form.5 While the focus of Wittkower’s 1949 book was on the work of 15th century architects with Humanist ties, it had an impact on the reading of Modern architecture in respect to theories of proportion and modularity.6 Today, however, the significance of Wittkower’s work is in its relationship to the versioning enabled by parametric software and digital fabrication tools.

In the absence of specific type-forms in contemporary architecture, however, patterns — existing in ornament, nature, material performance, geometries, organic growth patterns, etc.

— present the ability to produce logics that can generate variations of form. Patterns have embedded diagrams that can be translated to organizational and spatial structures of our work.

In recent years this has resulted in an architecture of elaborate, organically conceived, endlessly growing constructs that are exceedingly more accessible.

Longitudinal section

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throughout this process. This, one of the greatest feats of contemporary practice, has enabled

Muqarnas plan and section, based on a pattern (Lur’zadah, 1979)

MUQARNAS An example of this concept is the case of patterns found in an Islamic ornamental construct, muqarnas, which builds on geometric principals to create endless scalable patterns. These patterns have the potential to operate at multiple scales, and have a great capacity to behave in periodic as well as a-periodic configurations while responding to various internal and external contingencies.

Simultaneously developed in Persia and North Africa and vastly distributed by Islamic builders and artisans, muqarnas is an ornamental device often used at the base of a vault, dome, or niche to transition between the geometries of the base and roof. Similar to the pendentive, muqarnas is often used to negotiate between two disparate geometries — a rectilinear base and a curvilinear roof. It is based on a complex, often multi-scalar, two-dimensional geometric pattern projected vertically, creating a dome- or vault-like three-dimensional construct whose structural and formal integrity is attributed to the differentiated transition of the two geometries.

Pre-determined units — or girih tiles, varied in style depending on period and region — constitute the muqarnas in an aperiodic arrangement.7 For centuries, artisans have used complex methods to generate and fabricate these three-dimensional structural ornaments. Their proliferation is largely due to the importance of geometry in Islamic philosophy and cosmology.

These fantastically elaborate patterns, in combination with calligraphic Quranic inscriptions, have and continue to adorn mosques throughout the Islamic world. Equally significant to the development of the muqarnas is the position of the mosque in respect to the urban landscape

Muqarnas pattern based on pattern by Lur’zadah with local agitation

Muqarnas pattern based on pattern by Lur’zadah using compound curves resulting in an a-periodic pattern

Traditional Muqarnas pattern reconstructed 3-dimensionally

Muqarnas pattern based on pattern by Lur’zadah using elliptical curves resulting in an a-periodic pattern

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Muqarnas Pattern (Lur’zadah, 1979)

Deflection Map

Optimized structure Unloaded, Folded Plate, Diagrid

Optimization Diagrams

Deflection Analysis

STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION

Optimized structure Unloaded, Folded Plate, Square, grid

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Keeping the weight and tributary area of the structure constant, variables such as geometry, matrial and degree of folding were tested to measure the system’s deflection under its own weight. Using an open source software ‘equistruct’ developed by Panagiotis Michalatos, the data is used to optimize the structure. In the optimization diagrams below the darker color indicates areas where structural contribution of the material is minimal. These areas are used to introduce apertures in the system.

Plan diagrams — City and Pier

it occupies. Islamic law, Shari’a, requires the mosque to be oriented towards the qibla. The mosque often finds itself in the position of having to negotiate this orientation with the irregular geometry of the medieval city. This results in complex geometrical conditions that are resolved through introduction of multiple courts and corridors that often intersect one another in irregular angles. Some of the most fascinating and innovative aperiodic geometries used in tile work and muqarnas — and seldom visited by scholars — occur in these intersections. It is this ability to morph, unravel, and produce aperiodic conditions that make this ornamental construct a scaleless, variable system rather than static, applied ornament.

RE-FOLDING MUQARNAS: A CASE STUDY This project utilizes folding surfaces as a mechanism to make a historically non-structural system, muqarnas, into a spatial construct that combines surface and structure. The resulting forms are structurally optimized, operating as skin, aperture, and circulation core.

The research presented here starts with a study of the traditional methods of pattern generation and traditional construction techniques that are still practiced by artisans. The structural computational techniques, two-dimensional patterns incorporating girih tiles are generated,

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and geometric logics of muqarnas are tested through digital and physical modeling. Using

environment.

The system is adapted geometrically, materially, and structurally to create a viewing platform in the San Francisco Bay. A peri-style hall emerges, drawing on the structural grid of the existing pier, while responding to program, the urban grid, and the slope and depth of the ground below the surface of water. As the bay slopes away from the shore, the pillars are spaced farther apart from each other while becoming deeper and wider. While the vertical structure behaves as a variable repetitive grid, creating smaller apertures, furniture, and circulation cores, the symmetrical geometry gives way to an unfolding which translates to stairs, ramps, and canopies. In this case, ornamentation does not merely serve as decoration. Instead, it presumes its historic role as a foundational unit, establishing a much larger system that is adapted to the Bay Area.

Interior view of peristyle hall

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and two-dimensional patterns are translated into three-dimensional constructs in a parametric

View from Telegraph Hill

References: 1. Loos, Adolf, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (1870-1933). Introduction by Adolf Opel; Translated by Michael Mitchell. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1997.

2. Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 6:5, (1939): 34.

3. Peter Eisenman, “Diagram, An Original Sense of Writing.” In The Diagrams of Architecture: AD Reader, ed. Mark Garcia (Chichester: Wiley, 2010), 92-103.

4. For Eisenman the diagram mediates between the history of architecture (diagrams of anteriority) and the ways in which this is traced in a real building and the other possible buildings that are within it (diagrams of interiority).

5. Wittkower, Rudolf, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1949.

6. Rowe, Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976.

7. Husayn Lur’zadah. Ihya-’i hunarha-yi az yad raftah-i mi’mari-i. Tehran: Muhammad Khvajavi, 1979.

View from San Francisco Bay Abbasy-Asbagh Patterned and Elaborated

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Original siheyuan arrangement: hierarchical, symmetrical and axial with a well-enclosed courtyard

THE CRITICAL MASS floating population and self-help in beijing IDA D. K. TAM CORNELL UNIVERSITY, M.ARCH 2012 The emergence of the floating population has caused unprecedented social and housing issues in Beijing, opening up new opportunities for the typological evolution of siheyuan, traditional courtyard housing. More inventive, performative, and economic alternatives are possible with the use of performance-based design tools such as energy data mapping and digital simulation. These alternatives respond dynamically to environmental, cultural, and economic issues encountered already by the siheyuans typology.

Since Beijing became more urbanized in the 1950s, rural urban migration has resulted in overpopulation in the form of floating populations. In 2009, the floating populations in Beijing exceeded ten million in comparable number to the 12.46 million registered inhabitants.1 Since floating populations are not official residents of Beijing, their housing and social demands are not accounted for in the planning processes; however, this mass has grown to a critical point at which urgent attention is inevitable.

The Beijing government’s initial solution to accommodate these “excess” residents in the 1960s was to transform some of the siheyuans from single family to multifamily occupations. These transformations were limited to siheyuans located in the neighborhoods of the commoners. The siheyuans located in royal neighborhoods

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Densification: Buildings are subdivided to allow multifamily occupation with one courtyard

and on major avenues were typically restored, refurbished and in some cases reconstructed to the extent that they looked brand new. The different rooms of the commoners’ siheyuan were reassigned to include more residents. The largest rooms were even further subdivided to accommodate more units.

The redistribution of rooms in the siheyuans did not alleviate the Beijing’s population growth for long. The solution failed very quickly in coping with the rapid rate of increase in population.

In the 1970s, self-help housing activities emerged as low cost, informal unit extensions constructed by residents to cope with overcrowded living conditions. As the factors driving the migration of floating populations are largely economic scarcity, most of the immigrants who rent have little expectation on comfort and are very unlikely to invest in their living environment. Selfhelp housing activities become a natural and popular solution.2 The self-help housing structures are often direct extensions adjacent to the subdivided siheyuan buildings. They are typically two to three meters in width and are used as kitchens, bathrooms or storage spaces. The units sometimes contain only one room in which the living and sleeping are integrated. In some instances, bigger units are rented out by bunk beds equipped with no living and dining areas. Furthermore, the structures are often built of temporary materials, construction waste and scavenged materials characterized by their short life spans. These constructions are often structurally unstable and non-compliant with building codes and fire

regulations. Since they occupy almost all buildable spaces in the courtyard, the high density of self-help housing structures leaves circulation between units to less than one meter and eliminates almost all open space once provided by the courtyard.

Meanwhile, the preservation of siheyuans located in royal neighborhoods has propelled gentrification, creating enclaves of wealth, businesses and tourism. The market has forced the poor to move, frequently pushing them outside the city’s center marginalized populations such as laborers, artisans, neighborhood store-owners, the underemployed, and the elderly. They are expelled from the historic environments of their own culture, often by force and with minimal compensation. Since 1990, more than 580,000 siheyuan residents have been relocated to the outskirts of Beijing.3 Frustrations from these forceful clearances have led to public protests and lawsuits against lower-level government agencies and real estate entities, and in extreme cases, suicide attempts.

Despite the informal quality of these housing activities, the emergence of self-help structures has opened up new social and design opportunities for the evolution of this traditional typology.

As residents generally lack living and leisure spaces within their own unit, the role of the communal space between blocks of siheyuan, hutong, has gained importance. The original

Current Conditions: Blurred boundary between public and private

enclosed courtyard spaces are opened and turned into semi-public corridors. These corridors are turned into small courtyards whenever possible and become venues for T’ai Chi, mahjong and chess; play and study areas for children; and kitchen and dining areas for families during the unbearably hot summer. Hutong neighborhoods are more connected than ever before.

Similar to vernacular housing types in other cultures, siheyuan evolved as inherently efficient and sustainable responses to geographic and climatic factors through building organization, orientation and scale. Such sustainability principles, however, are compromised by the unplanned densification and overpopulation. Therefore, to explore the continuation of the typological evolution of siheyuan, any design solutions should generate value through high energy performance, low maintenance, and cost-effective construction solutions in order to provide better living conditions and incentivise continuous investment.

If we assume the need to increase the occupant capacity of siheyuan’s original accommodation and satisfy the demand of urbanization, new design tools such as energy data mapping and digital simulation are essential. There is an inseparable link between computational tools and performance. Computational tools such as digital simulation rationalize scientific behaviors

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and turn them into viable design alternatives, generating solutions that are inherently efficient

Environmentally devised wall iterations: Daylight data map model (right) and Progress data maps of optimized locations for light well and outdoor spaces (above)

Environmentally devised wall iterations: Porosity and unit arrangement depends on wind vectors and program requirement

and performative. Digital simulation design tools also allow designers to develop inclusive site strategies that improve environmental conditions and prepare for the impacts of future crise.

These design tools offer new sets of nonlinear constraints and opportunities, working both bottom-up and top-down. Additionally, they form a series of feedback loops that connect varied scales and scopes.

Using this hypothesis as a basis, a computative system can be set up to find for the most energy-optimized scenario for densification of siheyuans. By inputting three-dimensional data of the site into energy analysis software, factors of building mass, geography, and climate information are utilized to generate a data map of daylight factors of each site subdivision.

Data maps of optimized locations for light wells and outdoor spaces are identified. Progressive densification scenarios are also generated, ranging from most dense to least dense. All of these scenarios are then consolidated into one single data map incorporating different priorities such as growth, economics and program.

The frequent sandstorms in winter and heat waves in summer have posed difficult challenges to building performance in Beijing. Beginning with behavioral studies of seasonal air-flow in wind vectors into variable parameters. These parameters govern the degree of rotation and

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Beijing, computational models can be arranged to translate the direction and magnitude of

by daylight, natural ventilation, and programmatic strategies. Variation in porosity and volume can be efficiently generated due to the brick’s inherent modularity.

Instead of attempting to construct replicas of traditional structures, turning Beijing into a living Disneyland, the emergence of floating population and self-help housing activities have created new opportunities for the continuation of the typological evolution of siheyuan. With the use of performance-based design tools, such as energy data mapping and digital simulation, more inventive, performative, and economic alternatives are possible to respond dynamically to environmental, cultural, and economic issues.

References 1. Meng Jing. “Beijing’s population surges near 20 million,” China Daily, July 23, 2010. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ china/2010-07/23/content_11038489.htm.

2. Zhai Zhenwu, Duan Chengrong, and Bi Qiuling. 2007. “The Floating Population in Beijing: An Update,” Population Research, Vol. 31 Issue 2, pp39.

3. W. Denslagen. 2009. Romantic Modernism Nostalgia in the World of Conservation, Translated by Donald Gardner.

Amsterdam: University Press, pp. 9.

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separation in between bricks, forming a three-dimensional structure that will be further refined

LOTS excess as a way of dissolution JOANA POLĂ“NIA UNIVERSITY OF PORTO, M.ARCH 2013 excess noun 1. an amount of something that is more than necessary, permitted, or desirable.

2. lack of moderation, especially in eating or drinking. adjective 1. exceeding a prescribed or desirable amount.

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shift permanently articulates and challenges what we want and what we need. Excess is a reflection of the dissolution of the liquid borders between satisfaction and actual happiness.

The information revolution has transformed urban systems and forced the exploration of new strategies for relationship-building. Technologies available dictate a new logic of communication that maximize indirect contact between people. Excess affects human intimacy, proximity, and contact; it intensifies alienation and represents the dissolution of self-image.

In urban miscellanea, the desire of the object extends beyond the object itself. Images are comforting and provide a sense of belonging. Yet excess is everywhere; excess of noise, images, distractions. At what point does this excess become a collective dizziness?

As much as I find plurality healthy and stimulating, the reality of excess as an end in itself makes contemporary space blurry and hard to read. Space in excess is hard to relate to. In this post-modern circumstantial maze it is not difficult to experience a loss of empathy towards the city. The intrusion of paraphernalia on billboards and urban facilities, as well as the television screens increasingly present as interfaces with our urban public spaces, sharpens the tension between happiness and pleasure, between what is enough and what I want to reach. In modern life there is an anxious excess of borders, labels, catalogues. These boundaries becomes increasingly ambiguous as we deal with liquid, volatile concepts. Antagonizing this process, however, is no longer relevant. What is in between, and that which has already (been) dissolved can with all its subtleties be equally honest and significant.

Lots is a collection of experimental city configurations that take repetition and juxtaposition to an extreme. I aim to represent a caricature of the absence of guidance based on the difficulty of tracing and reaching out to one another in contemporary society.

In a time where space elements merge into each other, I ask: is chaos the new order? What is more efficient: an overload or an absence of references?

Polรณnia Lots

In a living and dynamic system, relationships are characterized by advance and retreat. Each

hi

I’m next to the _____

hi, where are you?

which one? the new one. right next to ____

you mean the one across the street?

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I’ll meet you. where are you?

I have no idea where that is.

Polónia Lots Polonia

no. that’s the old one.

I’m next to the ____

what? oh. nevermind.

Polรณnia Lots

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Polรณnia Lots

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DEEP TIME, WIDE OPEN SPACES, AND NUCLEAR AMERICA an interview with jamie kruse and elizabeth ellsworth of smudge studio EMILY GORDON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY MLA 2012 SARA JACOBS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY MLA 2012

smudge studio, an ongoing collaboration between New York artists Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth, is dedicated to “exploring sites and moments where the human and the geologic converge.” Their work is grounded in the notion that geologic time should be central to discussions of human and non-human habitation, ecology and ethics, and art and design. smudge studio’s current work, Look Only at the Movement, is a three-hour film that opened in October 2013 in New York and will travel to venues around the country through the spring of 2015. Look Only at the Movement invites viewers to experience both the banality and the complexity of nuclear waste disposal, storage, and transport in North America — an excess of remnant material for which there lacks a comprehensive strategy. Presented through visual and investigatory narratives, smudge studio’s body of work consistently questions our understanding of the compounded nuclear legacy of North America.

> To start, we were wondering if you saw your work as fitting into any type of genre?

Elizabeth Ellsworth: I think the first big influences on our work were the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Matt Coolidge. But even before that, our very first collaborative projects had to do with landscape and with invisible forces that shape and change landscapes. We were experimenting with ways of visualizing those forces and actually bodily sensing them when we discovered CLUI [the Center for Land Use Interpretation].

Jamie Kruse: The CLUI residency [in Wendover] throws artists into extreme juxtapositions. The town is split between Nevada and Utah, with a major WWII historical legacy; dry Mormon Utah on one side and the casinos of Nevada on the other.

EE: And there are sites of crazy resource extraction. It’s an amazing place that activates extreme limits of habitability, and exists under extreme historic, cultural, and economic pressures.

JK: Up until our residency in Wendover, I did not know over 1,000 nuclear bombs had been detonated in the United States.

the residency or was that a shifting point?

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> And the ideas of “where humans and the geologic converge” — were those present before

expand the time scale. You have to look at how long its present material realities took to form.

When we began to do that, all of a sudden the work took on a vaster context.

EE: The forces that shape a landscape — wind, water, light, heat, time — started becoming newly apparent when we started the nuclear projects. Time is a material force, not just an abstract concept. Certain materials on this planet exist only because there have been processes taking place for millennia. Putting our bodies at sites of nuclear processes and trying to sense their forces started getting interesting and complicated because it meant we had to try to think of time in terms of millions of years.

JK: Look Only at the Movement feels like a capstone to a body of work that we began seven years ago about the American West related to the nuclear. We learned about the nuclear era and then actually went and stood in front of a crater.

EE: Polarized discourses right now make it almost impossible to talk about nuclear waste in terms of what it really is. Cold war discussion has left us with a legacy of highly charged language. This can actually shape our reality by influencing what kinds of things are done with nuclear waste or nuclear power, and what kind of things or policies don’t get considered or invented.

Gordon, Jacobs Deep Time, Wide Open Spaces, and Nuclear America

JK: The only way to put the realities of the nuclear complex in America into context was to

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One of the big motivations for working with the nuclear was our interest in coming up with new ways to use design, words, or photographs that focus directly on the materiality of the sites we visited. We didn’t want to talk about nuclear waste as anything other than itself: What is this stuff? What are its capacities to shape reality around itself?

The question that propelled the whole project was, “What does it take for two human beings to meet up with this material and move with it for a while on public roads?” We suspected that if we watched it move dynamically — in relation to sunsets or wind or city limits — we would actually be inhabiting the space around it. We suspected we might be able to sense it more as a material force, and less as the sum of the highly charged political arguments and assumptions that have accumulated around it. > After the screening of Look Only at the Movement, we were thinking how the irony of the encounters with the waste is that you never actually get to see the waste itself. The radiation is something that you can’t see or even feel with your raw senses. You imagine nuclear waste warping reality around it.

JK: It might be your imagination but you really can feel it. You see nuclear waste as a trajectory of time and space that is vast and incredibly powerful. And that’s definitely what happened when we were passing the truck transporting waste in New Mexico. We saw it in direct relationship to the sun, to the solar system, and to deep futures of geology. That was all happening in those seconds while it was passing. Afterwards, we had a big “wow” moment, when we realized it was on its way to being underground forever. > Another question I’ve been thinking about is how nuclear test sites and nuclear waste storage sites are memorialized, or if they have the potential to be memorialized. Do you think waste has the potential to transition into anything other than waste?

JK: We proposed a project [through the Institute of Wishful Thinking] after we visited various underground testing sites. We proposed that every fifty years, for 24,000 years, design students would visit, study, and update the marking systems at underground nuclear testing sites in the United States. The sites had to be revisited because keeping them in peoples’ consciousness

is about remembering. If we can actually understand the necessity of continual remembering, and live up to the challenge of it, then maybe we can make different choices as humans. The project proposed less of a memorial and more of a re-upping our attentiveness to a material reality that will continue to persist even beyond our capacities. Our languages may not even last as long as the need to contain nuclear waste. The places we visited needed something. A lot of the sites just look like little tombstones. We contacted the Office of Legacy Management to try and interest them in the project, and we got to a certain point— EE: —they invoked “Homeland Security” and said they would rather not call attention to the underground nuclear test sites that are on public lands.

JK: We went back to one site last fall, and it was the weirdest feeling when we got there because all signs of it were gone! Now there’s a huge rush of gas extraction very close by, so trucks are clogging dirt roads that were completely empty when we were there only three years earlier. There’s drilling very close to the marker that was there, but is now completely gone. We looked at each other and said: “what is happening!—“

> I remember at the Parson’s screening [of Look Only at the Movement] someone brought

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EE: “—are they going to drill right here?”

that it has transformed into an ecologically robust landscape. Could you speak about the word “waste” itself in the extended time scale of nuclear material?

EE: We’ve talked a lot about how using the word “waste” for this unusable excess of leftover nuclear material is so inadequate because it can’t grasp the intense potency of the stuff, or its longevity and continuous active shaping of human life around it. To say it’s “waste” makes you think of something you simply ball up and throw away and that’s what makes it imaginable as simply “waste.” “Waste” also implies that it’s something we can get away from. But there’s no “away” when it comes to the radiation. “Waste” isn’t a helpful term.

We most likely have isotopes in our bodies now that we didn’t have before we started this project. So do the people who live in Moab, Utah next to the uranium tailing site. Anytime there’s a storm with wind, they run the risk of inhaling radiation. So there is no “away.” We’ve made nuclear materials and distributed them and now we are becoming of them.

JK: You also start to see how there’s no “away” when you look at all the design and infrastructure and landscape planning that this material requires. We’re hollowing out mountains in Nevada [like Yucca Mountain] and burying waste 2,000 feet [below ground] in a gigantic salt dome in New Mexico, and yet we’re far from shutting off the 100-plus reactors currently generating high-level waste in the United States. We’re never going to get away from designing for these materials and innovating ways just to keep it isolated. So much energy, technology, and innovation will continue to be directed towards this enterprise. Back in the 1950s most people thought of nuclear power as an affordable power source, not as waste that requires stewardship for all of eternity! We’re not sure the entire cycle is being completely considered, even today. > Do you think there is an excess of space and time in how we are dealing with nuclear material?

Does the vastness of the American West and the time scale of radioactive material privilege us to create this false sense of “away?”

Gordon, Jacobs Deep Time, Wide Open Spaces, and Nuclear America

up the Rocky Flats Mountain Arsenal. It’s not occupiable for humans, and partially because of

JK: That’s interesting. Finland has Onkalo, the world’s first repository for high-level waste.

Maybe because they’re a smaller country, they’re taking it more seriously. Here, the landscape and political polarities are vast. We don’t sense an urgency in public consciousness regarding how none of our high-level waste has anywhere to go.

EE: When you are in the American West the thing that is so palpable is that so much of its “open space” has been militarized and nuclearized — many of them are Native American lands acquired by the government during the Cold War and WWII. Nuclear materials exist very proximate to many groups of people in the West. Sure it was far away from New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — JK: Originally our focus was on the American West because there was so much evidence on the surface — but there is no less an issue in the Midwest or Northeast, in places such as Chicago. Byron, right off Lake Michigan, is a case in point. It’s interesting — we think that nuclear materials are mostly in the West and that there are these mythical spaces around it.

And yes, bombs were detonated there, and yes, they’re trying to store waste in a mountain there. But we forget that the material results of nuclear power generation are everywhere. I think we’ve realized that part of the project is to direct people’s imaginations to the places where they live, so that nuclear material doesn’t seem so far away, but actually close by. Because it is!

EE: Just mapping the stuff, the whole continent lights up. > One thing I got out of the screening was the idea that this is part of a shared legacy in the United States. [The West] has a very particular history and I think even today we have this idea of the American West as a distant frontier. But we are complicit as well.

JK: Yes, it’s hard because we have this idea that it was all about testing nuclear bombs or the Cold War, when really, we turn on the light switch in our homes and we’re completely implicated.

It’s really inconvenient to think, “I’m participating by having a light on.” > And your work is not just the research. There’s something very objective and almost banal in the way it’s presented. It creates a fine line for the audience between observation and participation. In Look Only at the Movement, why did you chose to eliminate narrative?

JK: We have other projects that use words to capture or direct people. Their research and design took forever, because it was very important to fact check and make the research “real” by mapping and picturing it.

With Look Only at the Movement, we wanted to make a gesture that invited people into their own process of grasping the material force of the nuclear. The film needed to be three hours to offer this larger context of movement and the larger topographical reality of North America. If you had

ever gone on a road trip, you could project your imagination into driving past a tourist site like Hole N” The Rock [a house, and a gift shop, inside a giant boulder in Utah’s Canyanlands] in a way that is relatable. Then maybe it will be easier to relate to the fact that there are these other realities — nuclear realities — that coexist with the tourist sites and punctuate them in the film.

The video is experiential. We hope it creates curiosity about what you’re looking at — in the video and on a highway. Its an invitation to a different mode of talking, because sometimes you’ve lost everyone the minute you say “nuclear waste.”

Look Only at the Movement is also about being able to recontextualize an exhibition as it travels.

The project is going to Santa Fe this spring, then to CLUI Wendover, then to Colorado. It closes in Reno, Nevada at the Nevada Museum of Art. JK: The camerawork — because the camera was mounted on the car — is kind of banal.

We’re delivering to the audience what the camera delivered to us. But that’s enough, right?

Neutralizing — or regrounding — a charged issue can be a starting place.

EE: And going back to the points about waste and excess, the reality is that no matter where

We framed the video with a very specific intention: to point to the fact that this thing we call “waste” is a volatile event — it’s not an object. It’s not a thing you can crumple up and throw away, or put in a container and bury. It’s an ongoing event that, in relation to human time, is going to be never-ending. Making a gesture of movement in relation to its movement, putting the audience in motion with us, underscores the eventfulness of the stuff itself.

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containers that it’s in, and it’s already leaking or will be leaking eventually.

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the stuff is, it’s on the move. It’s moving out of the containers that it’s in, it’s moving within the

A FUTURE FOR PYRAMIDEN ghost town of the industrial arctic Hylgeriak, Wikimedia Commons

JENNIFER LIVINGSTON UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2015

INDUSTRY IN THE ARCTIC Nomadic traditions in the Arctic date back thousands of years, a result of the challenge of forming permanent settlements in harsh conditions; urban centers have been only recently established in the region. Often spurred by a local abundance of natural resources, many of these cities were developed solely to support material extraction and production. Requiring a large labor force to drive the local economy, these industrial centers experienced a transient influx of people who came seeking employment. Many one-industry cities experienced a period of intense growth followed by decline, and sometimes abandonment, after the resources were depleted or extraction was no longer profitable. Declining and abandoned urban centers exist throughout the Arctic, especially in Russia and its territories.

Resource extraction, a transient workforce and eventual decline have cultural and economic implications not only for the cities themselves, but also for the greater Arctic region and beyond. Due to climate change and the pursuit of resources, predictions indicate that an increasing number of people will continue to migrate to the far north. As the centers of industry shift, a clear understanding of how depopulation affects an area socially, economically and environmentally is important to planning for sustainable growth in the region..

While it may not be realistic to revive every declining city or re-inhabit every ghost town, it is important to design Arctic cities that support Arctic industry as well as other functions.

GROWING, SHRINKING, ABANDONED While natural resources are also available in the Canadian and Alaskan portions of the Arctic region, Russia has access to the most; a wealth of deposits of oil, gas, and various metals are available for extraction. Unlike more temperate areas where historically the economy focused on agriculture, the economy of the Arctic has been based largely on resource-extraction and therefore has traditionally been more urban. In the Murmansk Oblast, one of the most Northern regions of Russia, more than 90 percent of the population is considered urban.

Most Northern settlements are relatively new, early-to-mid-twentieth century constructs that operate more as collection points and supply centers than as traditional cities with hierarchical each has a population of 100,000 or more, yet has few connections to the others or beyond

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layers of function. More than forty percent of the Northern population resides in sixteen cities;

and an overall contraction of settlements. While a few northern industrial cities, such as Surgut, Nefteyansk, Nizhnevartovsk, and Novyi Urengoy managed to grow during the post-Soviet period, the region’s overall population has declined by 1.3 million people, or 17 percent.

There is, however, hope for growth, focused on capitalist exploits of natural resources and an educated workforce equipped to efficiently extract them.

POPULATION AND MIGRATION The Soviet system attempted to equalize living standards among the union’s many groups and regions; its collapse allowed the Russian north to polarize. Resource-rich regions became growth magnets, and regions lacking resources have became pockets of poverty. Areas with resources became places of in-migration, while those lacking assets experienced population decline. Many areas with high levels of in-migration are filled with highly-mobile young workers.

This demographic, however, is cyclical and unreliable; while many young, educated people are willing to come work in the north for a short time for higher pay, they aren’t typically willing to stay permanently.

While the country’s current Northern labor policy is to recruit and train young, skilled workers for employment in the region’s expanding industries, the government also seeks to provide resettlement assistance for the pensioned, the disabled and others who are not working.

The post-Soviet government views the population — too large for the regional climate and social structures to support — as burdensome. Regional governments have encouraged consolidation to decrease costs, and many small settlements across the North have been closed or abandoned as resources dwindled, costs increased and living conditions deteriorated. Consolidation is not always voluntary: occasionally, drastic measures were taken, such as cutting utilities or infrastructure, to speed evacuation. While the cost of maintaining Northern settlements is expensive, it remains necessary because Russia’s most valuable natural resources, critical for growth, are located there.1

Gordon, Jacobs Deep Time, Wide Open Spaces, and Nuclear America

the region. In recent decades, the Russian North has experienced significant out-migration

PYRAMIDEN: BOOMTOWN TO GHOST TOWN Rated #7 on National Geographic’s list of the top ten ghost towns in the world, Pyramiden, a former Russian coal-mining town on the Svalbard archipelago in the high Arctic, presents an iconic example of a former boomtown. Pyramiden (in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) means “the pyramid” and refers to the pyramid-shaped mountain that towers over the town. Founded in 1910 by the Swedish, it was sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, though major construction and operations did not get underway until after WWII. At its peak, Pyramiden was a bustling town of more than a thousand people. It had a school, hospital, theatre, and even a gymnasium with a heated swimming pool. Operated by the state-owned Russian company Arctikugol Trust, the town was abandoned in January 1998 when mining operations were no longer sustainable.

Many of the buildings remain in the state they were on the day they were abandoned, as residents were forced to leave quickly. Because the rate of decay in the Arctic climate is slow, it is predicted that the structures will remain intact for at least 500 years.

While the area remained a ghost town for over a decade, tourists, artists and others have begun to visit and re-inhabit the town. Access to the town is unrestricted, however visitors may not enter buildings without permission due to health and safety hazards. The town is accessible by boat and snow mobile, and guided tours are available in English, Norwegian and Russian.

The closest settlements include Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s capital, approximately 50 km south, Barentsburg, an operational Russian mining town 100 km southwest, and Ny-Ålesund, a small research community, 100 km to the west.2

PYRAMIDEN AND THE RIVER A uniquely accessible example of a Soviet-era mining town, Pyramiden provides an opportunity to reimagine a ghost town as an incubator where artists, designers, scientists, tourists, and other enthusiasts come together to draw inspiration from the Arctic landscape. The re-awakening of Pyramiden is representative of the potential for other abandoned settlements throughout the Arctic to be re-imagined as places for recreation and creative activity. The older portion of Pyramiden, built mostly between 1945 and 1960, is sited in a dry alluvial fan away from the active riverbed and melting glacier, but later structures were built in this flood plain. Protective earthworks have eroded, and the meandering river has begun to encroach on the town, damaging several buildings and threatening to undermine the enduring integrity of the town.

If Pyramiden is to be maintained as a destination, the current situation with the river must be addressed. Because the existing infrastructure has failed, a more robust system should be implemented. Drawing from passive frozen core dam technology, this project proposes that a terraced frozen core dike be constructed on the west end of the town, extending the town’s central axis, preventing flooding, and providing a public amenity and tourist attraction. The heat extracted from the dike’s core using thermosyphons is used to heat dwellings made of repurposed shipping containers on top of the terraces, while a ramp on the dike’s north-east side allows vehicular access.

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FROZEN CORE DAM AND THERMOSYPHONS Frozen core dam technology employs an impermeable frozen mass, consisting of the dam core and foundations, as a water retaining structure. Thermosyphons, a passive refrigeration system in which a radiator and a sealed tube filled with pressurized gas, passively remove from the ground and disperse it into the cold air. The dam is constructed in thin lifts of material; during construction, each lift must be allowed to freeze to -2˚C before the next lift is set. This technology is typically used in the continuous permafrost zone in areas where a limited range of materials are available for construction. Foundations typically consist of frozen, fractured bedrock and icerich soils layered with crushed rock, sand, silt or clay as available. Construction of the foundation often occurs in harsh Arctic winter conditions when the ground is most stable. The resultant form is similar to earth embankment dams built in temperate conditions.

Reference 1. Heleniak, Timothy, Elena Wilson Rowe, Ed. “Growth Poles and Ghost Towns in the Russian Far North.” Russia and he North. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2009.

2. Andreassen, Elin, Hein B. Bjerck, Bjørnar Olsen. Persistent Memories: Pyramiden, A Soviet Mining Town in the High Arctic. Trondheim, Norway: Tapir Academic Press, 2010.

Gordon, Jacobs Deep Time, Wide Open Spaces, and Nuclear America

Arctic Industries and Associated Cities

Existing Flood Condition

Proposed Flood Control

171 Livingston A future for Pyramiden The Frozen Core Dam: Initial Sketches

THE COLUM(N)BA a living monument for the dead CAIO BARBOZA, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, B.ARCH 2013 NATALIE KWEE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, B.ARCH 2013 New York City is a city of excess, a globalized hub of the world that never stops moving. Congested and densely packed, its buildings keep growing taller and its spaces keep shrinking smaller. While it may seem hard to find prime real estate when living in the city, it has become even more arduous to find it for the deceased. With limited land resources, the premium on real estate has deemed the use of land for the interment of the dead inefficient, if not wasteful.

While scarcity is the mother of invention, excess is the mother of innovation.

Creative and sustainable solutions are needed to deal with the ever-growing population of the deceased in a sustainable manner. The Colum(n)ba revisits the ideas of the traditional columbarium, utilizing modern technologies and abandoned urban infrastructural space and facility to create a place of solitude and contemplation within the busy urban metropolis.

This spatially efficient system has proven to be an effective and sustainable solution to the lack of real estate dedicated to the dead. The Colum(n)ba imbues the mechanized columbarium with spatial and experiential layers, elevating it beyond pure functional efficiency to embrace the intensively personal and private moments linked to the departure and remembrance of the beloved ones.

The core concept of the project is derived from the root word for Columbarium: Columba (Latin for “dove�). In a city of visual and aural excess, the Colum(n)ba provides a place of respite, serving as a dovecote to the city; an oasis in this desert of honking cars and flashing signs.

The Colum(n)ba itself is a multi-dimensional void; a hollow column filled with the countless memories of the deceased. It is modest both in its footprint and materiality, taking up no more than a 150 square feet, and built out of polished granite and marble. Upon entering the Colum(n)ba, visitors encounter an incredibly tall, light-filled space, arriving at a new realm of serenity and solace. Urns are placed in compact jars and stored within the infrastructure of abandoned subway lines that run beneath the city. Families swipe a smart card and the ashes of the deceased are lifted from the underground vault into a viewing area. Once they leave, the urn is returned to its place, and the Colum(n)ba is at once ready for its next visitor.

The simple and obliging nature of the project lies in stark contrast to the abundant stimulation that surrounds it. The experience borders on religious as the hectic and noisy city fades away, replaced by the gentle echoing coos of doves. In this simple space, born out of excess and dedicated to transcendence, one is left to contemplate and commemorate the life of the

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deceased.

Colum(n)ba: How it works

A personalized smart card of the

Visitors scan their smart card to gain

deceased individual is registered with

access into Colum(n)ba

Urns are stored underground in

Within 60 seconds, the mechanized

reappropriated subway lines. The

system transports the urn from

smart card activated the mechanism

its underground storage into the

that retrieves the appropriate urn

Colum(n)ba

The urn is secured in place on the

Upon leaving the Colum(n)ba, the urn is send

pedestal, allowing visitors to pay

back to storage, and the Colum(n)ba is ready

respects and remember their loved ones

for its next visitor

Barboza, Kwee The Colum(n)ba

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Colum(n)ba

THE FUTURE OF LAND USE IN VIRGINIA a gis model LUKE JUDAY UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MUEP 2014

For most of the period when Northeasterners were bemoaning “suburban sprawl” and trying to figure out how much undeveloped land was worth preserving, rural land in the South seemed a nearly inexhaustible resource. Economic development was a far more pressing concern for a region still decades behind the rest of the country in the accumulation of capital and modern industry.

In the past few decades, however, Virginians have seen a boom in population and a rapid rise in standard of living. These two factors resulted, as they usually do, in the dramatic spatial growth of the state’s metropolitan areas. This decentralization of urban areas was further exacerbated by desegregation, the highway building prowess of Virginia’s unusually powerful Department of Transportation, and the state’s historic disapproval of land use controls. The fastest growth took place in the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads regions, both fueled by rising Federal spending. A significant majority of residents in both areas were not born in Virginia.

Development was and continues to be automobile-dependent, with the exception of several transit-oriented districts around the Washington Metro heavy rail system.

Growth resulting from transportation expansions, especially in Northern Virginia, has touched historic battlefields, scenic natural areas, and agricultural regions, leading Virginians to recognize that rural land and natural areas are a finite good.

Where is that development headed in the next fifty years if current trends continue?

The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia releases periodic population projections for the state. These projections are based on a complex model that considers past trends, school enrollment, economic data, and other factors. None of those factors are spatial, however. To show spatial growth, I created a GIS model based on the Center’s population projections that would visualize the spread of urban areas along major transportation routes as the population rises.

The first map (Fig.1) is of the developed areas of the state, based on the 2006 National Land Cover Dataset. The importance of I-95 as a major highway between two large urban areas is already apparent. The second map (Fig. 2) is based on a compilation of the Weldon Cooper Center’s population projections for 2040 by planning district. Conceptualizing data by planning district, rather than by country, better generates the behavior of metropolitan areas as a whole.

The Commonwealth’s eastern urban crescent continues to explode and begins to melt into one unbroken super-metro, joining the Boston-to-Washington megalopolis. This is not certain, though. Recent trends show Americans are driving less and preferring urban infill development for the first time in years. Tighter fiscal and environmental scrutiny of new highway projects,

The last map (Fig 3) is of Virginia in fifty years if development continues to follow current patterns

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along with the economic downturn, has also slowed outward growth.

to simulate the likelihood that any given piece of land will develop: I identified a series of overlapping service areas based on the state road network and used distance to approximate driving time to employment centers. I adjusted likelihood of development for each square accordingly. I then reduced the likelihood of certain cells based on how steeply sloped the land is, simulating the shepherding effect of mountains on development. I excluded protected lands including wetlands, properties under conservation easements, local parks, military bases, and state and federal parks. I then split up the grid by planning district commission. This allowed me to tailor the projection in each district to its population estimate. The extent of developed land as visualized in the projection maps represent the squares with the highest associated value that combined to match districts’ projected ratio of developed land to people so as to simulate the region’s existing development efficiency.

Making actual forecasts about growth far into the future is helpful to visualize the future of current practices. These maps convey that highways matter. Most development is automobiledriven and thrives off quick access to employment centers. The shape of urban areas is often determined by the driving distance to the center, as can be seen from these maps of the Northern Virginia and Richmond-Petersburg areas. Traditionally, transportation and land use have been considered separately in Virginia. It is time to recognize that the two are intimately connected and must be planned for in conjunction with one another. These maps also show that conservation easements matter. They have the power to redirect development, or good or for ill, and should be carefully considered.

Juday The Future of Land Use in Virginia

of density. I divided the state into 15 by 15 meter squares and used a Poisson distribution

Figure 1. Land development based on 2006 National Land cover dataset.

Figure 2. Land development Weldon Cooper Center’s 2040 population projections.

Figure 3. A 50 year projection if current trends continue.

Figure 4. Polygons representing different driving times to urban areas.

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Fig 6: Conservation easements in northern Fauquier County and eastern Warren and Clarke Counties redirect development north to Loudoun and south to central Fauquier.

181 Juday The Future of Land Use in Virginia

Petersburg 15 minute driving radius Richmond 22 minute driving radius

FIg. 7

45 minute driving radius

conserved land undeveloped land developed land water

Fig 8: Driving times to employment centers create the shape of metropolitan areas.

WASH urban hydrological networks for resilient cultural ecologies AJA BULLA-RICHARDS UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, MLA 2013 / M.ARCH 2011 This project proposes prototypical interventions that reconfigure stormwater and greywater infrastructure to initiate layered social and ecological structures in a typical Los Angeles neighborhood. Prototypes are proposed at multiple scales, ranging from the individual experience of site amenities to collective policies that define Los Angeles County water networks. Interventions are designed to impact regional scales including the Colorado River watershed. Street design prototypes utilize the potential of greywater to not only reduce unsustainable dependence on water importation and the consequential environmental impacts, but also to transform monofunctional infrastructure into multifunctional, inclusive community watersheds. Integrating ecological performance into the fabric of a neighborhood is critical to questioning the divide between nature and culture, redefining urban water infrastructure and usage in relationship to everyday experience.

CONSTRUCTED WATERSHEDS Half of the world’s cities are located in depleted watersheds. A four-phase policy progression is common among the growing number of cities facing water scarcity.

First, the local water supply is overtaxed or depleted. Second, cities turn to water importation. The third step is usually to develop centralized wastewater recycling;

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unfortunately this is a costly system that can quadruple the price of water.

The fourth and final phase for cities on coastlines is to turn to desalination, an expensive and energy intensive process that carries with it a host of ecological concerns such as disposal of concentrated brine. This progression looks to technological fixes that maintain existing social and spatial structures rather than addressing the design of landscape infrastructure and the potential embedded in alternative cultural practices.

Los Angeles is an iconic example. The small city and surrounding ranches originally depended on local water resources. The promise of a sunny, healthy, and pleasurable landscape drew large numbers of people until LA grew to become the second largest city in the United States.

Additional water supplies were secured from distant watersheds to support the growing population. The consequences of this engineered landscape extend beyond city, state and national borders. The actual watershed of Los Angeles has expanded to include the Owens Valley, the California Delta, and the Colorado River. LA has an impact on ecosystems across the western US and into Mexico. The city has contributed to a dry Colorado River delta, endangerment of species in the California Delta, and is responsible for the devastation of ecosystems and farming communities in Owens Valley and the loss of critical habitat in the Sea of Cortez.

THE LOS ANGELES WATER CYCLE Water scarcity in the mediterranean climate of Los Angeles is not solely a quantitative problem, but rather a mismanagement of resources in support of unsustainable cultural practices and landscape typologies. Water is imported over vast distances, used in commerce, industries, and residences, sent to the sewer system and then piped to reclamation plants and cleaned through an elaborate three stage process. The treated water is then either dumped in the LA River and mixed with polluted street runoff or piped directly into the Pacific Ocean and mixed with salt water, only to potentially be pumped back out and desalinated. Stormwater is handled in a similar manner. Streets are engineered to shed rain as quickly as possible, sending it along with thousands of cubic feet of trash each year into the concrete channel of the LA River and out to sea. As is the case in a growing number of urbanized areas, the LA Basin aquifers are no longer replenished by rainfall, resulting in a diminished local water supply and saltwater intrusion. This unidirectional system illogically treats a precious resource as waste.

Seventeen desalination plants have been proposed along the California coast. Los Angeles

warn against turning to this technology because of its impact on water prices, the environment, and land value along the coast. It is time for the city to radically rethink outdated water systems rather than turn to yet another unsustainable centralized infrastructure model.

Between greywater reuse and rainwater capture, LA residences could easily halve the amount of imported water on which they rely. This localized water cycle would send more water into the aquifers and approximately 75 percent less water out to sea. If stormwater capture and infiltration were maximized and coupled with greywater reuse, LA could potentially eliminate its reliance on water importation. Los Angeles is an ideal city to lead a new global trend, one that radically re-imagines the residential streetscape and integrates ecological performance into the fabric of a neighborhood.

How can these engineered monofunctional linear landscapes be transformed in support of greywater re-use, stormwater capture and enhanced social connection?

SURFACE LAND USE Los Angeles has become an epicenter of consumer culture and a landscape dominated by the automobile and single family home. Low-density residential neighborhoods make up 50 percent of the land use. Land surface covered in asphalt and front lawns dominates almost 500 square miles of the city and over 5,000 square miles of Los Angeles County. These vast areas could be redesigned to allow for rainwater infiltration and greywater reuse.

RESIDENTIAL USAGE Half of LA’s residential water is used outside the home, usually to water a front lawn of coolclimate grasses. Approximately 65 percent of the water used indoors for bathing, hand washing and laundry could be reused. If we use biodegradable soaps and detergents, then this nutrientrich greywater could be used to irrigate plants. Greywater is the product of our daily rituals and can connect activities in the home with the public landscape of the street.

Bulla-Richards WASH

desalination in their water portfolio. Reports produced by nonprofits such as the Pacific Institute

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is considering investing in this technology or buying water from companies that include

THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LIVING STREET: The proposed system of gradient interlocking pavers and new street topographies supports the integration of ecological performance and social engagement to redefine everyday experience.

Full scale prototypes of interlocking concrete paver system. Various textures provide subtle coding of the street, indicating zones for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles without limiting or isolating functions.

STREETS Although Los Angeles is the icon of a city devoid of nature or public space, there are alternative narratives embedded in its history, ecology, and culture. The monofunctional automobile landscape has not always characterized LA; not long ago rail cars and bicycles filled the streets. Beneath the paved surface, alluvial soils were deposited by a dynamic LA River and accumulated over geological time to create layers of aquifers. These aquifers have the capacity to serve the needs of the city, storing water below ground where it is protected from evaporation.

The city has been designed to ignore and deny the logic of the ecological systems that existed before it. By identifying and designing with the layered ecological and cultural narratives of Los Angeles it is possible to reveal invaluable knowledge already inherent in the arid landscape.

This project draws on these alternative narratives to inform a new vision of water infrastructure and everyday experience in Los Angeles.

PROPOSAL Contemporary concepts of hygiene, waste, personal transportation, and formal typologies these existing ideas and forms are treated as essential, as if they must be maintained even in

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such as the single family home and the front lawn are all relatively recent developments. Yet

alternatives to water importation. Incentivised programs for installing low flow toilets and shower heads have already successfully reduced water consumption. This project proposes a new incentivized program that can help residents cover the cost of installing a greywater system and plants appropriate for greywater reuse. Individual home owners can choose to transform their front yards during street reconstruction. With each passing year additional homes, blocks, and eventually neighborhoods can opt in as increasing water costs and wastewater fees make greywater systems an attractive investment.

The everyday landscape of the street, sidewalk, and front lawn is the primary site for this intervention. The core of the proposal is the construction of a living street fabricated out of a system of interlocking pavers. Three types of pavers are interchangeable and can therefore create an endless variety of surface typologies. The street section performs as a micro basin, storing water in a rain event and then allowing it to slowly seep into the ground to replenish the aquifers below. Proposed paver arrangements consider various ways to disrupt the linear form of a typical residential street so that automobiles can still traverse the ground but no longer dominate the landscape. A minimum driving lane width and turning radius are designed for fire truck access. This driving surface is made up of the most solid pavers and can support heavy vehicles while also encouraging slower driving speeds by incorporating gentle curves.

Various finish textures provide a subtle coding of the street, indicating zones for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles without limiting or isolating functions. This flexible gradient approach is ideal for residential streets. On mixed use and commercial streets with higher volumes of traffic and higher speed limits, the pavers could still be employed but arranged in clearly delineated patterns for pedestrian safety. The design of these streets helps support alternative transportation choices by creating a more visually stimulating environment and temperate microclimate, making walking and cycling more pleasurable experiences.

Bulla-Richards WASH

the face of dire ecological consequences. The city of Los Angeles is now being forced to find

During rain events the proposed living street absorbs stormwater, capturing this water within the constructed street section so that it may be stored for later use or allowed to slowly infiltrate the ground, replenishing the local aquifer.

The intermediate scale of the neighborhood “corner store wetland” provides an urban water treatment site fed by arroyos formed in arid bioswales. This park is also a public space that can accommodate larger gatherings for recreational, commercial, and educational activities.

Further development of multiple scales will include prototypical street interventions, corner lot wetlands, neighborhood watersheds, and regional policy initiatives.

The monofunctional space of the street is transformed and compartmentalized daily interactions with water are expanded beyond private space. This logic can be extended to change the design of a single family home, transforming it from an object surrounded by lawns and pavement to spaces for living composed of microclimates with wet and dry walls that correspond to greywater treatment courtyards and rainwater storage basins. Flows between the home and landscape promote a new understanding of micro-water cycles. Daily rituals can be understood in relationship to larger cycles and processes.

Modernization has included advancements that regulate the quality of urban water, slow the spread of disease, and make distribution more efficient. However, the engineering of most centralized water infrastructure systems denies the capacity of natural processes and Everyday rituals of gathering around water, once part of public social life, are now primarily

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compartmentalizes experience. This separation of functions in cities fragments daily life.

reducing infiltration and groundwater replenishment but also limiting the role of water in public space.

We are living in a critical moment in time when these issues can no longer be denied, postponed or ignored. Anticipatory design necessitates questioning the mechanical paradigm and resulting infrastructure that is now failing us, and creating new visions of urban life informed by an intelligent awareness of the complex social, geological and environmental histories it encompasses.

Advisors: Bill Sherman, Brian Osborn and Jorg Sieweke, University of Virginia.

References Desalination — Cooley, Heather, Peter H. Gleick, and Gary Wolff. DESALINATION, WITH A GRAIN OF SALT A California Perspective.

Oakland: Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, June 2006. PDF. Global Urban Water Trends — Richter, Brian D., David Abell, Emily Bacha, Kate Brauman, Stavros Calos, Alex Cohn, Carlos Disla, Sarah Friedlander O’Brien, David Hodges, Scott Kaiser, Maria Loughran, Cristina Mestre, Melissa Reardon, and Emma Siegfried. Tapped Out: How Can Cities Secure Their Water Future? N.p.: IWA Publishing, 11 Mar. 2013. PDF. Los Angeles Water Usage: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. History of Los Angeles Water.

LADWP. Los Angeles Department Of Water and Power, 2013. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <http//www.ladwp/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-water/a-w-patandpresent/a-w-pp-past?_adf.ctrl-state>.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Facts And Figures.

LADWP. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, 2013. Web. 04 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/aboutus/a-w-factsandfigures?_adf.ctrl-state>.

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private events. Rain that falls on city streets is swept out of sight as quickly as possible, not only

Streetscape as Arroyo, a wash or gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain. In many rural communities arroyos also form principal transportation routes, and in many urban communities arroyos are also parks and recreational locations, often with linear multi-use paths or trails.

6AM

8AM

10AM

12pM

2pM

4pM

6pM

8pM

10pM

12aM

2aM

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daily flows between the home and landscape

use bathe water the garden

reuse use

cook water the fruit trees

reuse

clean cool the air

use reuse

drink

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weekly flows between the home and landscape

fri

sat

|

sun

use reuse

laundry replenish the aquifer

Floodplain Aquifers | Alluvial Ground Capacity Flows between the home and landscape promote a new understanding of micro water cycles. Daily rituals may be reconsidered in relationship to the landscape. Water used within the home is transformed and enjoyed again outside the home.

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tues

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mon

OUT OF SITE BENJAMIN M. GREGORY UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, M.ARCH 2014

It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. ­— Steve Jobs regarding the new Apple Campus (June 2011) The suburban corporate campus was born from shifting managerial practices of an industrializing United States. Company managers moved their work forces from congested urban manufacturing sites to pastoral outposts near suburban bedroom communities to bolster prestige and form collaborative environments.1 By providing stable jobs and continuous tax revenue, these corporate campuses quickly became primary institutional figures within many suburban landscapes.

As economies have rapidly globalized over the past forty years, suburban communities have played host to a rising number of internationally involved corporations. The increasingly unstable global market has intensified corporate mortality2 and often leaves gaping holes within local communities that are dependent upon corporate institutionalism. In response, many companies have moved to the more fluid labor and real estate markets of the city, tempering the risk embedded in established creative and capital assets.3 But many are also doubling down on their suburban turf, designing insulated campuses that work hard to retain their critical creative talent. The result has been a proliferation of corporate enclaves which work to keep the employee productive and on campus for as many hours of the day as possible.

Apple Campus 2 Cupertino, California

No campus exemplifies this more than the proposed Apple Campus 2 by Foster + Partners.

At 2.8 million square feet, it is one of the largest corporate campuses ever built. The building’s and network of meandering walking paths, all amidst Cupertino, California’s sprawling

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enormous 1,625’-diameter donut footprint will be surrounded by a restored apricot orchard

when viewed from incoming airplanes to Mineta-San José International Airport or while flying around Google Maps on an iPhone. At ground level, however, it will effectively be obscured from view. The building will be strategically nestled within a network of earthen berms and physically separated from its surroundings by a border fence, meant to keep prying eyes out and its 13,000 employees in. The rigid circular plan is the antithesis of an integrated design, concerned more with its own formal clarity and less with the complex agitation necessary for creative collaboration. While Apple as a company is an open participant in the dispersed yet integrated networks of corporate globalism, the on-site reality of Apple Campus 2 is static, concentrated, and closed to outside transference — all optimized to the priorities of large scale capital accumulation.

How can one began to grapple with the schism between Apple’s integrated globalism and isolated localism? As an exercise in comparisons of scale, form, and global material flows, the following series of diagrams register the various points of origin, manufacture, and assembly of the aluminum iPhone case against the static form of the Apple Campus 2 main building. At one level, it highlights Apple in the context of the complex global-spatial network its products support. At another, it critiques the contrasting manner in which Apple portrays itself as a company via its advertising, products, and — specifically — its architecture, debunking the myth of the unified formal object.

References 1) Mozingo, Louise A. Pastoral Capitalism : a History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.

2) Geus, Arie De. THE LIVING COMPANY: Habits for survival in a turbulent business environment. Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard Business Review Press. 2002.

3) Peterson, Eric. Suburbs struggle with large campuses like AT&T’s in Hoffman Estates. Daily Herald. Aug. 8th 2013.

HYPERLINK “https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130808/news/708089961/”https://www.dailyherald.com/article/

Gregory Out of Site

suburbs. The sleek composition, undoubtedly modeled after Apple’s product, will be striking

Rio Tinto Alcan Aluminum Smelter, Boyne Island, Australia

Rio w Alcan Bauxite Mine, Weipar, Australia

Taishan city KAM Kiu Aluminium Extrusion Co. Ltd. Guadong, China

Rio TInto Alcan Aluminum Smelter, Boyne Island, Australia

Taishan city KAM Kiu Aluminium Extrusion Co. Ltd. Guadong, China

Apple S 5th Ave

Port of Los Angeles Los Angeles, California

Apple Store 5th Ave, Manhattan, NYC

Port of Los Angeles Los Angeles, California

Apple Store 5th Avenue, Manhattan, New York City

Gregory Out of Site

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Hon Hai Industries (Foxconn) Guadong, China

Street lights, XIX Europeaninfluenced architecture and concrete buildings overlap in San José, Costa Rica.

Ale Hidalgo, Untitled, digital photography, circa 2012.

THE LAND OF ABUNDANCE six possible points of convergence between territory and excess in san josÉ, costa rica NATALIA MEZA UNIVERSITY OF PORTO, PH.D ARCH

The colonization of America was a conquest for gold, silver, and species — a means to achieve power. Latin America can be thought as a continent constructed from the anxiety to posses and consequently to control.

The conquerors found more abundance than they could dream of. Not just gold and silver, but also tomatoes, corn, and chocolate. They found the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. Abundance was not only material but metaphysical: the new continent changed the idea of how much land there was to use and overuse.

The conquest of America was not, however, a linear project. Not all the newly found lands were as superficially rich as Cuzco or as apparently magnificent and populated as Tenochtitlán. The new land was so vast that inevitably some territories were so far from the center of power that they became isolated. They were considered, economically, but also culturally, uninteresting. Yet, for strategic reasons and an almost perverse desire to have more — and more — and more — these were kept under European control. These lands are what I will call a decadent surplus of the conquest. Not wanted nor needed, but still possessed.

They became, in a certain way, a physical manifestation of excess.

The formation of territory is understood not only as physical process, but also a sentimental one. A territory is a place and all the constructions that are collectively and individually created by its inhabitants in order to be able to recognize themselves in it. Territory is not static concept, but can be carried from one place to the other.

This construction of territory for and by American colonies was directly informed by each province's value as perceived by the Spanish Crown. This ascribed value — related to geographic position, population, or productive and economic potential — determined how the colony was occupied but also how it was perceived from the inside. Costa Rica, the last and southernmost province of the Capitanía General de Guatemala, serves as an example of a territory of excess: a land that had never been imagined nor needed, but still kept. Even its name, which literally means “rich coast,” demonstrates a projected desire for material abundance. The capital, San José, offers an opportunity to observe the spatial implications of this phenomenon.

CENTRALITY

Although Costa Rica is almost completely surrounded by water, the places to settle were landlocked and surrounded by mountains. The conquerors ran away from the hard and humid tropical climate of the coasts and chose the fertile valleys in the center of the province to establish their presence. Costa Rica developed into a center-based territory. Isolation inside isolation.

The name given to this territory would become determinative: the Meseta Central, or Central Valley. The Meseta held Costa Rica’s first capital city, Cartago, and its other three major villages.

One of them, San José de la Boca del Monte, was to become the country’s capital and be known as San José.

A city isolated by its mountains. Nancy Pauta, Untitled, digital photography, 2012.

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isolation occurred almost naturally in Costa Rica during the Colonial Era.

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As the southernmost province of the Capitanía General de Guatemala, cultural and commercial

The Meseta Central functions as an island, not surrounded by water but by land. The mountains operate as buffers. They isolate, prevent, and protect. Conveniently detached from the rest of the country, the Meseta, and the major city at its center, invents itself. It constructs its own distorted identity and sees itself as representative of Costa Rica. It lends the country characteristics unique to the region, such as its democratic tradition. Place and identity are bounded, and the idea of centrality emerges constantly. The idea of center is imprinted in the collective memory of citizens.

(left) The tugurios of La Carpio. Ber Arce, La Carpio, circa 2006, 14x 9.8 inches; (right) The grid is boring. Ale Hidalgo, Untitled, digital photography, circa 2012.

ORTHOGONALITY San JosĂŠ is organized according to the damero, or typical grid plan. The imported Cartesian organization is in two dimension a perfect one. In reality, the orthogonal grid ignores the topography of the valley in which the city rests and turns its back to the rivers that cross the city like veins. Surprisingly the spatial organization of the city as a grid was, as Florencia Quesada suggests, â&#x20AC;&#x153;a spontaneous and slow process related to the increase in population and not part of trace or preconceived plan, which was only consolidated during the last decades of the XVIII century.â&#x20AC;?1 The grid disrupts in topography and landscape and sets the city and nature in conflict.

Rainwater no longer runs according to natural laws. Unnatural slopes make the city exhausting.

The uncomfortable orthogonality inevitably marginalizes areas that do not fit its rigidity. Areas are cut off as malignant excess. In particular, the river canyons are ignored; they turn into wastelands, places where excess manifests as abandoned machinery and garbage. The waste management facilities of the city are located close to River Torres. The most impoverished people of the city have declared the polluted river canyons as their own and have built their tugurios or slum houses there. They are literally off grid .

The grid, as a means of spatial organization, fails and leads to chaos. The grid is boring.

HOMOGENEITY Homogeneity was, and still is, fundamental to the construction of the Costa Rican identity.

Homogeneity and its related processes are closely related to isolation. As suggested by author Isaac Felipe Azofeifa in the essay “La Isla Que Somos” individualized identities are silenced by the one and only identity of the city of San José; redundantly the center of the center, it operates as a vortex that swallows it all.2 Philosopher Alexander Jimenez Matarrita suggests that the construction of nationality started in Costa Rica in the second half of the 19th century and is still an unfinished process. Jimenez identifies a movement he calls nacionalismo étnico metafísico, or ethnic metaphysical nationalism, as one of the process’s most relevant peaks.3 In and around the 1950s, a group of publications created by Costa Rican intellectuals were used to link the construction of nationality to a political agenda. These publications repurposed existing national sentiment to promote the supposed ethnic homogeneity of the nation and the ongoing exclusion of African and indigenous descendants in the writing of history. At this moment, homogenization was a

an attitude towards the use of urban space. Homogeneity rejects difference. It emerges as a powerful force particularly when it is challenge; whenever there is a reminder of the country’s ethnic or religious diversity. It pretends that the city, and consequently the country, is homogenous in race, beliefs and social class. It ignores the colonial, and therefore mixed, background of the population.

Homogeneity leads to contradiction and denial.

TROPICALITY Tropicality is an idea that — though it is a fact that the city is located in a tropical zone — has been constantly denied. During its consolidation as a city, San José looked to Europe to find its identity. While the surrounding environs were acknowledged as tropical in terms of their productive capacity and associated architectural language, many times the city itself has been built as if it were not.

Tropicality can be associated with Third Worldness, as associated with poverty. Tropicality can also be associated with being a Banana Republic, with being a provider of prime matters.

Archetypically, tropical means coconut palms.

Though colonial Costa Rica proved not to be rich in silver and gold, it was rich in biodiversity.

The recent realization of this abundance opened the country to tourism. The boom of tourism, and particularly ecotourism, put Costa Rica on the international map. Suddenly, tropicality embraced as part of a branding process — Costa Rica: No artificial ingredients. Palms are now everywhere, the unofficial national plant. Backpackers coexist with Hawaiian shirt users.

Ecolodges compete with five stars hotels that promote the ultimate tropical lush: humidity, giant leaves, incredible creatures, and luxury.

In San José , though, giant trees and toucans are proudly substituted by shopping malls and fast food restaurants. Tropicality is used when needed, denied when not.

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Homogeneity can be understood not only as a construct of identity and nationality but

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process of appropriation but also a means to be more physically European — a longing.

(left) Wendy's at Avenida Central. Ale Hidalgo, Untitled, digital photography, circa 2012. (right) San José is a dirty girl. Silvia García, Untitled, digital photography, 2012.

UGLINESS The city is despised by many of its citizens. It is not uncommon to hear a josefino, an inhabitant of San José, complaining about how ugly the city is.

What is ugly in San José?

Ugliness can occur from an excess of stimuli.

Violence is ugliness.

Ugliness can be dirtiness.

Ugliness could be a kind of violence that comes from the excess of advertisements.

Ugliness in San José can be associated with an excess of garbage.

Is it related to ongoing lost of patrimonial buildings? Are the Modern buildings ugly?

Loudness can be ugly. Vehicular chaos can be ugly.

The city as territory is a reflection of its inhabitants disappointment.

HAPPINESS Happiness is colorfulness. Happiness can be overindulgence. Excess.

Happiness is using a precarious public transportation systems without losing one's mind.

Happiness can be excess of stimuli and excess of chaos.

Happiness can be loud. It can be the colors and the sounds of the Mercado Central.

A walk in Morazan Park, a landmark in the urban landscape of the city. Happiness may come from accepting the inheritance and transformations inherent to territory.

San José has an alternate name: Chepe. It is a deformation of the name José, that implies informality, closeness and familiarity. Almost or most certainly love.

203 Meza The Land of Abundance A collage map of Chepe, Natalia SolanoMeza, paper and digital collage 60x90cm, 2014.

References 1. Florencia Quesada, "La Modernización Entre Cafetales: San José, Costa Rica, 1880-1930" (Universidad de Helsinki, Instituto Renvall, 2007), 24. Translated by the author.

2. Isaac Felipe Azofeifa, La Isla Que Somos Y Otros Ensayos: Texto Y Estudio Didáctico (Editorial Fernández-Arce, 1996).

3. Alexander. Jiménez Matarrita, El Imposible País De Los Filósofos: El Discurso Filosòfico Y La Intervenciòn De Costa Rica (Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2005), 30-33.

CITY OF BLUBBER a fantasy SETH MCDOWELL MCDOWELLESPINOSA, PARTNER UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

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“Beyond the edge of the city we know lies the city we dream of, the city we long for but never reach, the “ideal city.” At the edge, the old rules of the city loose their hold, allowing it to reinvent itself, redefine its values and create new forms. The edge is never far away: the city of our dreams might be here and now, close to us, nesting within the familiar confines of our towns, transforming them from the inside, a city within the city, the boundary between the known and the unknown being conceptual rather than physical.”

— Colin Fournier, Chief Curator of Beyond the Urban Edge: The Ideal City1

We have attempted the solid and the rigid approach. We have made our cities vertical machines delineated by repetitive concrete and steel extrusions, sprinkled with fluffy green patches of reprieve. We have formulated the urban ideal as the gridded, the zoned, and the controlled. I have a fantasy of a new ideal — a fat, soft, amorphous, visceral urban monster. This dystopian/ utopian vision presents a contrasting paradigm to the lingering effects of modernity. It is a fat, cushiony terrain. It is a mushy mass that engulfs its inhabitants and deforms to the touch. It is the City of Blubber.

The City of Blubber is a city encompassed by a layer of fatty tissue that formulates a new urban tissue is the resultant of metabolism, waste storage and thermal regulation. The city swells

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terrain of fat folds, crevices, and sagging bulges. Just as with mammals, this layer of urban

produces and uses it for survival and comfort. It is an aesthetic and organizational ideal formulated upon a pragmatic response to concerns of energy, waste, and excess.

The City of Blubber is in a state of constant transformation. This is a transformation that results from both internal and external stimuli. Internally, the inhabitants’ fluctuating levels and patterns of consumption create a blubber swelling to thinning rhythm. Externally, the malleable, fatty membrane is in constant deformation by the forces of nature and city. The effect is similar to the fluctuating figure of a swing dieter, whose body swells and slims based on an unhealthy pattern of binging and starvation.

The City of Blubber begins at the edge — blubber accumulates at the edge of structure and cushions the bone. The city expands out of the skeleton of the archaic city of stone and steel which acts as a foundation for this soft, urban creature. The city of modernity acts as a ground, a topography for the fatty blubber to accumulate upon. Through the accumulation an alien spatiality emerges.

The City of Blubber is soft. It is resilient to destruction. Cataclysmic events only cause the city to ripple, vibrate and roll. The blubber does not break. Brute force may cause the fatty mass to redistribute but equilibrium is never disrupted. As a cushioned city, it is in an ideal state of comfort. Every surface and orientation of the city offers relief upon touch for the human body.

With this condition of softness, the conception of ground is in crisis. The distinction between horizontality and verticality is masked by the nebulous nature of the blubber. While formations tend to propagate in a layered fashion, they quickly roll and sag into configurations that are undefinable as ground, wall, or roof. The City of Blubber is therefore a condition of caverns, stalagmites, stalaites, pools, bubbles, slabs, and swells. Without the constant of a ground plane, rules for circulating within the city must be invented. As one navigates through this city of blubber they feel like a child bouncing around in a palace of sublime, giant pillows.

McDowell City of Blubber

to obesity as a response to excess and waste. This city takes full advantage of the waste it

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This terrain of blubber presents an artificial ground. The history of the city is dependent upon the practice of claiming the ground and replicating it as many times as structurally possible toward the sky. In this practice horizontal continuity is divided by the figure/ground relationship into extruded enclosure and void corridors. The City of Blubber is reestablishing a continuity of ground, now existing on top of the urban fabric. Here, on this new terrain, thresholds no longer configure property. It is a city without static territory. Rules and regulations are reflexive and accommodating.

The City of Blubber is a thermo regulator. This thick, flabby tissue encom-passing the city acts to regulate temperature below the surface. The old city below is now energy independent, due to the efficiency of the blubber. Urban waste becomes productive as insulation rather than material demanding removal.

The City of Blubber exists on top of the old city of Hong Kong. In the year of 2018, this city of seven million people ran out of room for their trash. The dense city had grown accustomed to producing over 6 million tons of waste each year and had no sustainable plan for reducing or extracting waste production.2 So Hong Kong decided to approach the issue from another direction. The inhabitants of the city were generating material through the act of consumption.

1.83 m

Could this material be exploited? Could the waste that littered the streets be transformed into a

.61 m

new materiality and become a pro-ductive component of urban metabolism?

The solution came in the form of biotechnology. Hong Kongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waste stream was heavily

.6 m max.

saturated with food waste as about 40 percent of the food in the city went uneaten, creating around 3,500 tons of unwanted food each dayâ&#x20AC;? which was then trucked to the landfills.3 So a process was developed around a new infrastructural element: the biorefinery. Similar to the way that oil refineries convert petroleum into fuels and ingredients for hundreds of consumer products, biorefineries convert corn, sugar cane, and other plant-based material into a

+/- .46 m

malleable, plastic material now known as blubber.

HK blubber

HK now

HK waste

In the massive plan to stabilize Hong Kong’s waste issue each block within the city is outfitted with a biorefinery that acts as a garbage disposal for the neighborhood. These biorefineries are located in the center of the urban blocks and are networked to each floor of surrounding buildings. A biorefinery “involves an upstream processing step, which uses a mixture of fungus to break down food waste into simple sugars. The blend then goes into a fermenter, a vat where bacteria convert the sugars into succinic acid. Succinic acid is one of the top molecules in green chemistry, and could be used to make everything from laundry detergents to plastics to pharmaceutical agents and surfactants.”4 In Hong Kong, the succinic acid is piped to the top of the city where it emerges as bioplastic blubber out of a supporting framework.

This is the fatty fantasy of the City of Blubber: a visceral scape, atop the towers of modernity.

Below the blubber streets are clean and dumpsters are empty, yet the consumption continues.

Lifestyles do not change, but waste does. The unwanted material of civilization is transformed into a sublime fiction of blubbery tissue that squeezes the city of Hong Kong, keeping it warm during cold nights.

1. Exerpt from Colin Fournier’s curatorial statement for the 2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Hong Kong) - “Urban Edge”

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References

3. Dean Irvine, “Hong Kong’s mounting food waste problem” CNN. January 21, 2013 4. Katherine Gammon, “The Future of Composting: Turning Food Waste Into Fuel and Plastic” Aug. 22, 2012.

blubber, a wax/glycerin mix, cast onto steel wire frame.

Blubber growth framework, steel wire Hong Kong waste chimneys, aluminum tubing acrylic base (.635cm) model sectioned into .61m modules. to wood frame delineating streets wood frame delineating streets Hong Kong Waste Bundles

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2. Bettina Wassener, “In Hong Kong, a Precipice of Waste” The New York Times. Feb. 6, 2011.

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