http://www.driversofchange.com/projects/the-ecco-model.php
(video)
You've seen the movie; trawled the web sites; shopped around for that green lifestyle. Like me, do you wonder if we can build enough of this green technology to keep up with economic growth and reduce our voracious appetite for fossil fuels? Alternatively, how can our society can get off the growth tread mill without wholesale collapse of our economy?
Through simple drawings, I explain how its possible to "count up" all our stuff (physical assets) using embodied energy. This is the first step to building a physically based model of an economy. I go onto apply such a model to a scenario for the UK to 2025. Finally I test my scenario against objectives for jobs, national energy security, balance of payments, consumer welfare and CO2 reductions. The scenario scores well! Have you got a scenario you would like tested in this way?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Thesis Abstract as of Dec 15th, 2009
We are now living at yield point of an Age of massive change in all aspects of the globe, in which we are becoming increasingly sensitive to our symbiotic relationship with the environment and the impact that we have on the vulnerability of the earth. This thesis will focus on the reutilization of waste as a byproduct of consumerism and how it is linked to the cultural and economic growth of society, in parallel with several systems, such as oil, environment, global warming, cultural impact, obsolescence, morale, politics, materiality, urban fabric, and cities. Where the thermodynamics of these systems integrate into an ecosystem that is constantly in pursuit of equilibrium and imparts an infrastructural framework on how we should approach these topics simultaneously in the near future. Where the notion of waste will begin to shift from something that is rejected into something that is accepted. I will focus on the diversity of waste as a material. As much of the waste we produce can be broken down into elements that are similar to the materiality that is already in existence in the field of architecture.
This thesis is partly written as a narrative that will run parallel with the research topic to allow for play and a sense of urgency, a strategy that enables all types of people and generations to act empathetically. In a dystopian setting positioned in the future of 2050 and based on the scenario of oil depletion. Where oil depletion and climate change leads to disastrous outcomes for Manhattan Island, at a time when negative political upheavals correlate an impoverished ecosystem, repressed by fear, famine, and idleness. At this time, heaps of waste will be left idle in the city as transportation by any means become obsolete. This will become an important and colossal issue to address, as there will be many implications that will affect the wellbeing of the city—health, lifestyle, infrastructure, and pollution. The intervention this thesis proposes is one that takes into account all the interconnecting global issues in year 2050 and seeks to reutilize garbage in a creatively articulate way so that harvesting natural energy, creating flood barriers against climate change become possible, at the same time remediating pollution, and reducing waste on the island
This thesis is partly written as a narrative that will run parallel with the research topic to allow for play and a sense of urgency, a strategy that enables all types of people and generations to act empathetically. In a dystopian setting positioned in the future of 2050 and based on the scenario of oil depletion. Where oil depletion and climate change leads to disastrous outcomes for Manhattan Island, at a time when negative political upheavals correlate an impoverished ecosystem, repressed by fear, famine, and idleness. At this time, heaps of waste will be left idle in the city as transportation by any means become obsolete. This will become an important and colossal issue to address, as there will be many implications that will affect the wellbeing of the city—health, lifestyle, infrastructure, and pollution. The intervention this thesis proposes is one that takes into account all the interconnecting global issues in year 2050 and seeks to reutilize garbage in a creatively articulate way so that harvesting natural energy, creating flood barriers against climate change become possible, at the same time remediating pollution, and reducing waste on the island
a brief description of how landfills + constructed wetland work:
Landfill:
About 32.5% of the trash is either recycled or composted, 12.5% is burned, and the rest, 55% is buried in landfills, however, the amount of trash buried in landfills has doubled since 1960.
What landfills generally are is a carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground where garbage is then isolated from it's surrounding environments. The most common method is the used of a bottom liner and then daily coverings of soil to prevent flying garbage or raiding of pests, but because space is a precious commodity, many companies are now experimenting with tarps or spray on paper or cement emulsions.
There are generally 2 common types of liner, the sanitary landfill uses a clay liner and the municipal solid waste landfill uses a synthetic or plastic liner to isolate garbage from the environment. The purpose of the liner is to isolate it from groundwater so that the contents above will be kept drive and not in contact with air. Under these conditions, the decomposition process will slow, almost preserving the waste.
General overview:
A: Recycling Centres
B: Scale House
C: Access roads
D: Sanitary Landfill-
Closed
E: Municipal Solid
Waste Landfill
F: New Cell Prep
Area
G: Cell Being Filled
H: Storm Drainage
Collection
I: Leachate
Collection Pond
J: Methane Vent
K: Methane Piper
L: Methane Station
M: Monitoring Pipe
N: Run-off Collection
Basin
O: Storm Water
Drainage Basin
P: Storm Water Pipe
Q: To City Water
Treatment
A: Groundwater
B: Compacted Clay
C: Plastic Liner
D: Leachate Collection Pipe
E: Geotextile Mat
F: Gravel
G: Drainage Layer
H: Soil Layer
I: Oil Cells
J: New Cells
K: Leachate Pond
The cross-section drawing shows the structure of a typical municipal solid waste landfill and the arrows indicate the flow of leachate.
The basic parts of this system are:
- C - bottom liner that separates leachate from groundwater
- I + J - cells, both old and new where garbage is stored within the landfill
- D - Leachate collection system that collects water that has percolated through the landfill
- Storm water drainage that collects rainwater
- Methane collection system that collects the gas that is formed during the breakdown process.
- and lastly, the covering or cap that seals off the top of the landfill.
Storm water drainage that collects rainwater
Leachate pond that collects contaminants
The Leachate pond is then tested for chemicals: organic chemicals, pH, calcium, magnesium, iron, sulfate and chloride, are just some common chemicals they test for. After the testing, the water can be treated like any other sewage or wastewater and can happen insitu or exsitu. A method to reduce the volume of leachate water can be to recirculate it, making it more concentrated, but this poses a problem with the increase in concentration and possibly contamination.
It is also important to implement a methane collection system to collect the anaerobic byproducts, which is methane gas, during the natural landfill break down process in absence of oxygen. The reason for this is to prevent methane from exploding or burning, therefore a series of pipes embedded in the landfill is used to collect this gas, and in some cases, it is collected for natural energy, burned, or vented. Methane gas would then still be produced for a number of years after the landfill is capped, making it an ideal way of generating renewable energy.
The capping process is the last portion of the landfill where it will be covered permanently with a polyethylene cap and then 2 feet of compacted soil. Vegetation is then planted to prevent erosion and generally consists of shallow penetrating root type plants, such as kudzu and grass.
Constructed Wetland:
In my thesis, the constructed wetland acts as the leachate pond where the leachates will drain into the wetland for remediation.
Constructed wetlands are wastewater treatment systems composed of one or more treatment cells in a built and partially controlled environment. There are generally two types of wetlands, free water surface and vegetated submerged bed. For the wetland portion of the project, the thesis will utilize the free water surface method. Where free water surface constructed wetlands closely resemble natural wetlands in appearance and function, with a combination of open-water areas, emergent vegetation, varying water depth, and other typical wetland features. The components of this system include berms to enclose treatment cells, inlet structure that regulate and distribute influent wastewater evenly for optimum treatment, various combinations of open-water areas and fully vegetated surface areas, and outlet structures that allow adjustment of water levels within the treatment cell.
A Vegetated submerged bed wetlands consist of gravel beds that may be planted with wetland vegetation. A typical system also contain berms and inlet and outlet structures for regulation and distribution of wastewater flow. The vegetated submerged bed are not dependent on wetland vegetation for treatment performance and also do not require open-water areas. However, the success of the previous system is in view of the fact that the performance of constructed wetlands depends heavily on the ecological functions that are similar to those of natural wetlands, which are based largely on interactions within plant communities.
Sources:
Freudenrich, Craig. “How Landfills Work”, How Stuff Works, 2000, 14 Dec. 2009 http://science.howstuffworks.com/landfill6.htm
“Municipal Solid Waste”, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 13 Nov. 2008, 14 Dec. 2009 http://www.epa.gov/garbage/facts.htm info
United States. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Manual: Constructed Wetlands Treatment of Municipal Wastewaters. Cincinnati, Ohio: Office of Research and Development, 2000
Images:
1-5: Freudenrich, Craig. “How Landfills Work”, How Stuff Works, 2000, 14 Dec. 2009 http://science.howstuffworks.com/landfill6.htm
7-8: United States. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Manual: Constructed Wetlands Treatment of Municipal Wastewaters. Cincinnati, Ohio: Office of Research and Development, 2000
Monday, December 14, 2009
How to Construct a Constructed Wetland
www.epa.gov/nrmrl/pubs/625r99010/625r99010.pdf
This useful link is to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Tells you all you need to know about constructing wetlands for remediation.
This useful link is to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Tells you all you need to know about constructing wetlands for remediation.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
M1 Excess Culture: an integrated framework of systems (Introduction)
The thesis seeks to investigate waste as a byproduct of consumerism and how it affects the cultural and economic growth of a society. In fact, if you dissect consumerism, one will find that it is a correlation of several systems that are interconnected, where one is dependant on the other—oil, environment, climate change, cultural impacts, obsolescence, morale, politics, materiality, the urban fabric, and city formations. Where the principles of thermodynamic equilibrium of these systems come to play in an integrated ecosystem that is constantly in flux and at the same time, in pursuit of balance in the natural order. It becomes important too look at this thesis in multiple parallels and as parallels that converge into a whole infrastructure of networked matrices. Keller Easterling considers the idea of what constitutes infrastructure and to think beyond the traditional infrastructure of transportation, communication, and utilities, into a network that includes collective standards of shared mechanisms in order to create our own understanding of space1. Though the topics proposed can be broken down into canonical sources, the importance of each subject is not weighted individually but as a collective, and imparts an approach on how architecture should design in the near future. To change our notion of waste and shift our values from something that is rejected into something that is accepted.
Waste is a scalar thing and also has no scale—it is everywhere, from a candy wrapper to building debris and large mountainous landfills. The term waste designates the elimination of a substance that no one claims or wants ownership of and is a devalued substance at the end of its life cycle, however, there is also no growth biologically and economically without the production and discarding of waste materials. Kevin Lynch, planner and philosopher, claim that it is a process that happens naturally and cannot be controlled, ergo we must accept it and find innovative solutions. He saw that we were all headed in a self-destructive direction that has implications for virtually every profession and that we should promote his philosophy on “positive wasting” and acknowledge this as valuable and necessary in the lives of people, things, and places2.
These solutions, whether through art, architecture, or by common practice, should seek to make waste a valued substance as it will be an abundant source for a future with scarce and depleting natural resources. We should also be mindful that waste as a byproduct has scalar implications on the environmental, social, and political impacts on society. As this topic is a growing problem, only recently have we been able to acknowledge this theme through art and architectural practice and education, by some notable urbanists, artists, and theorists—Kevin Lynch, Michell Joachim, Edward Burtynsky, Mira Engler, Alan Berger—are just some of many contributors to this growing discourse.
The fascination stems from waste being a diverse material that can take on many forms, as much of the waste we produce can be broken down into elements that are similar to the materiality that currently exists in the field of architecture. Since its origins, architecture has used the “waste” of agriculture as a primary material. These inedible parts—wood, hay, reed, bamboo—are often the primary ingredients that make up a building3. So why is it not possible to utilize synthetic man-made waste, given that modern architectural practices have been utilizing synthetic materials in construction since the industrial revolution? Futurist, Alvin Toffler spoke about the waves in historical milestones of civilization. Where the first wave is that of agriculture and the second, thousands of years later, the industrial revolution, and the third wave is the rise of a knowledge based economy in which we are currently in4. The thesis will overlap between the acceleration of the second and third wave intermittently as they are dependant upon each other. All of which stemmed from the industrial age of mass production, consumption, distribution, and mass society that was made possible through the production of cheap energies—coal, natural gas, and oil as the most significant. It is this wave that inspired the disposition of writers such as Orwell and Huxley on their political and dystopic writings.
It is only appropriate that this thesis explores the option of a narrative in parallel with architectural research. The purpose is to distribute a tone of voice that would carry on throughout the thesis to convey a sense of cynicism, black humour, and dystopia, while adopting the styles of Rem Koolhaas, George Orwell, James Howard Kuntsler, as well as my own. Narratives allow for play and a sense of urgency, a strategy that enables all types of people and generations to act empathetically. In Animal Farm, Orwell experimented with this method to tell his story that was written in the type of a fable and follows the traditional pattern of telling a moral tale with the personification of animals. The premise of the thesis’s narrative will follow loosely Orwell’s Nineteen-Eigthy Four from Room 101 where Winston’s worse fear is induced. It will then follow his journey as he experiences the thesis from his personal point of view.
The narrative would set up a scenario for the project that I would like to design. The setting is year 2050, oil has depleted to be almost nonexistent, to the extent that vehicular transportation and production has halted and as a result suburban culture dissipated as those who survived from disease and famine move towards the city in search for survival. Manhattan, a city that never slept was consumed by idleness as nothing came in or out of the city. Landfills become a natural part of the landscape, weaving itself into the different layers of the urban fabric. The sorting of rubble and rubbish become a natural thing as people salvage and ransack materials for survival. Consumed with boredom and the inherent habit of a “working” lifestyle from the past, naturally, a system of sorting, recycling, putting together of “stuff”, artworks, sculptures, and projects—begin to form a new union of jobs and a sense of community. Though intentions may vary, whether to create a sense of purpose, a goal, or to better society at a time of extremity. It is believed that the underlying purpose is to rescue themselves from futureshock, a term invented by Toffler to describe peoples’ reaction to the premature arrival of the future that often results in signs of deteriorated decision making capabilities or disorientation when change comes too quickly to absorb.
The plan is to consider the different types of waste that will be projected onto the city at a time when there will be little movement. A series of projects will investigate the reutilization of waste first as a building material, and second the implementation of waste that will define the city and its new built environment. Projects like a continuous flood barrier, housing, and waste spaces (oppose to green spaces), will closely follow themes of landscape urbanism to define a place’s use and to create adaptable “systems” instead of a rigid and systematic way of organizing space. Where we can begin to see an integrated framework of systems forming a ubiquitous landscape of an environment rich in forums, trading spaces, parks, and places of enlightenment.
Notes:
1. Keller Easterling. “Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America.” Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999
2. Kevin Lynch. "Wasting Away". Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1990
3. Yona Friedman, “Du Déchet fait art,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 81
4. Ted Turner, “Executive Interview with Alvin Toffler,” AMEinfo, 22 Aug. 2004, 5 Dec. 2009
Waste is a scalar thing and also has no scale—it is everywhere, from a candy wrapper to building debris and large mountainous landfills. The term waste designates the elimination of a substance that no one claims or wants ownership of and is a devalued substance at the end of its life cycle, however, there is also no growth biologically and economically without the production and discarding of waste materials. Kevin Lynch, planner and philosopher, claim that it is a process that happens naturally and cannot be controlled, ergo we must accept it and find innovative solutions. He saw that we were all headed in a self-destructive direction that has implications for virtually every profession and that we should promote his philosophy on “positive wasting” and acknowledge this as valuable and necessary in the lives of people, things, and places2.
These solutions, whether through art, architecture, or by common practice, should seek to make waste a valued substance as it will be an abundant source for a future with scarce and depleting natural resources. We should also be mindful that waste as a byproduct has scalar implications on the environmental, social, and political impacts on society. As this topic is a growing problem, only recently have we been able to acknowledge this theme through art and architectural practice and education, by some notable urbanists, artists, and theorists—Kevin Lynch, Michell Joachim, Edward Burtynsky, Mira Engler, Alan Berger—are just some of many contributors to this growing discourse.
The fascination stems from waste being a diverse material that can take on many forms, as much of the waste we produce can be broken down into elements that are similar to the materiality that currently exists in the field of architecture. Since its origins, architecture has used the “waste” of agriculture as a primary material. These inedible parts—wood, hay, reed, bamboo—are often the primary ingredients that make up a building3. So why is it not possible to utilize synthetic man-made waste, given that modern architectural practices have been utilizing synthetic materials in construction since the industrial revolution? Futurist, Alvin Toffler spoke about the waves in historical milestones of civilization. Where the first wave is that of agriculture and the second, thousands of years later, the industrial revolution, and the third wave is the rise of a knowledge based economy in which we are currently in4. The thesis will overlap between the acceleration of the second and third wave intermittently as they are dependant upon each other. All of which stemmed from the industrial age of mass production, consumption, distribution, and mass society that was made possible through the production of cheap energies—coal, natural gas, and oil as the most significant. It is this wave that inspired the disposition of writers such as Orwell and Huxley on their political and dystopic writings.
It is only appropriate that this thesis explores the option of a narrative in parallel with architectural research. The purpose is to distribute a tone of voice that would carry on throughout the thesis to convey a sense of cynicism, black humour, and dystopia, while adopting the styles of Rem Koolhaas, George Orwell, James Howard Kuntsler, as well as my own. Narratives allow for play and a sense of urgency, a strategy that enables all types of people and generations to act empathetically. In Animal Farm, Orwell experimented with this method to tell his story that was written in the type of a fable and follows the traditional pattern of telling a moral tale with the personification of animals. The premise of the thesis’s narrative will follow loosely Orwell’s Nineteen-Eigthy Four from Room 101 where Winston’s worse fear is induced. It will then follow his journey as he experiences the thesis from his personal point of view.
The narrative would set up a scenario for the project that I would like to design. The setting is year 2050, oil has depleted to be almost nonexistent, to the extent that vehicular transportation and production has halted and as a result suburban culture dissipated as those who survived from disease and famine move towards the city in search for survival. Manhattan, a city that never slept was consumed by idleness as nothing came in or out of the city. Landfills become a natural part of the landscape, weaving itself into the different layers of the urban fabric. The sorting of rubble and rubbish become a natural thing as people salvage and ransack materials for survival. Consumed with boredom and the inherent habit of a “working” lifestyle from the past, naturally, a system of sorting, recycling, putting together of “stuff”, artworks, sculptures, and projects—begin to form a new union of jobs and a sense of community. Though intentions may vary, whether to create a sense of purpose, a goal, or to better society at a time of extremity. It is believed that the underlying purpose is to rescue themselves from futureshock, a term invented by Toffler to describe peoples’ reaction to the premature arrival of the future that often results in signs of deteriorated decision making capabilities or disorientation when change comes too quickly to absorb.
The plan is to consider the different types of waste that will be projected onto the city at a time when there will be little movement. A series of projects will investigate the reutilization of waste first as a building material, and second the implementation of waste that will define the city and its new built environment. Projects like a continuous flood barrier, housing, and waste spaces (oppose to green spaces), will closely follow themes of landscape urbanism to define a place’s use and to create adaptable “systems” instead of a rigid and systematic way of organizing space. Where we can begin to see an integrated framework of systems forming a ubiquitous landscape of an environment rich in forums, trading spaces, parks, and places of enlightenment.
Notes:
1. Keller Easterling. “Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America.” Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999
2. Kevin Lynch. "Wasting Away". Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1990
3. Yona Friedman, “Du Déchet fait art,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 81
4. Ted Turner, “Executive Interview with Alvin Toffler,” AMEinfo, 22 Aug. 2004, 5 Dec. 2009
M1 On Oil
It has been predicted with American geophysicist M. King Hubbert’s model in 1956 that the global petroleum production rates will peak just after year 2000 and has correctly predicted that production of oil from conventional sources would peak in the continental United States around 1970. Though oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, it is increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. Once the peak is passed, oil production slows and costs begin to accelerate, as seen currently in oil and gas prices. We are currently seeing the effects of the depletion of oil in our quotidian lives not to mention its effect on global warming. The issue is not of “running out” of oil, so much as not acquiring enough to keep global economy running that will lead to a collapse, that even a shortage of 10-15% of an oil dependant country is enough to collapse its economy and reduce its citizens to poverty(1).
Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of oil depletion is of agriculture. Pesticides and agro-chemicals are made from oil, commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is from natural gas that will be peaking in the near future, and most farming tools are power driven by oil-derived fuels. Food shortage will be an outcome as transportation and distribution become expensive. The average transport of food in the U.S. is transported almost 2400 km before it is made available, and in Canada, the average is 8000 km (2). In the future, food prices will skyrocket and for those less fortunate, starvation and famine will take hold even on a global scale.
As well, the concept of suburbia will also be under speculation, as commuters can no longer afford to drive into the city, there will be an overflow of people in the near future looking to move closer to the centre. The growth of the city can also harvest new problems with water scarcity and also with health and sanitation. Presently in the United States, 4% of people do not drive, whether because of low income, being handicapped, or age—this number will likely rise, making driving exclusively for the elite class and most likely will harness resentment amongst the general population(3).
We will see an increase in oil nationalism when countries with the most oil is withholding its resources from the future market and then auctioned off to favoured customer relations with other countries that they want to maintain good relations with. The United States will probably tend to be less favoured amongst some of the oil producing nations. The monopoly of oil can potentially cause major warfare while nations battle over oil, not to mention civil wars that will arise from the shortcomings. Cities and nations will eventually fall apart as the consequences are unimaginable. Permanent fuel shortages would bring the world into a generations-long economic depression as millions become unemployed when industries implode. There will no longer be big box stores, clothing stores, cafes, and postal services—the financial economic downfall will be evident.
The financial community begins to accept the reality of Peak Oil.
"They accept that banks created capital during this epoch by lending more than they had on deposit, being confident that tomorrow’s expansion, fuelled by cheap oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for today’s debt. The decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges."(4)
When truth can no longer be concealed, prices for daily maintenance of life will escalate abruptly, and the support and infrastructure of our civilization will fall. There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. Democracy will be shut out, as economic hardships will bring out the worst in people. “Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression—emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude towards torture—already in place, courtesy of the war on terror” (5). Simultaneously, climate change will work against us, making its presence felt “with a vengeance”, while engulfed in financial ruin, food and water supplies will seize and prolonged droughts will crop up in numbers as harvesting crops decline(6).
Almost daily, we see our personal environments changing, whether with work, climate, commuting, spending—we must progress and take nothing for granted as a new Dark Era is emerging for ourselves and generations to come as growth may be coming to an end. The social and economic consequences are cataclysmic as our entire financial order from interest rates, pension funds, insurance, to stock market is dependant on growth(7). We must find new [renewable] alternatives and new ways of using the resources we already acquired in order to alleviate stress globally and especially oil dependant nations.
Notes:
1. Matt Savinar, “Peak Oil”. Life After the Oil Crash, 27 Oct. 2009
2. Stephen Hesse, “Matters of Survival in a Shattered World,” The Japan Times, 25 Apr. 2005, 1 Nov. 2009,
3. James H. Kunstler, Interviewed by Glen Hiemstra for Futurists.com, May 2008,
4. Colin Campbell, “The Financial Consequences of Peak Oil,” 24 Feb 2004, 1 Nov 2009
5. Jeremy Leggett. The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Financial Catastrophe. Random House: New York, 2005
6. Jonathon Gatehouse, “When Oil Runs Out,” Macleans, 9 Feb. 2006, 1 Nov. 2009
7. Bryan Appleyard, “Waiting for the Lights to Go Out,” The Times. 16 Oct. 2005, 3 Nov 2009,
Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of oil depletion is of agriculture. Pesticides and agro-chemicals are made from oil, commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is from natural gas that will be peaking in the near future, and most farming tools are power driven by oil-derived fuels. Food shortage will be an outcome as transportation and distribution become expensive. The average transport of food in the U.S. is transported almost 2400 km before it is made available, and in Canada, the average is 8000 km (2). In the future, food prices will skyrocket and for those less fortunate, starvation and famine will take hold even on a global scale.
As well, the concept of suburbia will also be under speculation, as commuters can no longer afford to drive into the city, there will be an overflow of people in the near future looking to move closer to the centre. The growth of the city can also harvest new problems with water scarcity and also with health and sanitation. Presently in the United States, 4% of people do not drive, whether because of low income, being handicapped, or age—this number will likely rise, making driving exclusively for the elite class and most likely will harness resentment amongst the general population(3).
We will see an increase in oil nationalism when countries with the most oil is withholding its resources from the future market and then auctioned off to favoured customer relations with other countries that they want to maintain good relations with. The United States will probably tend to be less favoured amongst some of the oil producing nations. The monopoly of oil can potentially cause major warfare while nations battle over oil, not to mention civil wars that will arise from the shortcomings. Cities and nations will eventually fall apart as the consequences are unimaginable. Permanent fuel shortages would bring the world into a generations-long economic depression as millions become unemployed when industries implode. There will no longer be big box stores, clothing stores, cafes, and postal services—the financial economic downfall will be evident.
The financial community begins to accept the reality of Peak Oil.
"They accept that banks created capital during this epoch by lending more than they had on deposit, being confident that tomorrow’s expansion, fuelled by cheap oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for today’s debt. The decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges."(4)
When truth can no longer be concealed, prices for daily maintenance of life will escalate abruptly, and the support and infrastructure of our civilization will fall. There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. Democracy will be shut out, as economic hardships will bring out the worst in people. “Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression—emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude towards torture—already in place, courtesy of the war on terror” (5). Simultaneously, climate change will work against us, making its presence felt “with a vengeance”, while engulfed in financial ruin, food and water supplies will seize and prolonged droughts will crop up in numbers as harvesting crops decline(6).
Almost daily, we see our personal environments changing, whether with work, climate, commuting, spending—we must progress and take nothing for granted as a new Dark Era is emerging for ourselves and generations to come as growth may be coming to an end. The social and economic consequences are cataclysmic as our entire financial order from interest rates, pension funds, insurance, to stock market is dependant on growth(7). We must find new [renewable] alternatives and new ways of using the resources we already acquired in order to alleviate stress globally and especially oil dependant nations.
Notes:
1. Matt Savinar, “Peak Oil”. Life After the Oil Crash, 27 Oct. 2009
2. Stephen Hesse, “Matters of Survival in a Shattered World,” The Japan Times, 25 Apr. 2005, 1 Nov. 2009,
3. James H. Kunstler, Interviewed by Glen Hiemstra for Futurists.com, May 2008,
4. Colin Campbell, “The Financial Consequences of Peak Oil,” 24 Feb 2004, 1 Nov 2009
5. Jeremy Leggett. The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Financial Catastrophe. Random House: New York, 2005
6. Jonathon Gatehouse, “When Oil Runs Out,” Macleans, 9 Feb. 2006, 1 Nov. 2009
7. Bryan Appleyard, “Waiting for the Lights to Go Out,” The Times. 16 Oct. 2005, 3 Nov 2009,
M1 Manifesto
In addition to the oil crisis, mass quantities of oil are required for the production of things—plastics, clothes, automobiles, and modern technologies such as, computers, cell phones, electronics, and devices. We have become a consumer nation, where these “necessities” define our identity and runs our lives. We become dependant on these items where most of these things become what we need instead of what we want. It fills our closets and our garages and gauge success based on what we own and its status it provides in our lives and our communities. These things cloud our vocation as inhabitants of the earth, where instead of embracing natural environments we cover it with masses of debris and waste. Though we thought these commodities would enhance our lifestyle and existence, the majority is still ignorant that consumerism destroys our balance with nature and actually accelerates ruin in peoples’ lives.
This is due to the fact that our waste and byproducts are hidden, transported, swept under the rug and away from the public eye. However the problem is not so much ours as it is a problem with the Government. The Government of the United States orchestrated consumerism after World War II to revitalize the economy after the war(8). The productive economy demands that consumerism should be a way of life, that we take the act of buying, using, throwing out—a ritual of life that seeks ego satisfaction in consumption where things could be discarded and replaced. The market design things, cars, buildings, products that will last for a finite amount of time, things are not built to last as they used to so that consumers would be forced to upgrade and replace. It is an endless cycle of disposing, buying, working off debt only to dispose and buy again. Business and capitalism has no pity for the environment, it is there to make profit, to take from us for their own benefit.
It is human egoism that drives our will to consume and the systems that encourages it, and we are quick to adopt this system. The market puts out loads of disposable products declaring that it will make our lives easier and more convenient. North America is only 5% of the world’s population, yet we produce 30% of the world’s waste(9). We must ask ourselves, “do we really need these things?” and “can we live with what we have?” Perhaps our culture today is filled with the notion that happiness can be bought, that you could put a price tag on anything as long as you have the cash or resource and can be amongst the privileged and fortunate. There needs to be an end to this mentality that has swept our nation, we have become conditioned to expect the impossible that we have made possible through oil. To think that produce from Asia, South America are just around the corner, tastes of India and Egyptian cottons at our local market, home theatre systems and furniture from one of many big box companies—it is easy to get what you want whenever you want. What happens when these items are no longer readily available? Is our nation prepared for that?
For everything we produce there is at least an equal amount produced in trash. Waste is a scalar thing and also has no scale—it is everywhere, from a candy wrapper to large mountainous landfills. The term waste designates the elimination of substance that no one claims or wants ownership of and is a devalued substance at the end of its life cycle. Biological substances and cells produce waste, we produce waste, machines and products produce waste—there is no growth biologically and economically without discarding the unwanted. We cannot control it, therefore we must accept it and find innovative solutions to make waste a valued substance, since it is the only abundant source of the future.
This topic is a growing problem, yet majority of us are in denial. It is not so much as it being a massive object we should take care of, we should think about waste and its huge environmental impacts on our societies today. Most large de-industrialized sites are located within proximity of local water sources; naturally, this is also where majority of the people congregate. Water scarcity is already a problem, as only 3% of the earth’s water is potable and that includes contaminated waters by industries, not to mention toxicity levels that seep into our water and soil we grow our food in. We can also expect increasing amounts of water related diseases in the near future.
We have the resources now to move trash and hide problems like these, but the future does not look bright as oil depletion, water scarcity, global warming, and resource scarcity correlate simultaneously into an unforgiving future. By putting waste material to good use allows dual purposes, it simultaneously reduces the burden on natural resources and second, reduces the quantity of waste to be eliminated. We must also curve the two associated fatalities that economic growth and increase in garbage are derivatives of each other and seek to reevaluate waste as a secondary resource. Life cycle analysis tools consider the overall composition of a material from inception to usage and the environmental impacts that go along with it, from “cradle to grave”. So in construction, the stages of extraction, preparation, processing, manufacturing, shipping, then construction, maintenance, repair, and lastly demolition; new policies are attempting to shift from discarding the material to creating a “grave to cradle” scenario, where reutilization and recycling becomes an important backbone for our future economy(10).
There are of course both pros and cons with reutilizing and recycling, first, that the energy initially invested in creating the product will be more profitable with reuse, however there may be environmental implications with some materials that are classified as toxic non reusable materials. We as architects must take responsibility primarily with the safe remediation of toxic material before implementing the rehabilitation and resurrection of inanimate materials and objects. There is an immense variety of material resources in existence beyond the traditional, everything points to the direction of maximizing the value of waste. The definition between reutilization and recycling is often mistaken—recycling maximizes the value of the constitutive material, and reutilization preserves the initial form. For my thesis, I would like to focus more heavily on the reutilization of discarded objects.
In favour of reduction, reutilization lowers costs by avoiding extraction of natural aggregates and other primary elements, as well as the costs of transporting and unloading natural aggregates and waste. It also allows history to procure in an object by lessening the transformable stages in the material’s life, opposite to recycling, and at the same time maximizing its value in terms of revenue and most importantly to the environment—as there are a lot of chemical processes involved with recycling. In some ways, retaining its original form allows us to view it as an artwork woven into the urban fabric, where ideally, these objects will eventually become the norm and standard of the built environment. The problem however, lies in the psychology that—waste as a matter is useful—and people do not want to accept this. I want to shift the mentality from things that our society devalue into something of value, where people will begin to reclaim ownership of the discarded.
The reutilization of garbage in art has been a reoccurring theme for many years, since 1913 when Marcel Duchamp created his first ready-made from a bicycle wheel and called it art. He wanted to instill the idea that garbage could be art and sought to blur the fine line between art and garbage. Though the fine line is not yet evident in the field of architecture, recent attempts by various architects has sought to redefine our profession as the be-all and end-all of the future—with the sustainability of our environment in mind. While the utilization of waste in art is becoming the norm, it is not so foreign in architecture. Since its origins, architecture has used the “waste” of agriculture as a primary material. These inedible parts—wood, hay, reed, bamboo—are often the primary ingredients that make up a building(11). So instead of utilizing organic waste, is it possible to adapt it with the use of synthetic or man-made waste?
Architects are amongst the privileged when it comes to the ability to visualize a project as a whole entity and to bring it into materialization much more efficiently than any other profession. It is from our creative free flowing ideas and knowledge of the built environment and its culture that allows us to see the emerging problems as an integrated framework of systems. We also have the knowledge for sustainable construction and the use of materials in efforts to conserve resources. It should be our objective to open up the markets for secondary resource exploitations, where we advocate the vast potential for innovations in waste and its construction benefits.
Notes:
8. Annie Leonard, “The Untold Story of Consumerism,” Kabbalah Today. Apr./May 2006, 29 Oct. 2009,
9. Annie Leonard, “The Untold Story of Consumerism,” Kabbalah Today. Apr./May 2006, 29 Oct. 2009,
10. Gérard Bertonlini, “Gestion des Déchets: My Poubelle is rich,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 53
11. Yona Friedman, “Du Déchet fait art,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 81
This is due to the fact that our waste and byproducts are hidden, transported, swept under the rug and away from the public eye. However the problem is not so much ours as it is a problem with the Government. The Government of the United States orchestrated consumerism after World War II to revitalize the economy after the war(8). The productive economy demands that consumerism should be a way of life, that we take the act of buying, using, throwing out—a ritual of life that seeks ego satisfaction in consumption where things could be discarded and replaced. The market design things, cars, buildings, products that will last for a finite amount of time, things are not built to last as they used to so that consumers would be forced to upgrade and replace. It is an endless cycle of disposing, buying, working off debt only to dispose and buy again. Business and capitalism has no pity for the environment, it is there to make profit, to take from us for their own benefit.
It is human egoism that drives our will to consume and the systems that encourages it, and we are quick to adopt this system. The market puts out loads of disposable products declaring that it will make our lives easier and more convenient. North America is only 5% of the world’s population, yet we produce 30% of the world’s waste(9). We must ask ourselves, “do we really need these things?” and “can we live with what we have?” Perhaps our culture today is filled with the notion that happiness can be bought, that you could put a price tag on anything as long as you have the cash or resource and can be amongst the privileged and fortunate. There needs to be an end to this mentality that has swept our nation, we have become conditioned to expect the impossible that we have made possible through oil. To think that produce from Asia, South America are just around the corner, tastes of India and Egyptian cottons at our local market, home theatre systems and furniture from one of many big box companies—it is easy to get what you want whenever you want. What happens when these items are no longer readily available? Is our nation prepared for that?
For everything we produce there is at least an equal amount produced in trash. Waste is a scalar thing and also has no scale—it is everywhere, from a candy wrapper to large mountainous landfills. The term waste designates the elimination of substance that no one claims or wants ownership of and is a devalued substance at the end of its life cycle. Biological substances and cells produce waste, we produce waste, machines and products produce waste—there is no growth biologically and economically without discarding the unwanted. We cannot control it, therefore we must accept it and find innovative solutions to make waste a valued substance, since it is the only abundant source of the future.
This topic is a growing problem, yet majority of us are in denial. It is not so much as it being a massive object we should take care of, we should think about waste and its huge environmental impacts on our societies today. Most large de-industrialized sites are located within proximity of local water sources; naturally, this is also where majority of the people congregate. Water scarcity is already a problem, as only 3% of the earth’s water is potable and that includes contaminated waters by industries, not to mention toxicity levels that seep into our water and soil we grow our food in. We can also expect increasing amounts of water related diseases in the near future.
We have the resources now to move trash and hide problems like these, but the future does not look bright as oil depletion, water scarcity, global warming, and resource scarcity correlate simultaneously into an unforgiving future. By putting waste material to good use allows dual purposes, it simultaneously reduces the burden on natural resources and second, reduces the quantity of waste to be eliminated. We must also curve the two associated fatalities that economic growth and increase in garbage are derivatives of each other and seek to reevaluate waste as a secondary resource. Life cycle analysis tools consider the overall composition of a material from inception to usage and the environmental impacts that go along with it, from “cradle to grave”. So in construction, the stages of extraction, preparation, processing, manufacturing, shipping, then construction, maintenance, repair, and lastly demolition; new policies are attempting to shift from discarding the material to creating a “grave to cradle” scenario, where reutilization and recycling becomes an important backbone for our future economy(10).
There are of course both pros and cons with reutilizing and recycling, first, that the energy initially invested in creating the product will be more profitable with reuse, however there may be environmental implications with some materials that are classified as toxic non reusable materials. We as architects must take responsibility primarily with the safe remediation of toxic material before implementing the rehabilitation and resurrection of inanimate materials and objects. There is an immense variety of material resources in existence beyond the traditional, everything points to the direction of maximizing the value of waste. The definition between reutilization and recycling is often mistaken—recycling maximizes the value of the constitutive material, and reutilization preserves the initial form. For my thesis, I would like to focus more heavily on the reutilization of discarded objects.
In favour of reduction, reutilization lowers costs by avoiding extraction of natural aggregates and other primary elements, as well as the costs of transporting and unloading natural aggregates and waste. It also allows history to procure in an object by lessening the transformable stages in the material’s life, opposite to recycling, and at the same time maximizing its value in terms of revenue and most importantly to the environment—as there are a lot of chemical processes involved with recycling. In some ways, retaining its original form allows us to view it as an artwork woven into the urban fabric, where ideally, these objects will eventually become the norm and standard of the built environment. The problem however, lies in the psychology that—waste as a matter is useful—and people do not want to accept this. I want to shift the mentality from things that our society devalue into something of value, where people will begin to reclaim ownership of the discarded.
The reutilization of garbage in art has been a reoccurring theme for many years, since 1913 when Marcel Duchamp created his first ready-made from a bicycle wheel and called it art. He wanted to instill the idea that garbage could be art and sought to blur the fine line between art and garbage. Though the fine line is not yet evident in the field of architecture, recent attempts by various architects has sought to redefine our profession as the be-all and end-all of the future—with the sustainability of our environment in mind. While the utilization of waste in art is becoming the norm, it is not so foreign in architecture. Since its origins, architecture has used the “waste” of agriculture as a primary material. These inedible parts—wood, hay, reed, bamboo—are often the primary ingredients that make up a building(11). So instead of utilizing organic waste, is it possible to adapt it with the use of synthetic or man-made waste?
Architects are amongst the privileged when it comes to the ability to visualize a project as a whole entity and to bring it into materialization much more efficiently than any other profession. It is from our creative free flowing ideas and knowledge of the built environment and its culture that allows us to see the emerging problems as an integrated framework of systems. We also have the knowledge for sustainable construction and the use of materials in efforts to conserve resources. It should be our objective to open up the markets for secondary resource exploitations, where we advocate the vast potential for innovations in waste and its construction benefits.
Notes:
8. Annie Leonard, “The Untold Story of Consumerism,” Kabbalah Today. Apr./May 2006, 29 Oct. 2009,
9. Annie Leonard, “The Untold Story of Consumerism,” Kabbalah Today. Apr./May 2006, 29 Oct. 2009,
10. Gérard Bertonlini, “Gestion des Déchets: My Poubelle is rich,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 53
11. Yona Friedman, “Du Déchet fait art,” L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui Sept./Oct. 2007: 81
M1 Project Intervention
Imagine Manhattan in the year 2050 when oil production slows to be almost nonexistent, leaving this oil dependant city torn to hardship and ruin for generations thereafter. Nothing comes and nothing leaves Manhattan. The population is dwindling as disease and famine has swept the city, taking the weak, old, and the unborn with it. Those who remain are forced to use existing resources for survival. What was once Wall Street and 5th avenue boutiques are forced to become obsolete, they remain only recognizable as ruins after the citizens ransacked and demolished the buildings for materials—glass, copper wire, tubes, plastics, paper—anything they can use in order to survive.
The rising sea levels change the waterfront to be almost unrecognizable. Citizen led efforts are being made to alleviate stress on an already burdened civilization before it may be too late. The earth has proven itself to be less resilient than predicted, and it is furious, its fury lies in our ability to take advantage of its selflessness while stealing every piece of armour it has created over the course of its existence, but the earth has also proven to be merciless in its vengeance. As news and newspapers do not come frequently as they used to, it has become almost impossible to predict the weather and its patterns, rendering the city vulnerable and open to the violent attacks of climate change.
The sorting of rubble and rubbish almost becomes a natural thing, heaps of waste produced by the city has nowhere to go. The problem cannot be hidden any longer as waste is no longer being moved to disposal sites, it will become a visible crisis that needs resolution. It will create thousands of jobs and a union of positive community relationships at a time of urgency and extremity. Waste will define the city and its built environment with undulating layers forming a ubiquitous landscape.
In my project I will look at Manhattan Island and its conditions for potential flooding, while implementing a permanent flood barrier solution by reutilizing waste as the building material. I would like to concentrate on 4 architectural and topographical conditions the island presents: the Meatpacking District, Battery Park, the South Street Viaduct, and East Harlem—as potential locations to implement a continuous flood barrier.
The plan is to consider the type of waste that will be projected onto the city at a time when there will be little or no movement within cities. Since vehicles will no longer be seen as a primary mode of transport, it will be seen as a resourceful readily available form of “trash” that people can salvage parts from in order to create the structural system of the barrier. Presently in Manhattan, approximately 48% of the population own vehicles, MTA has approximately 5,900 buses that run intercity, 13,087 taxis, and around 40,000 for hire vehicles—this amounts to approximately 3,500,000 tires(12). Tires are among the largest and most problematic sources of waste as approximately one tire is discarded per person per year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports 290 million scrap tires were generated in 2003(13). With landfills minimizing their acceptance of whole tires and the health and environmental risks of stockpiling tires, we must make new uses for them. These tires can then be filled with concrete or stones to build the perimeter of the landfill and then interconnected by cementing between the tires or by petrifying the materials in place by protocell technology. The cars are then filled with carefully selected plastics and other non-toxic materials with long material life or materials that would not decompose under water, but instead be preserved under those conditions. The vehicle would then be put in a hydraulic crusher that encapsulates all its waste and then spits out a bale that can then be used as a building block for infill.
This would be done in layers, with each layer separated by demolition wastes and debris of crushed concrete, bricks, stones, and sands—as filler between gaps. At the top of the landfill above the water table, is another strata of waste, these are items that require remediation. The waste is then separated into different cells to be compacted and then covered with soil or thick plastics (ie. tarp)—whatever is available. Harvesting methane from the waste will be done in order to create renewable energy for the city, utilizing bioreactors to speed up the breakdown of garbage and produce more methane in the process. The leachates are drained and collected into a pond or constructed wetland for safe remediation of wastewater effluents. This is ideal because it is inexpensive to construct and operate, and also requires a low level of maintenance because of its synergistic relationship with the environment.
The land is then shaped to create the barriers, at the same time programmatic relief for its citizens. Parks, new living spaces, meeting places, trading markets, educational spaces—a forum built by its people from abandoned shipping containers, cars, pop bottles, plastics, carpets, and debris, woven together by whatever’s left of the city. What was seen as a dismissed unwanted inconvenience in our lives, waste, will prove to be a coveted resource in changing our built environment, urban fabric, and also in bringing together communities and support during future turmoil.
Notes:
12. “2005 Annual Report,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 1 May 2006, 10 Nov 2009,
13. “Management of Scrap Tires”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 3 Jan 2007, 29 Nov 2009,
The rising sea levels change the waterfront to be almost unrecognizable. Citizen led efforts are being made to alleviate stress on an already burdened civilization before it may be too late. The earth has proven itself to be less resilient than predicted, and it is furious, its fury lies in our ability to take advantage of its selflessness while stealing every piece of armour it has created over the course of its existence, but the earth has also proven to be merciless in its vengeance. As news and newspapers do not come frequently as they used to, it has become almost impossible to predict the weather and its patterns, rendering the city vulnerable and open to the violent attacks of climate change.
The sorting of rubble and rubbish almost becomes a natural thing, heaps of waste produced by the city has nowhere to go. The problem cannot be hidden any longer as waste is no longer being moved to disposal sites, it will become a visible crisis that needs resolution. It will create thousands of jobs and a union of positive community relationships at a time of urgency and extremity. Waste will define the city and its built environment with undulating layers forming a ubiquitous landscape.
In my project I will look at Manhattan Island and its conditions for potential flooding, while implementing a permanent flood barrier solution by reutilizing waste as the building material. I would like to concentrate on 4 architectural and topographical conditions the island presents: the Meatpacking District, Battery Park, the South Street Viaduct, and East Harlem—as potential locations to implement a continuous flood barrier.
The plan is to consider the type of waste that will be projected onto the city at a time when there will be little or no movement within cities. Since vehicles will no longer be seen as a primary mode of transport, it will be seen as a resourceful readily available form of “trash” that people can salvage parts from in order to create the structural system of the barrier. Presently in Manhattan, approximately 48% of the population own vehicles, MTA has approximately 5,900 buses that run intercity, 13,087 taxis, and around 40,000 for hire vehicles—this amounts to approximately 3,500,000 tires(12). Tires are among the largest and most problematic sources of waste as approximately one tire is discarded per person per year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports 290 million scrap tires were generated in 2003(13). With landfills minimizing their acceptance of whole tires and the health and environmental risks of stockpiling tires, we must make new uses for them. These tires can then be filled with concrete or stones to build the perimeter of the landfill and then interconnected by cementing between the tires or by petrifying the materials in place by protocell technology. The cars are then filled with carefully selected plastics and other non-toxic materials with long material life or materials that would not decompose under water, but instead be preserved under those conditions. The vehicle would then be put in a hydraulic crusher that encapsulates all its waste and then spits out a bale that can then be used as a building block for infill.
This would be done in layers, with each layer separated by demolition wastes and debris of crushed concrete, bricks, stones, and sands—as filler between gaps. At the top of the landfill above the water table, is another strata of waste, these are items that require remediation. The waste is then separated into different cells to be compacted and then covered with soil or thick plastics (ie. tarp)—whatever is available. Harvesting methane from the waste will be done in order to create renewable energy for the city, utilizing bioreactors to speed up the breakdown of garbage and produce more methane in the process. The leachates are drained and collected into a pond or constructed wetland for safe remediation of wastewater effluents. This is ideal because it is inexpensive to construct and operate, and also requires a low level of maintenance because of its synergistic relationship with the environment.
The land is then shaped to create the barriers, at the same time programmatic relief for its citizens. Parks, new living spaces, meeting places, trading markets, educational spaces—a forum built by its people from abandoned shipping containers, cars, pop bottles, plastics, carpets, and debris, woven together by whatever’s left of the city. What was seen as a dismissed unwanted inconvenience in our lives, waste, will prove to be a coveted resource in changing our built environment, urban fabric, and also in bringing together communities and support during future turmoil.
Notes:
12. “2005 Annual Report,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 1 May 2006, 10 Nov 2009,
13. “Management of Scrap Tires”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 3 Jan 2007, 29 Nov 2009,
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Kevin Lynch’s Wasting Away
Philosophy on “positive waste,” making the most out of an inevitable process:
Lynch, Kevin. "Wasting Away". Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1990
Decline, decay and wasting are a necessary part of life and growth; we must learn to value them and to do them well. This book represents a natural progression in his consideration of all aspects of urban life. He saw that we are headed in a self-destructive direction that has implications for virtually every profession, including environmental design and planning. Though the book is not a warning, but a plea that we should acknowledge most waste and the processes of wasting as valuable and necessary in the life of people, things, and places, and promote his philosophies on “positive wasting”.
He tried to expand readers’ thinking by reducing the notion to its most fundamental meaning and then exploring its many implications. Lynch examines waste from many perspectives and addresses cultural notions of waste and why we are so uncomfortable with waste and wasting. He then looks at waste in the context of other cultures and talks about class and waste, eating, cleaning, and death. As in many other ancient societies, buildings and even settlements were wasted deliberately as a symbol of royal prestige and purity, just as emperors were served more than they could eat and possessed more clothes than they can possibly wear. New cities and palaces were at one time built at every accession and abandoned at each royal death.
Wasting is a pervasive process in human society, just as it is elsewhere in the living system. It is a feature of the underlying flux that carries us along, the everlasting impermanence of things. If we look for continuity and not permanence, then wasting might be turned to account. Rarely, the accumulation of waste caused the abandonment of a settled place, unless it has served to hasten some natural evolution. Only occasionally has the environment been pushed to some truly irreversible dead end. Wasting has not usually caused fundamental social change, but it accelerates changes under way, and shifts the distribution of burdens. Its presence preoccupies us: it is an affair of the mind. Might there be pleasures in it and practical opportunities so we may be at ease with waste.
Lynch, Kevin. "Wasting Away". Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1990
Decline, decay and wasting are a necessary part of life and growth; we must learn to value them and to do them well. This book represents a natural progression in his consideration of all aspects of urban life. He saw that we are headed in a self-destructive direction that has implications for virtually every profession, including environmental design and planning. Though the book is not a warning, but a plea that we should acknowledge most waste and the processes of wasting as valuable and necessary in the life of people, things, and places, and promote his philosophies on “positive wasting”.
He tried to expand readers’ thinking by reducing the notion to its most fundamental meaning and then exploring its many implications. Lynch examines waste from many perspectives and addresses cultural notions of waste and why we are so uncomfortable with waste and wasting. He then looks at waste in the context of other cultures and talks about class and waste, eating, cleaning, and death. As in many other ancient societies, buildings and even settlements were wasted deliberately as a symbol of royal prestige and purity, just as emperors were served more than they could eat and possessed more clothes than they can possibly wear. New cities and palaces were at one time built at every accession and abandoned at each royal death.
Wasting is a pervasive process in human society, just as it is elsewhere in the living system. It is a feature of the underlying flux that carries us along, the everlasting impermanence of things. If we look for continuity and not permanence, then wasting might be turned to account. Rarely, the accumulation of waste caused the abandonment of a settled place, unless it has served to hasten some natural evolution. Only occasionally has the environment been pushed to some truly irreversible dead end. Wasting has not usually caused fundamental social change, but it accelerates changes under way, and shifts the distribution of burdens. Its presence preoccupies us: it is an affair of the mind. Might there be pleasures in it and practical opportunities so we may be at ease with waste.
Robert Bean on Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention
http://www.robertbean.ca/
http://www.obsolescence.ca/bean.php
The research and creation associated with Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention is informed by the fact that material obsolescence in industrial culture is also the product of research methodologies. From as early as 1932, manufacturers from industrial economies have been actively researching and implementing the failure of design and technology into our lived experience. By scientifically quantifying and perfecting obsolescence in products, the continuous and accelerating consumption of manufactured products has been assured. The consequences of this development are considerable. Obsolescence, whether material or spiritual, becomes one of the most relevant developments of our time. The research associated with poetic and artistic creation may not share the methodologies of research formed by instrumental objectives. Culture, myth and metaphor are familiar to the process of creative and poetic research. How will artistic creation and research based in new technologies provide a renewed insight into the predicaments of obsolete things and experiences and how can this shape and influence the insight, future and wellbeing of our culture?
Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention will cover a three-year investigation into language, technology and artistic production in the context of digital media. The research documented and produced interdisciplinary artwork influenced by the culture and language of machines and obsolescence. The physical contact with the object was used as a procedure for remembering an obsolete technology that has influenced and predated his experience. The cultural complexity of the apparatus, its design, function, and mechanical precision were conveyed through this process of disassembly. The labour that fabricated and implemented the writing machine was also revealed. This project is an exploration of organic and inorganic memory through the borders and interface that continue to define the human experience with machines.
We are specifically interested in the creative and critical potential that technology and cultural obsolescence necessitates. Rather than presuming that obsolescence is inherently defined by loss and nostalgia, we will actively engage methods of creation that generate and inspire production concurrent with the processes of obsolescence. How can the excess of technological obsolescence inspire creative activities and circumstances?
There is an apparent contradiction in naming obsolescence as the subject of an extensive research project into creativity. Research methodology is traditionally associated with progress, development, and the brand new. Consequently, researching the imaginative and productive potentiality of outmoded culture and technology advances an inverse relationship that may appear obsolete to the conventional language of research. This is a critical paradox of our time as well as a principle question to investigate during the research / creation project. How are we as artists and producers affected by the experiences of obsolescence at this moment in time? How does this situation influence our perception, intuition, sensorial experience and our creative activities? The project profiled the ingenuity and resourcefulness that the artists brought to the contingencies of material and cultural obsolescence in an era of unprecedented technological advancement.
http://www.obsolescence.ca/
The research and creation associated with Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention is informed by the fact that material obsolescence in industrial culture is also the product of research methodologies. From as early as 1932, manufacturers from industrial economies have been actively researching and implementing the failure of design and technology into our lived experience. By scientifically quantifying and perfecting obsolescence in products, the continuous and accelerating consumption of manufactured products has been assured. The consequences of this development are considerable. Obsolescence, whether material or spiritual, becomes one of the most relevant developments of our time. The research associated with poetic and artistic creation may not share the methodologies of research formed by instrumental objectives. Culture, myth and metaphor are familiar to the process of creative and poetic research. How will artistic creation and research based in new technologies provide a renewed insight into the predicaments of obsolete things and experiences and how can this shape and influence the insight, future and wellbeing of our culture?
Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention will cover a three-year investigation into language, technology and artistic production in the context of digital media. The research documented and produced interdisciplinary artwork influenced by the culture and language of machines and obsolescence. The physical contact with the object was used as a procedure for remembering an obsolete technology that has influenced and predated his experience. The cultural complexity of the apparatus, its design, function, and mechanical precision were conveyed through this process of disassembly. The labour that fabricated and implemented the writing machine was also revealed. This project is an exploration of organic and inorganic memory through the borders and interface that continue to define the human experience with machines.
We are specifically interested in the creative and critical potential that technology and cultural obsolescence necessitates. Rather than presuming that obsolescence is inherently defined by loss and nostalgia, we will actively engage methods of creation that generate and inspire production concurrent with the processes of obsolescence. How can the excess of technological obsolescence inspire creative activities and circumstances?
There is an apparent contradiction in naming obsolescence as the subject of an extensive research project into creativity. Research methodology is traditionally associated with progress, development, and the brand new. Consequently, researching the imaginative and productive potentiality of outmoded culture and technology advances an inverse relationship that may appear obsolete to the conventional language of research. This is a critical paradox of our time as well as a principle question to investigate during the research / creation project. How are we as artists and producers affected by the experiences of obsolescence at this moment in time? How does this situation influence our perception, intuition, sensorial experience and our creative activities? The project profiled the ingenuity and resourcefulness that the artists brought to the contingencies of material and cultural obsolescence in an era of unprecedented technological advancement.
More Useful links + Resources on Waste
Dirt Studio, “toxic beauty” consultants.
www.dirtstudio.com
Fresh Kills design competition
ww.nyc.gov
Garbage studies at the University of Arizona
www.bara.arizona.edu/gs.htm
Glaneurs et La Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I). Dir. Agnes Varda. Ciné Tamaris, 2000.
Hackensack Riverkeeper
www.hackensackriverkeeper.org
Susan Strasser. Waste and Want:
A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan, 1999.
Simon Schama. Landscape and Memory. Knopf, 1995.
Robert Sullivan. The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures on the Edge of a City. Anchor, 1999.
Robert Smithson. The Collected Writings. Ed. Jack Flam. University of California Press, 1996.
Designing America's Waste Landscape--Mira Engler
Engler, Mira. “Designing America’s Waste Landscape”. London: John Hopkins University Press, 2004
The history of garbage in the past two centuries has been the history of urbanism: the rise of cities necessitated efficient collection of trash and excreta. Our modern-day equivalents are the aluminum can foragers, who open bags left out on trash night and search for redeemables. Their fortunes rose as those of the field scavengers fell. Prior to the 1970s, when cities and states first put a price on tossing them, cans were just trash among more trash, going to landfills. Forty years earlier, cans hadn’t yet been invented, and a few years before that, in the early 20th century, garbage itself was virtually nonexistent in big American cities.
Mira Engler’s Designing America’s Waste Landscapes covers the whole dirty history of excrement, offal, leavings, and scraps as they eventually evolved into sewage, compost, recyclables, and toxic sludge. Designing America’s Waste Landscapes is not a social history of how households and municipalities came to produce tons and tons of this stuff daily, instead, it brings together in one place many far-flung conversations about trash in disciplines as varied as art history, architecture, engineering, anthropology, and political science, with references to thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin. She focuses on the idea of trash transparency—that we should look our waste straight in the gut, so to speak, and not shy away from the noxious smells, industrial apparatus, or toxic byproducts that are the results of being consumers.
Engler’s overarching concern is the application of this principle to the reclamation of polluted landscapes and the planning of future waste disposal sites and looks to the work of a group of artists and landscape architects who have argued that, instead of recoiling from the waste we produce, we should integrate it into our everyday landscape. Many of the artistic projects Engler discusses have provoked policy makers and local bureaucrats to come up with more interesting solutions for our waste landscapes. Some works, such as Mel Chin’s experiment-as-conceptual-art piece Revival Field, have even advanced scientific understanding of what’s possible in remediating and recovering wasted landscapes. As a landscape architect who has submitted her own projects for re-envisioned dumps and former industrial sites, Engler is heavily invested in the idea that artists can make a measurable difference and to produce work that embraces waste, rather than hides it from public knowledge. Her ideal of trash transparency emphasizes that nature and culture are interdependent and that remediated landscapes should incorporate a record of human effects.
For Brief By Carly Berwick see:
http://americancity.org/magazine/article/review-mira-engler-baltimore/
The history of garbage in the past two centuries has been the history of urbanism: the rise of cities necessitated efficient collection of trash and excreta. Our modern-day equivalents are the aluminum can foragers, who open bags left out on trash night and search for redeemables. Their fortunes rose as those of the field scavengers fell. Prior to the 1970s, when cities and states first put a price on tossing them, cans were just trash among more trash, going to landfills. Forty years earlier, cans hadn’t yet been invented, and a few years before that, in the early 20th century, garbage itself was virtually nonexistent in big American cities.
Mira Engler’s Designing America’s Waste Landscapes covers the whole dirty history of excrement, offal, leavings, and scraps as they eventually evolved into sewage, compost, recyclables, and toxic sludge. Designing America’s Waste Landscapes is not a social history of how households and municipalities came to produce tons and tons of this stuff daily, instead, it brings together in one place many far-flung conversations about trash in disciplines as varied as art history, architecture, engineering, anthropology, and political science, with references to thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin. She focuses on the idea of trash transparency—that we should look our waste straight in the gut, so to speak, and not shy away from the noxious smells, industrial apparatus, or toxic byproducts that are the results of being consumers.
Engler’s overarching concern is the application of this principle to the reclamation of polluted landscapes and the planning of future waste disposal sites and looks to the work of a group of artists and landscape architects who have argued that, instead of recoiling from the waste we produce, we should integrate it into our everyday landscape. Many of the artistic projects Engler discusses have provoked policy makers and local bureaucrats to come up with more interesting solutions for our waste landscapes. Some works, such as Mel Chin’s experiment-as-conceptual-art piece Revival Field, have even advanced scientific understanding of what’s possible in remediating and recovering wasted landscapes. As a landscape architect who has submitted her own projects for re-envisioned dumps and former industrial sites, Engler is heavily invested in the idea that artists can make a measurable difference and to produce work that embraces waste, rather than hides it from public knowledge. Her ideal of trash transparency emphasizes that nature and culture are interdependent and that remediated landscapes should incorporate a record of human effects.
For Brief By Carly Berwick see:
http://americancity.org/
Monday, December 7, 2009
Edward Burtynsky: on Manufactured Landscapes + Oil
"Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."
In Manufactured Landscapes, Burtynksy's produced a series of still photography, contextualizing his photographs in the global cycles of energy, production, and waste, by cinematically inhabiting the subjects of his work. While his work serves as a commentary on the impact of large-scale industrialization, Burtynsky claims to neither criticize nor praise these developments, but to bring images to viewers in the hopes of opening their eyes to the realities of the contemporary world.
The series investigates:
1. The production cycle in China (Factories and Recycling),
2. Energy in China (coal industry and Three Gorges Dam),
3. globalization,
4. extraction industries (minding and the oil industries in Canada and U.S.), and also
5. urbanization in China (transformation of old neighbourhoods in Shanghai)
His exhibition on Oil surveys his 10-year journey of expansive documentation into the subjects of oil from:
1. extraction and refinement—how it is drawing from the earth, processed for our use
2. It then proceeds to show how oil is used and its effects—urbanization, roads, cars, etc.
3. And concludes with the destruction and consequences that lie at the end of oil—vast recycling yards, immense installations of defunct oil fields, breaking down of oil tankers
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."
In Manufactured Landscapes, Burtynksy's produced a series of still photography, contextualizing his photographs in the global cycles of energy, production, and waste, by cinematically inhabiting the subjects of his work. While his work serves as a commentary on the impact of large-scale industrialization, Burtynsky claims to neither criticize nor praise these developments, but to bring images to viewers in the hopes of opening their eyes to the realities of the contemporary world.
The series investigates:
1. The production cycle in China (Factories and Recycling),
2. Energy in China (coal industry and Three Gorges Dam),
3. globalization,
4. extraction industries (minding and the oil industries in Canada and U.S.), and also
5. urbanization in China (transformation of old neighbourhoods in Shanghai)
His exhibition on Oil surveys his 10-year journey of expansive documentation into the subjects of oil from:
1. extraction and refinement—how it is drawing from the earth, processed for our use
2. It then proceeds to show how oil is used and its effects—urbanization, roads, cars, etc.
3. And concludes with the destruction and consequences that lie at the end of oil—vast recycling yards, immense installations of defunct oil fields, breaking down of oil tankers
Notes on Alvin Toffler: Future Shock + The Third Wave
http://www.alvintoffler.net/?fa=bios
What differentiates the Tofflers from others who today echo this view is their insistence that there can be no economic transformation without a corresponding upheaval in our social, political and cultural institutions and values.
In support of this idea, the Tofflers draw not merely on economics, but on social psychology, military history, politics, pop culture and religion, revealing the hidden or unnoticed relations among them - and their implications for the decisions we make today.
http://www.ameinfo.com/44149.html
“3rd wave” book argues huge historic changes:
1. hunting and gathering to agriculture
2. rise of industrial age and all the things that go with it, mass production, factories
3. rise of a knowledge based economy
The central feature of his futurology is to note patterns in human history.
Toffler's idea of leadership is one of the ability to handle change, and improve existing practices. As he argues: 'In every company new ideas, new products, and new people are waiting to be born. The leader's task is to get them out and breathing.
'In the third wave, good ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. It may mean courage, imagination, entrepreneurialism, warmth, organizational savvy or street smarts. These are the kinds of brains that will thrive in the third wave.'
He thinks the leaders of tomorrow must be 'managers of adaptation equipped with a whole set of new, nonlinear skills.' And this guru of the future suggests: 'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.'
http://www.yoyow.com/marye/tofflers94.html
"future shock"--when too much change hits too fast for people to absorb, they then began to show signs of either deteriorated decision-making capability or disorientation; indeed, in some cases, stress and illness and so forth. Future shock is the consequence of the premature arrival of the future.
The Third Wave, ten years after Future Shock. That book said that the changes around us are not entirely random, that you can see patterns, and that basically what was happening was a revolutionary upheaval on a par with, or even greater than, the industrial revolution--or indeed the agrarian revolution that came first. We used the terminology First Wave, Second Wave, Third Wave.
Then came the industrial revolution of two or three hundred years ago, which launched what we call the second great transformatory wave in history, and gave rise to an industrial civilization. That industrial civilization had multiple forms. It had capitalists and communists; it had Japanese, Korean, Swedish, or American versions; but all of the industrial countries, by definition, were based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass entertainment. Sociologists referred to it as the mass society.
The old scenarios, the scenarios of Orwell and Huxley and hundreds, if not thousands, of science fiction writers, saw the continual advance of technology as necessarily increasing the industrial character of society--making it more bureaucratic, more centralized, more impersonal, more robotoid, and so on.
There is a contrast between second and third wave, where 2nd is based on mass society produced by industrial civilization, while computer age is more singular and independent.
Military on the contrary to mass production where they are participating in demassification of no assembly line.
http://www.solutioneers.net/solutioneering/thirdwave.html
Second Wave society and Expansionism is based on 3 beliefs:
1. Nature is to be exploited.
2. Humans are pinnacle of long process of evolution.
3. History flows irreversibly towards the progress of a better life for humanity.
What differentiates the Tofflers from others who today echo this view is their insistence that there can be no economic transformation without a corresponding upheaval in our social, political and cultural institutions and values.
In support of this idea, the Tofflers draw not merely on economics, but on social psychology, military history, politics, pop culture and religion, revealing the hidden or unnoticed relations among them - and their implications for the decisions we make today.
http://www.ameinfo.com/44149.html
“3rd wave” book argues huge historic changes:1. hunting and gathering to agriculture
2. rise of industrial age and all the things that go with it, mass production, factories
3. rise of a knowledge based economy
The central feature of his futurology is to note patterns in human history.
Toffler's idea of leadership is one of the ability to handle change, and improve existing practices. As he argues: 'In every company new ideas, new products, and new people are waiting to be born. The leader's task is to get them out and breathing.
'In the third wave, good ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. It may mean courage, imagination, entrepreneurialism, warmth, organizational savvy or street smarts. These are the kinds of brains that will thrive in the third wave.'
He thinks the leaders of tomorrow must be 'managers of adaptation equipped with a whole set of new, nonlinear skills.' And this guru of the future suggests: 'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.'
http://www.yoyow.com/marye/
"future shock"--when too much change hits too fast for people to absorb, they then began to show signs of either deteriorated decision-making capability or disorientation; indeed, in some cases, stress and illness and so forth. Future shock is the consequence of the premature arrival of the future.The Third Wave, ten years after Future Shock. That book said that the changes around us are not entirely random, that you can see patterns, and that basically what was happening was a revolutionary upheaval on a par with, or even greater than, the industrial revolution--or indeed the agrarian revolution that came first. We used the terminology First Wave, Second Wave, Third Wave.
Then came the industrial revolution of two or three hundred years ago, which launched what we call the second great transformatory wave in history, and gave rise to an industrial civilization. That industrial civilization had multiple forms. It had capitalists and communists; it had Japanese, Korean, Swedish, or American versions; but all of the industrial countries, by definition, were based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass entertainment. Sociologists referred to it as the mass society.
The old scenarios, the scenarios of Orwell and Huxley and hundreds, if not thousands, of science fiction writers, saw the continual advance of technology as necessarily increasing the industrial character of society--making it more bureaucratic, more centralized, more impersonal, more robotoid, and so on.
There is a contrast between second and third wave, where 2nd is based on mass society produced by industrial civilization, while computer age is more singular and independent.
Military on the contrary to mass production where they are participating in demassification of no assembly line.
http://www.solutioneers.net/
Second Wave society and Expansionism is based on 3 beliefs:
1. Nature is to be exploited.
2. Humans are pinnacle of long process of evolution.
3. History flows irreversibly towards the progress of a better life for humanity.
Bernard Tscumi's Manhattan Transcripts
Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also about event, action, and what happens in space. He proposed to transcribe an architecture interpretation of reality and its purpose was to transcribe things normally removed from conventional architectural representation, namely the complex relationship between spaces and their use, between the set and script, between “type” and “program, between objects and events.
The dominant theme is a set of disjunctions among use, form and social values; the non-coincidence between meaning and being, movement and space, man and object was the starting condition of the work. His aim was to offer different reading of architecture in which space, movement and events were independent, yet stood in a new relation to one another, so that the conventional components of architecture were broken down and rebuilt along different axes.
Keller Easterling and Her Insight on "Infrastructure as a Recipe for Politics"
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=41816_0_23_0_C
Keller Easterling Interview on Archinect
Maybe that question concerns an amplified understanding of what constitutes infrastructure. For some time we have been considering infrastructure to be something beyond transportation, communication and utility networks. Infrastructure may even include collective standards or shared mechanisms of financing. Still some of our spatial skills would find new territories (and seductions) in an understanding of infrastructure as a recipe for political disposition. Organization Space was already looking at landscape networks as a kind of infrastructure. More importantly, it was looking at the spatial product of suburban housing as an infrastructure.
One always knew that suburbia was a logistical apparatus which was also host to psychic content and emotional cultural stories about home ownership and patriotism. But was that phenomenon just related to a spatial product like housing, known to pull at the heart strings?
In answer to your question, it may also be worth mentioning that Wildcards and the articles that led to Enduring Innocence were also eventually nourished by discussions of various forms of sovereignty and extra-jurisdictional space that were part of the discourse on globalism. Still the evidence related to spatial products gave me a foothold in the discourse and served as a heuristic device. Architects have more to learn than to teach about global studies, but these formats proved to be good indicators of market aggression and political disposition. Their bid to remain intact and exempt from political responsibilities is itself a special form of violence. So the behavior of these formats led me to speculate that we have something valuable to contribute to discussions of globalization.
Similarly when one thinks of branding - the irrational values attached to economic exchange that reflect and create desire - one tries to reconcile this evidence to evidence of pre-capitalist practices. Pierre Bourdieu's discussions of symbolic capital, for instance, come to mind: The family buys extra oxen at the end of the harvest season when it is not really needed to raise the apparent worth of a daughter that is soon to be married. If branding adds a new twist on this old practice, it is that the irrational desire is also completely capitalized in the conventional sense. It is assigned numerical currency values and lending points. It is capitalized symbolic capital. (Marx's discussion of the fetish flies out of the book and has its own self-possessed life.) Economic exchange (let's not call it "capital" if that relegates the discussion to an evidence-excluding Marxist historiography) is very agile and able to alternate between amnesias and "discoveries," national and non-national swaggers or believing and cheating. It is all part of a special stupidity with which to create a refreshed narcotic reality.
Can we not be ingenious (or sneaky) enough to be effective against duplicity and evasion. Righteous symmetry is not complex enough. It may even serve a camouflage for actions we oppose. More than any other profession I can think of, the work of architecture engages multiple realms from finance to logistics to the heights and depths of frivolity and fiction that ultimately rule the world. Some think that work in the communication stratosphere is the truly powerful position. But with architecture one also engages the heavy material of global economies, moving from communication and branding to shipping to the physical/financial shape of a golf course to the designing of functional expressions between layovers and shopping to the indexing of global labor and materials. Would it not make us powerful political animals to simply be aware of this nexus of movements and begin to index and make ethical choices within it? We are in a position to help divert some of the world's most abusive situations.
Game theory and political theory are not very different. They develop logics that are not designed to deal with deception and folly. Strange, since urban design and planning as they are accomplished every day, must dig their way out of a pile of circumstantial detail that is most sturdily arranged by bureaucracy. One wonders what opportunities or epidemics might appear if its administration was arranged in a more entrepreneurial fashion. Urbanism is a slot machine.
So it would have been nice if my teachers had been Cedric Price or someone like him. I would have been able to understand architecture a little better. As it was transposed, the theatrical training has made the idea of active organization and the mechanics and character of organization more clear to me. In a cocktail with theatrical training, Bateson offers insight about the architecture of active organization.
America's stupidity as our greatest national resource, something we can learn to use wisely. The stupidity is so pervasive and the political deadlock so obdurate that is it strangely ... inspiring.
Mat Urbanism
Ospedale SS Giovanni e Paolo, Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital Project, plan of third floor (second scheme) 1964
http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/case/book_venice_excerpt.htm
EXCERPT
From the Introduction, by Hashim Sarkis
Today mats are everywhere. We call them fields, grounds, carpets, matrices. Whether seen as counterpoint to the preoccupation with sculptural form or as what happens to architecture when it has to cover really large areas, no building type, it could be stated without exaggeration, captures the predicaments but also the imagination of contemporary architecture more fully. The mat answers the recurring calls for indeterminacy in size and shape, flexibility in use, and mixture in program. It expresses architecture's increasing encroachment on both city and landscape and as the open exchange between structure (building) and infrastructure (context) that this encroachment professes. In face of these challenges, and in every other design published in every other magazine, the mat claims to address a wide range of problems preoccupying contemporary architecture.
And yet mat building cannot be associated with a specific formal or stylistic tendency in contemporary architecture. In the words of the late English architect Alison Smithson, it is "still developing." Yet what she justified in the 1970s as a natural condition of the "first primitive state" of mats has become a defining feature. Mats are by definition still developing. Today we apply to this phenomenon attributes as diverse as Kazuyo Sejima's ethereality and Rafael Moneo's compactness. The mat is the image of the promised fluidity of the Foreign Office Architects' Yokohama Terminal. It also occupies the centerfold in Office of Metropolitan Architecture's books on the state of architecture today. To contain all these ideas in one building type would be to miss out on the broad range of real differences between these architects' positions vis-à-vis such fundamental issues as context, the relationship between form and program, and architectural language. The mat category, however, seems to be broad enough to allow for this wide range, even for contradiction. What further binds these contemporary architectures together is their conscious return to mat building as a historical possibility that was never fully explored.
The present fascination has no doubt been triggered by the changes in development culture, particularly by the ever-growing scale of institutions (such as hospitals and schools) and commercial facilities (such as airports and malls). Increasingly developers are also seeking architects to help give form to new programs that have yet to settle on a distinctive type: airport/park/shopping mall or housing/retail/institution. In response, perhaps evasively, architects are seeking ways in which a building could act as a flexible framework rather than a rigid container to these shapeless functions. Avoiding what Stan Allen here refers to as "overall geometric form," today's architects proceed to define buildings that could "give space to the active unfolding of urban life without abrogating the architect's responsibility to provide some form of order." They turn back toward the mat. Allen promptly cautions that contemporary architecture needs to enlarge the scope of mat to include urbanism and landscape. Renaming the phenomenon "mat urbanism," he outlines the mat agenda of today as opening to urbanism and its large scale and multispeed movement and to landscape and its surface and temporal qualities. Mat buildings today aim for a much more aggressive exchange between structure and infrastructure than what was intended in the 1960s. This exchange was assumed to be definitional of the mat, but it did not challenge the permanence and autonomy of infrastructure in the way that contemporary architects are trying to do.
Smithson (2001: 91) described the mat process and defined mat-building as follows: “Mat- building can be said to epitomize the anonymous collective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric and the individual gains new freedoms of action through a new shuffled order, based on interconnection, close knit patterns of association and possibilities for growth, diminution and change.”
The emerging mat-building approach was evoked also in Le Corbusier’s unbuilt Venice Hospital project in 1964. With Berlin Free University in Berlin (1963-74), Candilis-Josic-Woods and Manfred Schieldhelm attempted to show the environmental responsiveness of mat-building in a university context. The guiding ideas of these two buildings reappear in today’s structural and infrastructural organizations. The contemporary significance of mat-building is explained by Hashim Sarkis (2001: 13)
Mat-building’s shallow but dense section activated by ramps and double- height voids unlike the high-rise buildings, mat-building’s low-rise character takes the advantage of an equally accessible circulation network. Ramps in mat-building are integrated with design. The use of mat-building gives also the possibility of flexible design features so that the buildings and urban fabrics can be structured in an inclusive way which can provide different choices of access for its users. It can organize activities in one or two storeys’ height so that it minimizes vertical movements and provides flexible movement patterns, flexible circulation networks and choices of access. Moreover, a simple designed circulation between the ramps can eliminate the confusion within the structure and enable easy use of the spaces. Mat-building can offer the possibility of using the spaces with low physical effort and travelling comfortably with the help of the ramps.
A delicate interplay of repetition and variation:
Mat-buildings take also the advantage of repetitive systems, which can allow spatial structures to expand and change to respond to the changing needs of a variety of users. An environment designed with the variation and repetition characteristics of mat-building allows more users to participate in and experience that environment. For Susan Goltsman (2001: 19.2), “social diversity is very much linked to physical diversity”. If the repetitive design elements are usable and safe for everyone and can be designed also in variation, then it can be stated that with the inclusive design approach in mat-buildings, hazards and errors are minimized
Mat-building can define an organized field where diverse functions of urban life are unified and their internal relationships become more important than the overall structure.
[Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urbanism arguing that landscape, rather than architecture, is more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience. Landscape Urbanism has emerged as a theory in the last ten years and is far from being a coherent doctrine. Charles Waldheim, James Corner, and Mohsen Mostafavi are among the instructors, practitioners, and theorists who have been most responsible for articulating the terms of landscape urbanism. Interestingly, an early and influential landscape urbanism project, Paris's Parc de la Villette, has been influential for both its actual built environment, designed by architect Bernard Tschumi, as well as the runner-up's (unbuilt) design, by Rem Koolhaas. Still, most of the important projects related to this theory have yet to be built, so design competitions have been an influential stage for the development of the theory.]
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
When Bad Things Happen
A short [funny] guide to nine big things to worry about—and what you can do about them.
Read more: When Bad Things Happen - What to Do in Case of Disaster http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/14985/
Smallpox Attack
Chlorine Release
Blackout
Dirty Bomb
Earthquake:
What the city would do: Dig survivors out of crumbled tenements and town houses and race to extinguish blazes fueled by broken gas lines. A minimum 5 on the Richter scale would level homes all over the five boroughs, and more deaths would result later as destabilized buildings are toppled by aftershocks and pedestrians are pummeled by falling air conditioners and other debris. Though two major fault patterns run under Manhattan, experts say a big quake is unlikely.
Worst-case scenario: A high-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter within the five boroughs. Aboveground subway lines and bridges crack, and airports are disabled.
What you can do: Live in a steel-framed high-rise built after seismic codes were adopted in 1996. At the first tremor, grab a cell phone and take cover in a doorway or under a solid piece of furniture. Protect your head. If you can, turn off natural gas, water, and electricity, but beware of aftershocks. Cover your nose and mouth with clothing to avoid breathing toxic dust.
Indian Point Explosion
Avian-Flu Pandemic
Hurricane:
What the city would do: Issue evacuation orders 48 hours before the storm hits, urging people in vulnerable zones (see map) to flee those areas by public transportation or catch an MTA bus to Madison Square Garden or one of 22 other intake centers.
Worst-case scenario: A storm closes in on the city faster than expected. Evacuees are stuck in cars on closed roads; the subways and Hudson River tunnels flood. Though a death toll would likely be low, damage could be extensive.
What you can do: Keep three days’ worth of food, water, diapers, medication, and other supplies in a safe place. If you’re in a hurricane zone, buy flood insurance and snap photos of your house for future reference. Keep a prescription stash handy and pack a bag with copies of important documents, extra keys, rain gear and shoes, nonperishable foods, and at least $100.
As the storm approaches, nail plywood over windows and bring balcony furniture and garbage cans inside. If you’re evacuating, unplug appliances, turn off pilot lights and water, and put valuables you can’t take along in watertight containers. Fill your tank, grab a map, and get out of town—with your pets.
Read more: When Bad Things Happen - What to Do in Case of Disaster http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/
Smallpox Attack
Chlorine Release
Blackout
Dirty Bomb
Earthquake:
What the city would do: Dig survivors out of crumbled tenements and town houses and race to extinguish blazes fueled by broken gas lines. A minimum 5 on the Richter scale would level homes all over the five boroughs, and more deaths would result later as destabilized buildings are toppled by aftershocks and pedestrians are pummeled by falling air conditioners and other debris. Though two major fault patterns run under Manhattan, experts say a big quake is unlikely.
Worst-case scenario: A high-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter within the five boroughs. Aboveground subway lines and bridges crack, and airports are disabled.
What you can do: Live in a steel-framed high-rise built after seismic codes were adopted in 1996. At the first tremor, grab a cell phone and take cover in a doorway or under a solid piece of furniture. Protect your head. If you can, turn off natural gas, water, and electricity, but beware of aftershocks. Cover your nose and mouth with clothing to avoid breathing toxic dust.
Indian Point Explosion
Avian-Flu Pandemic
Hurricane:
What the city would do: Issue evacuation orders 48 hours before the storm hits, urging people in vulnerable zones (see map) to flee those areas by public transportation or catch an MTA bus to Madison Square Garden or one of 22 other intake centers.
Worst-case scenario: A storm closes in on the city faster than expected. Evacuees are stuck in cars on closed roads; the subways and Hudson River tunnels flood. Though a death toll would likely be low, damage could be extensive.
What you can do: Keep three days’ worth of food, water, diapers, medication, and other supplies in a safe place. If you’re in a hurricane zone, buy flood insurance and snap photos of your house for future reference. Keep a prescription stash handy and pack a bag with copies of important documents, extra keys, rain gear and shoes, nonperishable foods, and at least $100.
As the storm approaches, nail plywood over windows and bring balcony furniture and garbage cans inside. If you’re evacuating, unplug appliances, turn off pilot lights and water, and put valuables you can’t take along in watertight containers. Fill your tank, grab a map, and get out of town—with your pets.
Nuclear Bomb:
What the city would do: Pray for help from the Feds because city hospitals, police precincts, and firehouses could be destroyed. If the prospect of a fema-managed catastrophe isn’t scary enough, a nuclear bomb would kill millions, and the lucky ones would get vaporized instantly. Others would be burned, blinded, or poisoned by radiation sickness in subsequent weeks and months. Bodies would litter the streets, and the water supply would be contaminated. The city would be too radioactive for outside emergency workers to enter, so those left alive would have to improvise.
Worst-case scenario: A bomb in the center of midtown. It doesn’t get worse than this.
What you can do: You could try to get your hands on some potassium iodide tablets in case you survive. Or, you might consider investing $200,000 in a “safe room”—a sealed, gamma-radiation-proof space with positive pressure, oxygen, food, necessary medicine, and other supplies—preferably underground. If you’re in a tall building, there’s no harm in heading for the center of the middle floors, which will put more mass between you and the radiation outside. But really: Kiss your ass good-bye.
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