2010 – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Yearly Archives: 2010

April 27, 2010 – 10:19 pm

“like a conveyor belt built to toss tea-drinking scientists into the icy sea”

[Halley VI, a British research station on ski pods, via Wired.] At Wired, Andrew Blum surveys the architecture of Antarctic research stations, which, as it includes buildings which have to be towed to remain at fixed geographic points, hydraulic lifts that raise buildings in reaction to snowfall, and architecturally-induced “subzero maelstroms”, reads like a photographic […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, asides | Tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 27, 2010 – 8:29 am

reading the infrastructural city: chapter one index (updated 5 may)

Images by Robin Black Photography for the Owens Lake Project, an ongoing photo documentary chronicling the rejuvenation of Owens Lake. See the website for many more.  Black comments at DPR – Barcelona: “No more is it a toxic wasteland, though it’s certainly odd, and occasionally ugly, and still troublesome along the portions deemed too disturbed to recover. Life is returning […]

By mammoth | Posted in mammoth book club, readings | Tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 26, 2010 – 5:05 am

wyoming is in los angeles

From now until the beginning of August, mammoth is hosting a chapter-by-chapter reading and discussion of The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles.  This post is the first in that series, and discusses Owens Lake; for the full schedule of readings and an introduction to the series (and the book), click here.  In addition […]

By mammoth | Posted in infrastructure, landscape, mammoth book club | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (14) | Permalink
April 23, 2010 – 12:00 pm

marsh experiments

[A model built by Alan Berger, Harvard graduate student Gena Wirth, MIT professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Heidi Nepf, and CEE graduate student Jeff Rominger, to test for the optimum design of pollutant-removing vegetated channels, as part of Berger and P-REX’s Pontine Systemic Design; image via MITnews.] I love this: [T]he Pontine Marshes project […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture, the-expanded-field | Tagged , , , | Comments (13) | Permalink
April 22, 2010 – 8:00 pm

transit disparity

The infrastructurally-obsessed will appreciate the Transport Politic‘s summary of the Chinese boom in local rapid transit, prompted by the observation that Shanghai now has the longest metro network in the world, despite having begun the first tracks merely fifteen years ago.  The local transit boom parallels the Chinese investment in high-speed rail which mammoth previously […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments Off on transit disparity | Permalink
April 22, 2010 – 7:00 pm

faslanyc interviews kate orff

For various reasons (vacations, other projects, et cetera), I have failed to direct readers of this blog to the interview with Kate Orff (of SCAPE) that FASLANYC posted about a month ago.  The interview touches on, among other things, SCAPE’s “Oyster-tecture” project for the Rising Currents exhibition, strategies for expanding the engagement of (landscape) architects […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape-architecture, the-expanded-field | Tagged , | Comments Off on faslanyc interviews kate orff | Permalink
April 21, 2010 – 10:40 pm

recreational volcanism

[The Moscow Pool, built on the site of Stalin’s abandoned Palace of the Soviets, via Polis.] As volcanism is, for obvious reasons, in the news at the moment, perhaps this is the right time to think back to an article posted a few months ago at English Russia which suggests that Moscow is a city built […]

By rholmes | Posted in futures, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , | Comments (8) | Permalink
April 19, 2010 – 10:26 pm

reading the infrastructural city: reminder

[Owens Lake, via google maps] A quick note: our discussion of The Infrastructural City will kick off next Monday, here and elsewhere, with posts and comments related to the first chapter, “Reconstructing the Void”, which looks at the relationship between Los Angeles and Owens Lake.  If you commented on the first post, you should have […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, mammoth book club | Tagged | Comments Off on reading the infrastructural city: reminder | Permalink
April 16, 2010 – 5:00 am

the delhi nullahs project

[A “nullah” in Delhi, via the Delhi Nullahs Project] I ran across the Delhi Nullahs Project — launched by Indian architecture firm Morphogenesis, and, in particular, Manit Rastogi, one of the firm’s principals — a few days ago, via @namhenderson.  The “nullahs” were originally constructed as drainage channels by the Tughlak dynasty in the 14th […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6) | Permalink
April 15, 2010 – 11:38 pm

waste-to-energy plants

An article in the New York Times discusses Europe’s waste-to-energy plants (which are key components of a successful closed-loop manufacturing process) and why no such plants are under construction in the United States: The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here [in Horsholm, Denmark] are at peace with the hulking neighbor just […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure | Tagged , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
April 13, 2010 – 12:00 pm

pathological geomorphology

[Russian thermokarst near Nova Zembla] I’ve been tremendously entertained lately by Pathological Geomorphology, a blog run by “a loosely defined and unified group of geobloggers” which catalogs “images of extreme landscapes, landforms, and processes”.   April is “delta month” (or, as one of their bloggers put it, “April deltas bring May fold and thrust belts”), so […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Tagged , , | Comments (3) | Permalink
April 11, 2010 – 8:00 am

I was the only one there

By Stephen | Posted in urbanism | Tagged | Comments (4) | Permalink
April 1, 2010 – 12:00 pm

a preliminary atlas of gizmo landscapes

[A water tank stands in Brooklyn, festooned with cellular antennas, photographed by flickr user Dreamer7112.] From the Franklin Stove, and the Stetson Hat, through the Evinrude outboard to the walkie-talkie, the spray can, and the cordless shaver, the most typical American way of improving the human situation has been by means of crafty and usually […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape | Tagged , , , | Comments (31) | Permalink
March 29, 2010 – 12:00 pm

a “cyborg planet”

At the excellent Human Landscapes, Erle Ellis (you may know him from his Wired Science article from last May, “Stop Trying to Save the Planet”, which you should stop and read right now if you have not) suggests that we need to start thinking about (and, presumably, constructing) a “cyborg planet”, where machines can feed […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape | Tagged , | Comments (4) | Permalink
March 29, 2010 – 5:00 am

reading the infrastructural city: proposal

[A portion of the Alameda Trench, a cut in the surface of Los Angeles which runs “ten miles long, fifty feet wide, and thirty-three feet deep”, carrying over $200 billion in cargo each year, as photographed by Lane Barden for The Infrastructural City; image via a Places Journal slideshow] — UPDATE: this book club is […]

By mammoth | Posted in readings | Tagged , | Comments (54) | Permalink
March 22, 2010 – 8:00 pm

clui spring newsletter

[Part of the James River ghost fleet, one of the three remaining floating stockpiles in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, via wikipedia] CLUI’s spring Lay of the Land surveys the American landscape of ship breaking (which is largely fed by the Congressionally-mandated dismantling of the ghost fleets), develops a linkage between Kodak Park (“said to […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
March 19, 2010 – 12:30 pm

geodesign

In an article at Architect, Loud Paper‘s Mimi Zeiger explores the growing entanglement of GIS and BIM applications, and the potential impact of this relationship for architecture: Loosely defined as the integration of geographic analysis and tools into the design process, the term “geodesign”… as Dangermond [the president of ESRI, makers of ArcGIS] sees it, […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (3) | Permalink
March 16, 2010 – 8:00 pm

geologic helium machine

[A portion of the Cliffside field snakes tentacles across flat pasture concealing ancient anticlines.] Just outside Amarillo, Texas, the Cliffside field stores much of the nation’s helium reserves in a naturally-occurring geologic dome. It is part of a complex of partially-privatized fields, mines, domes, and pipelines which extends nearly two hundred miles north-south, from the […]

By rholmes | Posted in futures, infrastructure, landscape, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , | Comments Off on geologic helium machine | Permalink
March 16, 2010 – 6:00 am

places on architectural criticism

While mammoth by no means aspires to fit within the category of architectural criticism (though we do occasionally have something to say about it), Nancy Levinson’s recent meta-criticism of the genre in Places strikes me as essentially correct: By now the rules are so familiar they seem almost inevitable. We’ve come more or less to […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, asides, meta | Tagged , | Comments (7) | Permalink
March 15, 2010 – 6:00 am

the shelter category

Magazine on Urbanism‘s twelfth issue, Real Urbanism, was released last Thursday; mammoth is quite pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to this consistently provocative publication.  For this issue, MONU called for entries which “explore how people in the real estates business perceive and conceive cities”: “What do cities look like in the eyes […]

By mammoth | Posted in architecture, finance, urbanism | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (12) | Permalink