mammoth // building nothing out of something

Yearly Archives: 2010

March 13, 2010 – 9:39 pm

infrastructure construction as jobs stimulus

Free Exchange posted this chart emphasizing the challenge long-term unemployment poses in this recession. It seems to indicate that construction-based stimulus could be especially effective in reducing such unemployment, furthering the case for a stimulus program emphasizing the construction and repair of infrastructure. But there’s just not that much room to cut unemployment by putting […]

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March 11, 2010 – 11:17 pm

future forests of the eastern seaboard

[Mapping the transference of botanical threats from Japan to the Midwest, from a video presentation on Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) in the Great Lakes region] From a recent article in the Guardian: Biological warfare is to be declared on an alien invader, Japanese knotweed, that swamps gardens and rivers, with the release of an insect […]

By rholmes | Posted in futures, landscape | Tagged , , | Comments (8) | Permalink
March 8, 2010 – 6:00 pm

landscapes of quarantine

[A portion of Cape Coral, Florida, which has been under citrus quarantine for much of the past decade, as the USDA attempts to prevent the spread of an invasive strain of Asian citrus canker to the remainder of the United States; though the quarantine zone initially included only relatively small areas such as the Cape […]

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March 7, 2010 – 3:54 pm

productivity signaling and size borrowing

Ryan Avent, who maintains the indispensable blog The Bellows, is one of my favorite writers on economics and urbanism. He recently drew attention to two interesting papers which are related to his response to an article in the the American Prospect by Alec MacGillis which was critical of Richard Florida (which mammoth previously highlighted). Avent contends […]

By Stephen | Posted in economics, urbanism | Tagged , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
March 2, 2010 – 11:18 pm

from bogota to nyc

Fast Company author Cliff Kuang writes about New York City’s adoption of rapid-bus transit solutions developed in Brazil and Columbia: Urban planners, rejoice! Today, the New York City Department of Transit announced a radical new plan for improving the city’s bus lines: A fully dedicated express-lane for buses, running crosstown on 34th Street. It’s expected […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides, urbanism | Tagged , , , | Comments (8) | Permalink
March 2, 2010 – 11:00 am

absent rivers, ephemeral parks

[American Falls de-watered, via Flickr user rbglasson] For six months in the summer and fall of 1969, Niagara’s American Falls were “de-watered”, as the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geological survey of the falls’ rock face, concerned that it was becoming destabilized by erosion.  During the interim study period, the dried riverbed and shale […]

By rholmes | Posted in landscape-architecture, speculative-architecture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (21) | Permalink
February 27, 2010 – 8:00 am

katabatia

[Perhaps the perfect image for mammoth to end our participation in Glacier/Island/Storm week (it’s been great fun, and lots of great research, commentary, and speculation has been posted) with: an Antarctic glacier sinking past Inexpressible Island (really) into Terra Nova Bay, while providing graphic evidence of the powerful winds which operate on the Antarctic coast.  […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on katabatia | Permalink
February 26, 2010 – 6:34 pm

“blooming landscape, deep surface”

[Model of “Blooming Landscape, Deep Surface”; all images from and by Smout Allen] I can’t let Stephen’s mention of Smout Allen pass — particularly in the context of a discussion of process and event in architecture — without also saying a word about their proposal for the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is one of my […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, landscape, landscape-architecture, speculative-architecture | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on “blooming landscape, deep surface” | Permalink
February 26, 2010 – 1:20 pm

saharan miami

[The future soil of Miami, captured by satellites while drifting off the coast of Africa.] At InfraNet Lab, Mason White posts about “Particulate Swarms”, or three storm typologies: dust, water, and gas.  The first image in the post, of a dust storm over Sydney, reminds me (because in my haste, I mistakenly read the form […]

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February 26, 2010 – 11:01 am

translation, machines, and embassies

The following is another contribution to the constellation of blog posts supporting the Glacier/Island/Storm Studio at Columbia University; read mammoth‘s previous Glacier/Island/Storm posts. LANDSCAPE MACHINES In Magic, Machines, and Architecture, published in Pidgin 6, we find a gloriously simple description of the function and nature of machines by a participant in a course at Princeton […]

By Stephen | Posted in geography, landscape | Tagged , , | Comments (6) | Permalink
February 25, 2010 – 10:29 pm

islands draw the clouds, and glaciers are wind-catchers

[Above, the volcanic peaks of the South Sandwich Islands distort wave patterns over the Pacific Ocean, through processes described, and, of course photographed, by NASA Earth Observatory: …the islands disturb the smooth flow of air, creating waves that ripple through the atmosphere downwind of the obstacles. The cloudy-clear pattern that is produced highlights the location […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape | Tagged , , | Comments Off on islands draw the clouds, and glaciers are wind-catchers | Permalink
February 25, 2010 – 10:00 am

chinampas

[Chinampas, artificial agricultural islands in Xochimilco, Mexico, photographed by flickr user Colibri.  The chinampas have been constructed in the lakes around Mexico City since pre-Columbian times; posts are driven into the lake bottom in shallows, connected into walls by weaving branches horizontally between the posts, and the resultant enclosures are filled with fertile soil from […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
February 24, 2010 – 1:56 pm

thilafushi

[A ferry arrives at Thilafushi, the world’s largest island composed primarily of garbage, in a photograph from an excellent photo-essay on Thilafushi by flickr user AB Watson Year.  Thilafushi, which is located in and was constructed by the Maldives on the site of a former lagoon, spreads across 124 acres in the Indian Ocean, ever […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink
February 23, 2010 – 1:12 pm

the north american storm control authority

[Comparative historic and contemporary heat maps of the wind energy potential of the continental United States, via NASCA.gov; NASCA documents indicate sources for their imagery include AWS Truewind/NREL via Wired Science and NOAA/NASA] The North American Storm Control Authority (NASCA), like its predecessor, the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), which rebuilt the Rocky […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, speculative-architecture, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments (12) | Permalink
February 22, 2010 – 2:29 pm

a glacier is a very long event

The following post, which is more a catalog of related items than a singular argument, has been written to engage the “Glacier/Island/Storm” studio BLDGBLOG is currently teaching at Columbia GSAPP, as a part of a timed release of material into the blogosphere coordinated across a bank of architecture, design, and technology blogs; you can find […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, landscape, landscape-architecture, speculative-architecture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (19) | Permalink
February 18, 2010 – 8:03 pm

readings: cars, ships, and nuclear reactors

[all photographs from Andrea Frank’s series “Ports and Ships”] 1. Dave Roberts reviews two books on the future of automotive transportation — Traffic and Reinventing the Automobile — in the American Prospect, primarily discussing “USVs”, the descendant of MIT’s CityCar.  Roberts’ review explains why mammoth is so excited about CityCar as an architectural tool: Where […]

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February 17, 2010 – 11:17 pm

paul kersey, yimbyist

Dan Hill has (another) excellent post at City of Sound examining what he’s referring to as “emergent urbanism”, or the “knitting together [of] the everyday loose ends in urban fabric” by community organizations and individuals acting “outside of traditional planning processes”.  I’m particularly pleased by (a) the presentation of the example of Renew Newcastle, which, […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, urbanism | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on paul kersey, yimbyist | Permalink
February 15, 2010 – 7:30 pm

double happiness

Bureau de Mesarchitecture’s “Double Happiness”, an installation for the 2009 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial, is described by the architects as a piece of “nomad” “urban furniture”, allowing users (who presumably own a forklift) to “reanimate” and “reappropriate” the public spaces of their cities, which, despite the obvious deficiences seems to me an appropriately ambitious aim […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, asides, urbanism | Comments (3) | Permalink
February 15, 2010 – 11:02 am

the dead sea works

I was reminded of the Conveyor Belt for the Dead Sea Works (pictured above) by FASLANYC‘s post last week, which rightly notes that Israeli landscape architect Shlomo Aronson completed a small series of projects in the mid-eighties which prefigured the contemporary interest in landscape infrastructures. While the conveyor belt is an obviously sculptural (and beautiful) […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture, the-expanded-field | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (10) | Permalink
February 12, 2010 – 5:22 pm

but do they know how you take your coffee?

Charles Petersen, in the New York Review of Books, on the rise of facebook. If anything, Zuckerberg looks, in some distant but discernible way, like the Robert Moses of the Internet, bringing severe order to a chaotic milieu. While several efforts have been made to create more open versions of social networks, none has found […]

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