psyttaleia island – mammoth // building nothing out of something

psyttaleia island

[Psyttaleia Island, Alcatraz of wastewater treatment plants. Via the awesomely-named tumblr The Value of Garbage. Aerial photos from this slideshow of Psyttaleia construction images. For more, see this description of the island (in Greek).]

6 Responses to “psyttaleia island”

  1. […] psyttaleia island – mammoth // building nothing out of something. […]

    • rholmes says:

      Yes — definitely. Thilafushi is particularly interesting when you pair it with Nauru (which Peter Nunns reminded me of recently; it also appears in the Buttology series on Pruned I mentioned), as both are tropical island paradises ruined by waste ecologies, but in opposite ways: Thilafushi has suffered from the importation of waste — and consequently is growing — while Nauru has suffered from the extraction of waste (bird shit) — and consequently is shrinking, physically and economically.

  2. Stephen says:

    Are there many other islands which are devoted to a single infrastructural purpose? It’s interesting to think that infrastructural islands might be disproportionally focused on waste ecologies, their physical isolation making them perfectly suited for tasks societies are particularly NIMBY-ish about.

  3. namhenderson says:

    To your point Stephen I assume you all know already have come across Pulua Semakau, another infrastructural island a few kilometers offshore from Singapore. Originally a single-use infrastructure, their landfill, but now also an “eco-park”. Interesting because of the way it suggests a possible blending of hard and soft ecologies.

    Via NYT
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16landfill.html?