March – 2012 – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Monthly Archives: March 2012

March 27, 2012 – 8:43 pm

unknown unknowns

0. Everyone’s favorite Donald Rumsfeld quotation: “[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.” (As evidence […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, landscape, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
March 20, 2012 – 8:00 pm

expiration dates

[Chart showing the typical lifespans of a wide variety of infrastructures (and components of infrastructures), from treated wood ties to deep geological repositories for high-level radioactive waste. The descriptive text reads: “This chart visualizes the lifespans of equipment associated with waste, water, energy, and transportation systems across North America. As we approach — and pass […]

By rholmes | Posted in events, infrastructure | Tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink
March 20, 2012 – 6:00 am

stable borders

My wife pointed me to a short but very interesting piece on NPR last night, about the re-surveying of the line between North Carolina and South Carolina: JULIE ROSE: Way before there was GPS, years even before the Revolutionary War, surveyors on horseback drew the line between the colonies of North and South Carolina. Every […]

By rholmes | Posted in landscape | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
March 18, 2012 – 2:02 pm

nambe falls dam

[The strangely geometric edge of Nambe Falls Dam in New Mexico; Nambe Falls Dam is a component of the San Juan-Chama Project, which delivers water from the San Juan River Basin through 26 miles of tunnels under the Continental Divide into the basins of the Rio Grande and Rio Chama, providing drinking water for Albuquerque; […]

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March 15, 2012 – 8:00 pm

“the last remaining organic components of a city-wide cybernetic system”

Writing at Fast Company, Tim Maly ties recent interest in autonomous cars and related intersection-managing algorithms back to the guest post he wrote for mammoth during our reading of The Infrastructural City: What’s interesting about the skepticism towards automated driving is that it reveals how invisible the current systems of automation already are. Traffic control […]

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March 14, 2012 – 9:00 pm

center pivot pixelation

[A particularly stark example of the pixelated patterns produced by pivot irrigation, in northern Saudi Arabia. The patterns produced by irrigation in Saudi Arabia are so stark because what water is available in the Arabian penisula is buried as fossil waters at such great depths that wells may reach as much as three thousand feet […]

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March 10, 2012 – 9:57 pm

density

[NASA compares Manhattan to a neutron star. The infographic is a dimensional comparison — if scaled for density instead, Manhattan wouldn’t be visible. From wikipedia: “[the] density [of a neutron star] is approximately equivalent to the mass of the entire human population compressed to the size of a sugar cube”; link via Alex Ogle.]

By Stephen | Posted in geography, other | Tagged , | Comments Off on density | Permalink
March 6, 2012 – 6:00 am

“landscape infrastructure” at harvard gsd

[“Reclamation and slope stabilization on a volcanic ash hillside” in Japan; photograph by flickr user GeoJuice.] If I weren’t going to be in California March 23rd and 24th, I’m pretty sure I’d be in Boston at the GSD’s “Landscape Infrastructure” symposium, which promises a fascinating range of discussion on “the future of infrastructure and urbanization […]

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March 5, 2012 – 7:00 pm

drylands design conference

[The Colorado River Basin as a hydrological mega-object; image by the Commonwealth Approach project team: Alex Gonski, Rob Holmes, Rebecca May, and Laurel McSherry.] I mentioned a little while ago that Laurel McSherry and I would be presenting our work on “The Commonwealth Approach” at the Arid Lands Institute’s Drylands Design Conference near the end […]

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