rholmes – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Author Archives: rholmes

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 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 […]

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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.  […]

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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 […]

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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 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 […]

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