geography – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: geography

October 27, 2010 – 8:48 pm

pathological superpositions

I’ve mentioned before my fondness for the blog Pathological Geomorphology, but this month’s theme is particularly fantastic: the interface of human landscapes and geomorphology.  In Green River, Utah (above), for instance, an extinct oxbow determines contemporary land-use patterns; other examples so far include farmed alluvial fans in Asian deserts, Pennsylvania farmland interspersed between anticlines, and […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides, landscape | Tagged , | Comments (2) | Permalink
October 27, 2010 – 5:00 am

the new north

[Murmansk in polar night, photographed by flickr user euno.] The Wall Street Journal recently ran a fascinating excerpt from geoscientist Laurence Smith’s new book, The World in 2050, which looks at how four global “megatrends” — “human population growth and migration; growing demand for control over such natural resource ‘services’ as photosynthesis and bee pollination; […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides, futures, urbanism | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on the new north | Permalink
October 3, 2010 – 2:43 pm

“it just makes things different”

[Flushing Airport, one of New York City’s “places humans let be”, via Google Maps] Robert Sullivan’s recent article on the renaissance of urban ecology in New York City, The Concrete Jungle, is so outstanding that I’ve been sitting on it for two weeks, paralyzed by the plethora of great quotes I could pull from it. […]

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
August 17, 2010 – 10:11 pm

“global hubs and mega-cities”

[Housing in Hong Kong, from photographer Michael Wolf’s series “Architecture of Density”] In the latest Foreign Policy, Parag Khanna argues that the city is increasingly becoming a more important geopolitical entity than the nation-state: The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age […]

By rholmes | Also posted in futures, urbanism | Tagged , | Comments (3) | 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 […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on saharan miami | Permalink
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 | Also posted in landscape | Tagged , , | Comments (6) | Permalink
December 17, 2009 – 1:09 pm

whitesward

I’m entranced by the simplicity (and, in retrospect, obviousness) of the suggestions in the short text accompanying Sergio Lopez-Piñeiro’s series of photographs at Places, entitled “White Space”. Lopez-Piñeiro says: …even everyday plowing practices — practices with no artistic or design ambitions — have the capacity to transform snowed-in parking lots into beautiful winter gardens… We […]

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape-architecture, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments (8) | Permalink
June 12, 2009 – 7:26 pm

edward burtynsky

Eat your heart out Richard Serra.  http://www.edwardburtynsky.com > ships > shipbreaking. After reading this post I was referred to here by a friend: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/ It turns out to be doubly relevant to recent posts: not only containing beautiful images of manufactured landscapes, but also absolutely stunning images of shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh. via Nico Sy, who doesn’t […]

By Stephen | Also posted in architecture, asides, landscape | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3) | Permalink
May 21, 2009 – 9:26 am

the ambiguity of seamelt and landrise

One of the trends which most observers of global warming warn us could have particularly dire consequences is the rise of sea levels. And not without reason. The recent evacuation of the Cateret islands, chronicled by Dan Box as the tale of the world’s first climate refugees (though perhaps most recent would be more appropriate, […]

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 28, 2009 – 12:50 pm

a quick visual tour of the urban prairies of america’s heartland

Beginning with Detroit; Saint Louis and Buffalo after the jump.

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape, urbanism | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on a quick visual tour of the urban prairies of america’s heartland | Permalink
April 16, 2009 – 7:39 am

twenty-five years of las vegas

Las Vegas, first in 1984 and then in 2009: [via NASA’s Earth Observatory]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides, landscape, urbanism | Tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink