landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect - mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect

February 2, 2010 – 9:52 pm

the city beneath the city

Our intention for a while now has been to write a bit more about what we like to refer to as “landscapes in search of an architect”, or those places whose phenomenological, industrial, psychological, geological, and/or ecological (and that list could go on, and on) characteristics suggest to us the possibility of an exceptionally interesting [...]

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape, urbanism | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)
November 24, 2009 – 4:18 pm

the new dutch water defense line

There’s nothing particularly original about the observation that the Dutch have a peculiar national relationship to their landscape (and, in particular, its hydrology), but that peculiarity produces endlessly fascinating oddities and, apparently, endless mammoth posts on Dutch hydrology.  As lewism noted on one such post, Bulwarks and Flux:
…the whole of Dutch landscape and history can [...]

By rholmes | Also posted in landscape | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)
July 14, 2009 – 3:04 pm

songdo’s tendril

You find this mass anchored in the Yellow Sea (google map) off the Korean coast, attached by a thin line of gravel and asphalt (drawn in the straight line which is the international tell of the engineer) to New Songdo City, the massive planned addition to the port of Incheon.  A perfect rectangle in a [...]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, urbanism | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)
May 28, 2009 – 9:41 pm

bonus freeway interchange info

More on freeway interchanges from James Fallows.
[I accidentally deleted this post last night, losing robs comment and potentially any links to it folks might have saved - sorry.  I don't suppose anyone knows how to recover posts foolishly deleted on the wordpress platform?]

By Stephen | Also posted in asides, infrastructure, urbanism | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
May 27, 2009 – 9:30 am

field guides to highway interchanges

From the beginning of last week, A Field Guide to Freeway Interchanges (part one // part two) on Infrastructurist.
Below, one of my favorite interchanges, the interbreeding of I-95, I-295, and I-395 over the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in Baltimore.

By rholmes | Also posted in asides, landscape, urbanism | Tagged , , | Comments (1)
April 24, 2009 – 12:21 pm

the most sublime room in the world

The French keep all of the nuclear waste from the last thirty years of energy production in one room, the storage vault at La Hague.
la hague in penisular context

portion of la hague facility [google maps]

If, as the landscape theorist Beth Meyers has suggested, sublime sentiments can be stirred by the juxtaposition of knowledge of invisible [...]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, landscape | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)