mammoth book club – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: mammoth book club

May 31, 2010 – 1:51 pm

a tertiary river

[Aerial photograph of sludge mats swirling in the Los Angeles River by flickr user Vision Aerie] As we’re about to jump scales in our reading of The Infrastructural City — from the post-natural ecologies and mining operations of the first section of the book, “Landscape”, to the networks of cell towers and cable lines featured […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
May 27, 2010 – 5:00 am

reading the infrastructural city: chapter four index (updated may 31)

[Jake Longstreth’s “Skybox”; while the pit mines and flood-control apparatus found in Irwindale are one particularly spectacular kind of marginal landscape, there are many other kinds, exhibiting varying degrees of marginality, including speedways — such as the Irwindale Speedway — and the ubiquitous suburban strip.] DPR-Barcelona returns to a familiar theme for that blog, the […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, readings | Tagged , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
May 25, 2010 – 7:00 pm

alternate los angeles no. 1

[Narrow Streets L.A. is a blog which posts photographs of greater Los Angeles streets, digitally manipulated in exactly the way you would expect from the title: made narrower.  While occasionally it may go a bit overboard and lurch towards self-parody, generally it is a fantastic experiment — postcards from an alternate Los Angeles — showing […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on alternate los angeles no. 1 | Permalink
May 24, 2010 – 5:00 am

“for every pile there is a pit”

We’re back from our week off with another installment of Reading the Infrastructural City; if you haven’t been following along, you can catch up on the series here and see the introductory post here. [Aggregate operation in the Reliance pit mine, Irwindale, California; photograph by Steve Rowell, via CLUI] The fourth chapter of The Infrastructural […]

By mammoth | Also posted in landscape, the-city-we-have, urbanism | Tagged , , , | Comments (7) | Permalink
May 14, 2010 – 1:00 pm

reading the infrastructural city: chapter three index (updated 17 may)

[Crude City today: a woman crosses oil pipelines in the Niger delta; photograph by Ed Kashi for National Geographic.] Nam Henderson ponders the relationship between urban density and oil production in Los Angeles, and wonders if future landscapes might develop from the evolution of Leo Marx’s classic formulation, the machine in the garden, to the […]

By rholmes | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
May 11, 2010 – 11:52 am

oildorado

You’ve arrived at week three of our reading of The Infrastructural City; if you’re not familiar with the series, you can start here and catch up here. It’s cliche to reference dinosaurs when describing the oil well pumps which are ubiquitous throughout the LA basin, but as a 5 year old obsessed with those prehistoric […]

By Stephen | Tagged , , , | Comments (19) | Permalink
May 6, 2010 – 10:56 pm

lo-fi seed dispersal

[Prepared Greenaid seedbombs, awaiting dispersal; photograph by Fletcher Studio via Sustainable Cities Collective] Design Under Sky wrote about this a month or so ago, but given that we’re talking about the Los Angeles River, lo-fi landscape interventions, and that Brett Milligan brought it up again, it’s probably worth taking a moment to mention the Greenaid […]

By rholmes | Also posted in futures, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
May 5, 2010 – 8:38 am

reading the infrastructural city: chapter two index (updated 6 may)

[A still from Gumball Rally, via motortrend.com. As high-speed races on the clogged freeways of Los Angeles have become increasingly implausible, the wide-open expanse of paved riverbed has proven irresistible to filmmakers.] SUPRbrains’ “The Lowline” hypothesizes futures for the river as a series of Tschumi-esque event-spaces. F.A.D.’s “Visual Histories of the Los Angeles River: Past and Envisioned […]

By Stephen | Also posted in readings | Tagged , , | Comments (9) | Permalink
May 3, 2010 – 5:00 am

“the parrot, the weed, and the sludge mat”

You’ve arrived at week two of our reading of The Infrastructural City; if you’re not familiar with the series, you can start here and catch up here — taking particular note of the index of contributing posts for the first chapter, which tracks the sprawl of the discussion across other blogs. [The lower reaches of […]

By rholmes | Also posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (22) | Permalink
April 28, 2010 – 9:00 am

solar owens lake

In the comments at DPR-Barcelona, David Maisel points us to a pair of news articles on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s latest plan for the Owens Lake playa: The Department of Water and Power’s board of commissioners [in December] unanimously approved a renewable energy pilot project that would cover 616 acres of […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides | Tagged , | Comments (19) | Permalink
April 27, 2010 – 8:29 am

reading the infrastructural city: chapter one index (updated 5 may)

Images by Robin Black Photography for the Owens Lake Project, an ongoing photo documentary chronicling the rejuvenation of Owens Lake. See the website for many more.  Black comments at DPR – Barcelona: “No more is it a toxic wasteland, though it’s certainly odd, and occasionally ugly, and still troublesome along the portions deemed too disturbed to recover. Life is returning […]

By mammoth | Also posted in readings | Tagged | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 26, 2010 – 5:05 am

wyoming is in los angeles

From now until the beginning of August, mammoth is hosting a chapter-by-chapter reading and discussion of The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles.  This post is the first in that series, and discusses Owens Lake; for the full schedule of readings and an introduction to the series (and the book), click here.  In addition […]

By mammoth | Also posted in infrastructure, landscape | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (14) | Permalink
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 […]

By rholmes | Also posted in asides | Tagged | Comments Off on reading the infrastructural city: reminder | Permalink