flood-control - mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: flood-control

February 18, 2010 – 8:03 pm

readings: cars, ships, and nuclear reactors

[all photographs from Andrea Frank's series "Ports and Ships"]
1. Dave Roberts reviews two books on the future of automotive transportation — Traffic and Reinventing the Automobile — in the American Prospect, primarily discussing “USVs”, the descendant of MIT’s CityCar.  Roberts’ review explains why mammoth is so excited about CityCar as an architectural tool:
Where the vision [...]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, readings | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
December 9, 2009 – 12:23 pm

climate defense systems

An article from Sunday’s Washington Post discusses the development of “climate defense systems”, resulting from an increasing interest in not just climate change prevention, but also climate change adaptation.  The article is particularly focused on the Netherlands, where “the Dutch are spending billions of euros on ‘floating communities’ that can rise with surging flood waters, [...]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscape | Also tagged , , , | Comments (1)
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 | Posted in landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (1)
July 22, 2009 – 12:06 pm

readings: on water

1. Good Magazine’s Water Issue discusses clean water technologies for the developing world, the current and historical contamination of American tap water, fully recycled tap water, how the control of water is becoming central to the conflict between India and Pakistan and interviews Robert Glennon, author of the new book Unquenchable, which explores America’s water [...]

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July 20, 2009 – 8:56 pm

its prettiness and romance will then be gone

As long as I’m on the subject of urban parks that serve as components of flood management systems, I ought to mention the recent Buffalo Bayou Promenade in Houston, which is not only an admirable and forward-thinking project from a city not known for its innovative ecological design (though they have built a rather seductive [...]

By rholmes | Posted in engineering, infrastructure, landscape, landscape-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged , , , | Comments (2)
June 24, 2009 – 9:50 am

elementary school hydrological investigations

While researching the history of the Buffalo Bayou for a forthcoming post, I came across this fascinating series of lesson plans prepared by a Houston elementary school teacher, which would introduce students to the history of flooding, emphasize the dual value and danger of waterways to cities, teach the children to access and utilize real-time [...]

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June 13, 2009 – 2:13 pm

bulwarks and flux

Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, returning from a tour of the Netherlands’ coastal armaments, says America needs to “rethink its entire approach to low-lying coastal areas and adopt an integrated model of water management like that of the Netherlands.” Here at mammoth, we (of course) think that this is a fantastic idea, and not only [...]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (8)