glacier-island-storm – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: glacier-island-storm

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 […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, landscape, landscape-architecture, speculative-architecture | Also tagged , , | Comments Off on “blooming landscape, deep surface” | 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 […]

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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 | Posted in geography, landscape | Also tagged , | Comments (6) | Permalink
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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February 25, 2010 – 10:00 am

chinampas

[Chinampas, artificial agricultural islands in Xochimilco, Mexico, photographed by flickr user Colibri.  The chinampas have been constructed in the lakes around Mexico City since pre-Columbian times; posts are driven into the lake bottom in shallows, connected into walls by weaving branches horizontally between the posts, and the resultant enclosures are filled with fertile soil from […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, landscape-architecture | Also tagged , | Comments (4) | Permalink
February 24, 2010 – 1:56 pm

thilafushi

[A ferry arrives at Thilafushi, the world’s largest island composed primarily of garbage, in a photograph from an excellent photo-essay on Thilafushi by flickr user AB Watson Year.  Thilafushi, which is located in and was constructed by the Maldives on the site of a former lagoon, spreads across 124 acres in the Indian Ocean, ever […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Also tagged | Comments (1) | Permalink
February 23, 2010 – 1:12 pm

the north american storm control authority

[Comparative historic and contemporary heat maps of the wind energy potential of the continental United States, via NASCA.gov; NASCA documents indicate sources for their imagery include AWS Truewind/NREL via Wired Science and NOAA/NASA] The North American Storm Control Authority (NASCA), like its predecessor, the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), which rebuilt the Rocky […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, speculative-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged , | Comments (12) | Permalink
February 22, 2010 – 2:29 pm

a glacier is a very long event

The following post, which is more a catalog of related items than a singular argument, has been written to engage the “Glacier/Island/Storm” studio BLDGBLOG is currently teaching at Columbia GSAPP, as a part of a timed release of material into the blogosphere coordinated across a bank of architecture, design, and technology blogs; you can find […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, landscape, landscape-architecture, speculative-architecture | Also tagged , , , | Comments (19) | Permalink