history – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: history

July 23, 2011 – 6:00 am

willow fascine mattress

[Before the use of articulated concrete mats was standardized, the Army Corps often relied on a variety of other methods of revetment construction.  The weaving and placement of willow fascine mattresses, as seen above, was one such earlier practice; the installation process is remarkably similar to and prefigures the process for concrete mats.  Images via […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, floods | Also tagged | Comments Off on willow fascine mattress | Permalink
February 27, 2011 – 2:23 pm

400 years of 124 Green Street

Go read this micro history of a block in New York City: We usually analyze Development at the national level. Why not other levels? At the other extreme, here is a short and surprising illustrated history of one city block […] Its history had been a series of unexpected events involving many actors, from Nicholas […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides, the-city-we-have, urbanism | Also tagged , | Comments Off on 400 years of 124 Green Street | Permalink
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 […]

By rholmes | Posted in landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (3) | Permalink