infrastructure – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: infrastructure

June 12, 2009 – 12:04 pm

field guide to standpipes (infrastructurist)

I’ve mentioned my love for Infrastructurist’s field guides before; the latest, A Field Guide to NYC Standpipes, teaches you to read the relationship between standpipes and the fire control systems embedded in the buildings they serve.  So much fascinating information is encoded on and in the built environment, if we know how to read it […]

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May 31, 2009 – 2:21 pm

on finance

I found this project by Andrea Brennen, which Rob highlighted here, incredibly refreshing.  Considering the vital role money plays in Getting Stuff Built, discussion of financing and its repercussions is absurdly rare in critical discourse on architecture and urbanism.  This is problematic – it’s not as if designs are hatched in a capital vacuum, funding […]

By Stephen | Posted in architecture, finance, infrastructure, the-expanded-field, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (11) | Permalink
May 29, 2009 – 12:34 pm

below the phreatic level

Pruned asks: “Has there ever been an ideas competition of any kind for Mexico City and its water crisis?”, in response to this post at the Guardian outlining that crisis.  While I’m not aware of a competition, the unrealized project that immediately comes to mind is Kalach and de Leon’s The City and the Lakes, […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape-architecture, urbanism | Also tagged , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
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 | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect, urbanism | Also tagged , , | Comments Off on bonus freeway interchange info | Permalink
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 | Posted in asides, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect, urbanism | Also tagged , | Comments (1) | Permalink
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 […]

By rholmes | Posted in infrastructure, landscape, landscapes-in-search-of-an-architect | Also tagged , , , | Comments Off on the most sublime room in the world | Permalink
April 15, 2009 – 2:44 pm

new books!

New Books! On the left (The author’s blog is absolutely worth reading regularly as well.) On the right Has anyone else read either of them? I’ll post some thoughts as I work my way though. UPDATE: Speaking of books, this one has just been added to my must-buy list, and I’m on the waiting list […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides, Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
April 14, 2009 – 10:19 am

on a more positive note

Its not exactly high-speed rail, but, unlike Becker’s state, mine is adding rail service — Richmond-DC and Lynchburg-Charlottesville-DC, which should allow me to realize my dream of living in the Fan District and commuting to DC. Which isn’t to disagree at all with what Stephen noted — there is a real problem in the disconnect […]

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April 10, 2009 – 12:15 pm

don’t mess with my trains

The dearth of funding for enhancing existing public transit infrastructure must be one of the stimulus bill’s biggest shortcomings. This story about the T hits particularly close to home for me, as I regularly depend on the Worcester/Framingham line out of Boston to get into the city, and to Logan Airport.  As some commenters on […]

By Stephen | Posted in asides | Also tagged , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink
April 9, 2009 – 1:45 pm

bracket: hydrating luanda

The following is a study of a hypothetical water farming infrastructure for the arid city of Luanda, Angola; using fog harvesting nets with varying capabilities. Luanda, the fastest growing city in the world, is desperately short of clean water. Only one in six Luandan households has running water, forcing most of the inhabitants of the […]

By mammoth | Posted in architecture, landscape, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (18) | Permalink