London-on-Sea

[Image: "London-on-Sea" by Practical Action].

Practical Action, a UK-based charity group, has done a quick edit to the London Tube map to show how things might look in an era of catastrophic sea-level rise.

As much as I like such a simple gesture, though, for me, one of the most effective urban sea-level-rise awareness projects is still Chris Bodle's Watermarks Project.

(Via Londonist and @poundforpound).

Manhattan El Dorado

[Image: The New York Federal Reserve Bank; photo by Friends of the Pleistocene].

I have linked to the ongoing series of "Geologic City Reports" released every few weeks by the excellent blog Friends of the Pleistocene—which, having launched back in January, receives my vote for Best New Blog of 2010—but the newest installment, #9, is worth singling out. In it, F.O.P. tour the gold reserve vaults of Manhattan.

The New York Federal Reserve bank "is a place where humans have encased geology within geology. They’ve unfolded and refolded stratifications of limestone, sandstone, iron and gold so they could put the gold on the inside—where it can be hyper-protected because of its high, human-assigned value." Think of it as a kind of metallurgical Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

The authors go on to describe the actual, physical sale of gold bars as "a human-scale chess game playing out in the basement of New York with elemental geology as the pawns."

While you're at it, "Geologic City Reports" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all worth reading, as well.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: City of Gold).

Crystal Furnace in Space

[Image: The crystal growth furnace; courtesy of NASA].

This isn't news, but my days are made fractionally better by the knowledge that there is a "crystal growth furnace" birthing new geological forms in microgravity aboard the International Space Station.

[Image: Another view of the crystal growth furnace; courtesy of NASA].

"The Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG) furnace, which was derived from earlier shuttle models," NASA explains, "can grow zeolites, zeotype titanosilicate materials, ferroelectrics, and silver halides—all materials of commercial interest. The unit consists of a cylinder-shaped furnace, the Improved Zeolite Electronic Control System (IZECS), which includes a touchpad and data display as well as autoclaves. Two precursor growth solutions are placed into each autoclave, which mix during their stay in the furnace."

In the end, though, this research comes down to fossil fuels: "Zeolites form the backbone of the chemical processes industry, and virtually all the world's gasoline is produced or upgraded using zeolites. Industry wants to improve zeolite crystals so that more gasoline can be produced from a barrel of oil, making the industry more efficient and thus reducing America's dependence on foreign oil."

[Image: Terrestrial and nonterrestrial zeolites compared, courtesy of NASA].

First, "the furnace heats up and crystals start to form, or nucleate," monitored only occasionally by the crew, while a "payload team on the ground" watches these crystals, like something out of a Charles Stross novel, "via download telemetry." Otherwise, "with the exception of loading the autoclaves into the furnace and turning the switch on, the crystal growth experiment operations are unattended by the crew."

Rare and unattended postgeological forms take shape in engines quietly aflame in space, new hearths for future astronauts, like William Blake gone Ballardian in earth orbit, cultivating crystal trays, supervised telemetrically by an audience far below.

[Image: More comparative space crystallography, courtesy of NASA].

In fact, there was an article seven years ago in New Scientist about cosmonauts running plasma-crystal experiments aboard the International Space Station, studying a type of matter that is atomically parked somewhere between liquid and solid: "Although the consistency of the [plasma] crystals is something like a viscous fluid, their internal structures closely resemble the atomic lattices seen in conventional solids."

But what's particularly interesting is that "one of the cosmonauts was so intrigued" by this strange new material form that "he decided to do extra experiments in his private sleep time"—a statement phrased perhaps deliberately vaguely, as if the writer was unable to resist this exquisite vision of obsessive-compulsive cosmonauts so intent on building crystals in space that they have found a way to do so even while dreaming.

Air Hive

[Image: From "Microclimates" by PostlerFerguson].

These air-cooling hives made from "3D-printed sand" and designed by PostlerFerguson have been rendered a bit too glossily for my taste, but I love the idea: each unit has "a complex internal structure whose large internal surface area efficiently conditions air passing through it by evaporative cooling. Each cooling tower is made from 3D-printed sand using technology developed by D-Shape."

[Images: From "Microclimates" by PostlerFerguson].

The designers refer to the work as "not just an installation, but a building language that can be reused again and again to create new public spaces." Roads, piazzas, buildings, halls, rooms, architectural ornament—adding non-electrical air-cooling technology to the built environment on a huge variety of scales and conjuring up images of 3D-printed sandstone ornamental cornices on buildings being used to cool urban streetscapes.

[Image: From "Microclimates" by PostlerFerguson].

In some ways, purely on the level of material similarities, this might remind readers of the work of Magnus Larsson, featured here last summer, in which it was proposed that landscape-scale architectural forms in the African desert could be "printed" into existence via bacterial-injection machines (read the original proposal for more information).

[Images: From "Microclimates" by PostlerFerguson].

But the very different aesthetic here, and the functional purpose of using hives of 3D-printed sand as a way of generating thermally advantageous microclimates in the city, offers an interesting direction for the surprising popularity today of architectural projects involving stabilized sand.

(Spotted via Dezeen).

Decolonizing Architecture

I've been delinquent in mentioning a talk by Eyal Weizman scheduled to take place later this afternoon, over at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles. A related exhibition called Decolonizing Architecture—co-curated by Weizman—opens to the public on Tuesday, December 7.

Decolonizing Architecture is a project initiated by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman in 2007. Set up as a studio/residency program in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem and recently re-established as the Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR), they engage spatial research and theory, taking the conflict over Palestine as their main case study. Decolonizing Architecture seeks to use spatial practice as a form of political intervention and narration. Their practice continuously engages a complex set of architectural problems centered around one of the most difficult dilemmas of political practice: how to act both propositionally and critically within an environment in which the political force field, as complex as it may be, is so dramatically skewed.

I will be posting again about the exhibition next month; for now, I want to get the word out in the nick of time for those of you who able to attend today's talk.

Probe Field

[Image: From "Kielder Probes" by Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil, courtesy of sixteen*(makers)].

Beginning in 2003, architects Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil of sixteen*(makers) began experimenting with a group of "micro-environmental surveying probes" that he was later to install in Kielder Park, Northumbria, UK.

[Image: From "Kielder Probes" by Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil, courtesy of sixteen*(makers)].

The probes were "designed to act as dual monitors and responsive artefacts." Which means what, exactly?

The probes were designed to measure difference over time rather than the static characteristics of any given instance. Powered by solar energy, the probes gathered and recorded ‘micro environmental data’ over time. The probes were simultaneously and physically responsive to these changes, opening out when warm and sunny, closing down when cold and dark. Thus not only did the probes record environmental change, but they demonstrated how these changes might induce a responsive behaviour specific to a single location.

After the probes were installed, they were filmed by "an array of high-resolution digital cameras programmed to record at regular intervals."

[Images: From "Kielder Probes" by Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil, courtesy of sixteen*(makers)].

The resulting data—which took note of the climatic and solar situations in which the objects began to change—offers insights, Sheil suggests, into how "passively activated responsive architecture" might operate in other sites, under other environmental conditions.

[Images: From "Kielder Probes" by Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil, courtesy of sixteen*(makers)].

As DIY landscape-registration devices constructed from what appear to be off-the-shelf aluminum plates, they also cut an interesting formal profile above the horizon line, like rare birds or machine-flowers perched amidst the tree stumps.

[Image: From "Kielder Probes" by Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, and Bob Sheil, courtesy of sixteen*(makers)].

Chernobyl/Baikonur

[Image: The Baikonur Cosmodrome; image via Tomorrow's Thoughts Today].

Liam Young and Kate Davies of the Architectural Association's Unknown Fields Division have teamed up to launch an annual "nomadic studio." Next July, 2011, Young and Davies will lead a two-week visit to the irradiated zones of exclusion at Chernobyl, Ukraine, and the derelict Soviet launch-city of Baikonur for an intensive workshop of architectural research and design.

As Liam describes the studio: "Together we will form a traveling circus of research visits, field reportage, rolling discussions, and impromptu tutorials... Joining us on our travels will be a troupe of collaborators: photographers and filmmakers from the worlds of technology, science and fiction including the Philips Technologies Design Probes research lab and Archis/Volume magazine."

There is a £650 fee to participate, but this does not cover flights or hotels. More info here.