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.

Ventilating Mines with Repurposed Airplane Engines

[Image: A "Jeffrey Portable Blower," once billed as the "highest efficiency in mine ventilation, insuring [sic] a continuous and abundant supply of fresh air under every operating condition." Image courtesy of Kentucky Coal Heritage].

I had never heard of a "Gorniczy Agregat Gasniczy" apparatus prior to the Pike River Mine disaster still unfolding in New Zealand, where one such device is about to be deployed.

The GAG, as it's known, is "a jet engine inertisation unit developed for use in mines, controlling and suppressing coal seam fires," Wikipedia explains—another way of saying that it is literally a jet engine that you plug into one end of a sealed mine in order to blow high-powered chemical winds (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor) into the tunnels below. These gases then "lower the oxygen levels, suppressing fires and forcing methane out of the mine."

[Image: A GAG unit being readied in New Zealand, courtesy of the New Zealand Herald News].

There are only three operational GAG units in the world right now, apparently. Each operates by taking a "docking position" on the earth's surface, attached to "intake ventilation headings" that lead, via boreholes, into the porous labyrinth of artificial caves below. The GAG then rapidly pumps a new atmosphere into the existing mineworks, as if generating artificial weather underground. In a paper on "jet engine inertisation techniques," Stewart Bell points out that "a variation of this device was used, mounted on a remotely controlled tank, to extinguish the oil well fires in Kuwait following the Gulf War."

As Jonathan Rennie, the person who originally pointed this machine out to me, added: "I wonder what alternative structures it could be plugged into and what alternative gases could be pumped." Indeed. Weaponized jet-engine army battering rams used to clear enemy houses of hidden combatants. Emergency subway ventilation machines. Alcoholic mist-dissemination units for avant-garde cocktail parties. Underground deodorant guns.

As it happens, the specialty subfield of preventing and/or extinguishing underground mine fires comes with a wide range of spatial and material techniques. These include the controlled "injection" of instant gel-foam barriers (operated via "an underground-based mobile gel preparation and injection system"), in order to block airflow through the mines, and the installation of ventilation control devices (VCDs), or rapidly deployed explosive barriers.

Looking into this latter architectural form—if we can treat underground ventilation control devices as a form of spatial design—led me to something called the "TestSafe Explosions Gallery" in Queensland, Australia—a kind of experimental underground explosion lab that operates as "a full-scale pressure test facility for ventilation control devices (VCDs) within Australia."

[Image: The Lake Lynn Experimental Mine facility; image courtesy of the CDC].

This "full-scale pressure test facility" joins another Aussie site, called the Lake Lynn Experimental Mine (LLEM), "a highly sophisticated underground and surface facility where large-scale explosion trials and mine fire research is conducted."

The workings are located in a massive limestone deposit. Entries are sized to match those of commercial mines, making them authentic, full-scale test galleries. Movable bulkheads permit the setup of single-entry, triple-entry, and longwall face configurations for experiments. The underground test areas are amply instrumented and coupled to a remote control center at the surface. Research conducted at this facility includes large-scale gas and coal dust explosion studies, conveyor belt flammability trials, and evaluations of explosive materials and mine stoppings. In addition, diesel, ground control, and emergency response and rescue research is conducted here.

I'm increasingly convinced that these sorts of highly specific sites need to be cataloged within the architectural world—or, at the very least, within the world of landscape research and design. Put another way, in the long line of accepted building typologies—the library, the stadium, the prison, the house, the theater—it's a shame not to see mine-fire research facilities more frequently listed...

In any case, Jonathan Rennie, who first pointed out Gorniczy Agregat Gasniczy devices to me, also forwarded a link to the homepage of Andrzej M. Wala, a mine engineering professor at the University of Kentucky with a research focus on subsurface ventilation techniques—mapping and predicting atmospheric effects in highly confined quarters below ground. As part of this, Wala has pioneered work in simulating the spread of underground fires using VENTGRAPH "mine fire simulation software" (as opposed to VENTSIM "mine ventilation simulation software").

"The essential work program of the project," Wala and his co-authors explain, "was built around the introduction of fire simulation computer software and the consequent modeling of fire scenarios in selected mine with different layouts." At stake here is a comprehensive understanding of the geometry of underground airflow:

The importance of understanding complex ventilation networks such as those with diagonal connections has been discussed. It is important to identify and understand their potential effects on the mine ventilation network as the airflow through the diagonal connections could reverse or stop due to the changes in the adjoining branches within the ventilation network. Mining companies need to identify the existing and potential diagonal connections in their ventilation system and analyze how these connections will affect their ventilation system especially in the case of fires. Training is necessary to equip mine ventilation personnel how to identify and minimize diagonal connections in their ventilation system.

Indeed, we read elsewhere, underground facilities are often subject to sudden, potentially disastrous "windblasts," an atmospheric effect generated under certain spatial conditions: "These conditions include the geological configuration and the dimensions of the mining excavation (mine layout)." It's like spatially-induced turbulence inside the earth.

[Image: The Wieliczka Salt Mine and its surface weather station; image courtesy of NOAA].

So there is weather underground, then. In fact, it is interesting to note in this context that the famed Wieliczka Salt Mine outside Krakow, Poland, has its own weather station monitoring the atmospheric conditions underground. The station operates in tandem with a distributed network of microclimate sensors and a massive dehumidification system: "Although the dehumidification system is not yet operating exactly as desired... 'tuning' of the dehumidification system is planned and is expected to completely solve the mine's moisture problem."

I'm reminded of a passage from the Aeneid that I often cite here on BLDGBLOG, in which Virgil describes the underground storm-storage facilities of King Aeolus, who "rules the contending winds and moaning gales" of the Mediterranean by "imprisoning" them inside artificial caves that he has excavated beneath the "granite of high mountains." A kind of mythic weather-emperor, King Aeolus exhibits a knowledge of underground atmospheric dynamics that the programmers of VENTGRAPH and the operators of the Wieliczka dehumidification system should envy.

[Image: Holland Tunnel exhaust tower, ventilating the underworld; photo via SkyscraperPage.com].

Finally, all this talk of subterranean ventilation compels me to mention David Gissen's short history of New York's urban ventilation control structures—specifically, the design of exhaust towers for the Holland Tunnel.

In a brief section of his recent book Subnature: Architecture's Other Environments, Gissen describes these structures as "strange buildings" that "collapsed" the difference between architecture and civil engineering:

The Holland Tunnel spanned an enormous 8,500 feet. At each end, engineers designed ten-story ventilation towers that would push air through tunnels above the cars, drawing the vehicle exhaust upward, where it would be blown back through the tops of the towers and over industrial areas of the city. The exhaust towers provided a strange new building type in the city—a looming blank tower that oscillated between a work of engineering and architecture.

The very idea here that urban infrastructure—such as trans-river commuter tunnels or an underground subway—might be atmospherically comparable to deep coal mines is fascinating; the possibility that spatial techniques learned in one of these fields might be equally applicable in the other is equally of interest.

It is these moments of marginal, shared spatial expertise that continue to fascinate me, offering, as they do, unexpected perspectives on the built environment—both above and below the ground.

(Meanwhile, check out this image of 16th-century mine ventilation works, in which "revolving wooden wind vanes fitted to the top of mine ventilation shafts... acted as extractor fans sucking stale air from the mine.")

Spatial Gameplay in Full-Court 3D

Japan is distinguishing its bid to host the 2022 World Cup with a plan to broadcast the entire thing as a life-size hologram.

[Image: Courtesy of the Japan Football Association/CNN].

"Japanese organizers say each game will be filmed by 200 high definition cameras, which will use 'freeviewpoint' technology to allow fans to see the action unfold from a player's eye view—the kind of images until now only seen in video games," CNN reports.

[Image: Courtesy of the Japan Football Association/CNN].

British football theorist Jonathan Wilson puts an interestingly spatial spin on the idea: "Speaking as a tactics geek," he said to CNN, "the problem watching games on television is it's very hard to see the shape of the teams, so if you're trying to assess the way the game's going, if you're trying to assess the space, how a team's shape's doing and their defense and organization, then this will clearly be beneficial."

Watching a sport becomes a new form of spatial immersion into strategic game geometries.

[Image: Courtesy of the Japan Football Association/CNN].

Of course, there's open disbelief that Japan can actually deliver on this promise—it is proposing something based on technology that does not quite exist yet, on the optimistic assumption that all technical problems will be worked out in 12 years' time.

But the idea of real-time, life-size event-holograms being beamed around the world as a spatial replacement for TV imagery is stunning.

(Thanks to Judson Hornfeck for the tip!)