Drained

[Image: Lake Lanier, Atlanta's primary source of drinking water, gets lower and lower; photo by Pouya Dianat for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution].

Via Pruned, we read that Atlanta may have less than four months of water left, that the governor of North Carolina has asked his constituents "to stop using water for any purpose 'not essential to public health and safety,'” and that an ongoing, 18-month drought, complete with "cloudless blue skies and high temperatures," has "shriveled crops and bronzed lawns from North Carolina to Alabama."
So is this the new desert southeast, a grassless landscape of abandoned golf courses, college dorms left empty amidst the remains of dying pine forests, and the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk creeping in toward Raleigh-Durham?
And could Atlanta really run out of water before March 2008?

The event

[Images: Lawrence Weschler and BLDGBLOG at the Park Life Store, San Francisco; photos by Nicola Twilley].

A quick thanks to everyone who came out the other night to see Lawrence Weschler and BLDGBLOG speak at San Francisco's Park Life Store – I had a blast. I had a really great time, actually – and I'd love to do it again.
We were celebrating the paperback reissue of Weschler's book Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, and otherwise just talking about the things that interest us – from the world's largest platinum deposit and artificial reefs off the coast of Israel, to the LA-based Institute for Figuring, underground infrastructure, and how to hurl Taj Mahals into the sky.
And a huge thanks to both McSweeney's and the Park Life Store for hosting it!

Quick List X

First, a general note: as some of you may know, I'm in the process of turning BLDGBLOG into a book for Chronicle Books. That's due out in Spring 2009.
Accordingly, over the next three or four months, until the manuscript is due, I'll be cutting back a bit on posting, going down to maybe two or three times a week... But that's only till February! After which I'll have a bright, new book waiting to be designed by the wizards at Chronicle.
So keep coming back – but be aware that I won't be posting everyday. And buy a copy of the book!
Second, I haven't done a Quick List in a long time, so I thought I'd take a casual swing through some recent stories...

[Image: Zoe Crosher's new pamphlet, published by the LA Forum].

In other bookworld news, for instance, the LA Forum has just put out a new pamphlet, featuring photographs of Los Angeles International Airport taken by artist Zoe Crosher.
But the images have a catch: all of the photos were taken inside airport hotel rooms.

Zoe Crosher takes the viewer on an exploratory journey inside the impersonal and transient travel world surrounding the mega international airport, LAX. She finds a landscape packed with identical hotel chains pushed up against giant billboards, where the words "hotel" and "taxi" are understood by nearly everyone. (...) The pattern[s] of the drapes change, the color of the stucco exterior changes and the airplanes caught in mid flight move through the atmosphere, but the basic view stays the same. There is a haunting familiarity that one has never really left the first room...

Read more at the LA Forum.
In other book news, readers of BLDGBLOG's recent 2-part interview with Mary Beard may be pleased to hear that Beard's Wonders of the World series just got one book bigger.
Keith Miller's St. Peter's just arrived at my house this afternoon.

[Images: (top) A wonderful – stunning! – photo of Rome, with the dome of St. Peter's catching sunlight in the background, by George O. Goodman; (middle) A view inside St. Peter's nested domes and arches by Andrew Huxtable; (bottom) St. Peter's Square, photographed by mambo1935].

Speaking of architectural history, an "underground monastery dating back to the 17th century has been restored in West Russia's Belgorod region. The huge underground complex, which was looted and destroyed after the October Revolution, was sanctified again by the local Archbishop."

The combined length of the caves is over 650 meters, and they resemble a real labyrinth. But the central part looks like any Orthodox Christian church and there are passages around the site for religious processions. The monastery is dry and temperatures inside remain stable year round at about 6 degrees Celsius.

Two wonderful details: 1) At its height, the monastery apparently had "no less than 1,000 meters of underground galleries and tunnels that lead to churches on the surface." 2) "During the Revolution, the monks had abandoned the complex and for some time the caves were populated by anarchist gangs."
I believe this is the same place – and if you like this kind of thing then don't miss BLDGBLOG's look at the allure of the underground city.
Moving in the opposite vertical direction, 33 Thomas Street, in New York City, is a windowless concrete high-rise built solely for the purpose of housing a telephone exchange.

[Image: 33 Thomas Street, via Wikipedia; view slightly bigger].

According to Wikipedia, 33 Thomas Street "is a telephone exchange or wire center building which contains three major 4ESS switches used for interexchange (long distance) telephony, two owned by AT&T and one owned by Verizon."
Further, "As it was built to house telephone switching equipment, the average floor height is 18 feet (5.5 meters), considerably taller than in an average high-rise. The floors are also unusually strong, designed to carry 200 to 300 pound per square foot (10 - 15 kPa) live loads."
Really a gigantic pseudo-Brutalist vault, the building is probably crawling with government wire-tappers – its windowless walls and concrete geometry the subject of at least half a dozen occult urban myths.
For instance, the ghost of Aleister Crowley is said to live there, sitting cross-legged in "a mass of blue and violet plumes," performing divine telegraphy, sending messages into the ether, "crowned with the stars of night."

[Image: The fires of chromosomal mutation burn].

Then there was some news about artificial life: "Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth." The Guardian refers to this as "a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes."
All of which is certainly interesting in and of itself, but what might this news herald for the future of landscape architecture? Could someone genetically engineer entire gardens and flowering species, new trees, shrubs, and lichen?
Let's ask Brazil, where the New York Times reports that "sprawling labs and experimental fields" run by the government have been making "Brazil's savannah bloom."
We learn that most of these sprawling labs' "pioneering work" has been performed "in the cerrado, the vast savannah that stretches for more than 1,000 miles across central Brazil. Written off as useless for centuries, the region has been transformed in less than a generation into Brazil’s grain belt, thanks to the discovery that soils could be made fertile by dousing them with phosphorus and lime" – chemically conjuring fertility from the ground.

[Images: The future of the Brazilian Earth, photographed by Lalo de Almeida for New York Times].

But making the Earth more fertile is sometimes just a matter of better harvesting techniques: Pruned introduced us last month to a new breed of picking machines that may soon be set loose upon the American agricultural landscape, harvesting fruits with an efficiency human hands can't quite – apparently – achieve.
But what might happen if these future machines get hacked? What strange new incisions in the landscape might result? Or, "[e]ven more interesting," Pruned asks, "what will happen if they become self-aware and go out to pasture? Fitted with solar panels, grazing from one oil well to another, domiciling in abandoned gold mines, what new ecologies will they terraform?"
This becomes, yes, even more interesting when you add another article – also discovered via Pruned – about the strategic use of crops as a form of pharmaceutical cultivation:

Conventional ways to make modern medicines are expensive, which means pharmaceutical companies generally target those diseases that affect lots of people who can pay. Plants can be grown, harvested, and the useful medicine purified from them at a fraction of the price, so using them as leafy drug factories saves a fortune, and opens the doors to treating people in poorer countries. Advocates say just 250 acres of GM potato crop could churn out enough hepatitis B vaccine to protect the entire population of south-east Asia from the disease for a year.

Whole fields of genetically-modified medicine waving in the summer breeze: someday, perhaps, pills will grow on trees.
But this scientized approach to the public health of tomorrow is not without its controversies. Later in that same article we read that one medically-augmented strain of tobacco is now being cultivated on "a Kent farm, in ultra-secure greenhouses with twin-skin plastic walls strong enough to resist a hurled brick." These ultra-secure greenhouses "are the botanic equivalent of the containment facilities used by microbiologists to work on biological weapons."
In other words, the current legal climate surrounding these Hippocratic organisms means that they will be "swaying only in an artificial, heavily filtered breeze" for some years to come. So much for my visions of the pharmaceutical future...
Until the harvesting machines show up.

[Images: Libya's ambitious plan is announced; via the BBC].

Further afield, it was announced last month that British architect Norman Foster will be designing a new "eco-region" for Libya – whether they want him to or not...
For that project, Foster + Partners have drawn up "regional plans to create a national park, a renewable energy infrastructure, a public transportation infrastructure fuelled by biofuels, sustainable agriculture irrigated through desalination plants, and an eco-tourism resort. The latter could, according to some preliminary plans, have buildings built into the side of mountains to minimise their visual impact and take advantage of the stone's insulating properties."
As the Guardian points out, the project's brief "basically says everything the world would want to hear: sustainable development; archaeological conservation; eco-tourism; renewable energy; environmentally responsible town planning; micro-banking; education; biofuels; even production of 'the finest quality organic food and drink'."
Further:

Foster's plan strives to avoid turning the coastline into another Benidorm. Nothing will be built along the seafront; all will be pushed back to the foot of the hills. Controlled zones of forest and agriculture will rise up the hills inland, towards the ruins on the plateau above. New towns will be based on the traditional Arab medina model: close-knit communities to minimise car use and urban sprawl.

It would also be the near-perfect setting for a future J.G. Ballard novel.
Just today, then, the New York Times jumps in, calling Foster's eco-region "a carbon neutral green-development zone, catering to tourism and serving as a model for environmentally friendly design," complete with "luxury hotels, villas and golf courses, as well as community housing."
Sounds green, indeed! I'll fly there in my private jet and recycle Pepsi cans.
Lots of Pepsi cans.

[Image: A rendering of the Libyan eco-region, ©Foster + Partners, via the New York Times].

Moving outward, then, New Scientist asks: "Did ancient oceans on Venus last long enough for potential life to have emerged? The answer could be locked inside a hardy mineral called tremolite, which future robotic missions to our neighbouring planet could find and study."
After all, the "surface of Venus today is extremely dry and hot enough to melt lead," but at some point in the distant past it may have harbored seaborne life.
Perhaps Norman Foster can build a resort there.

[Image: A Venusian mountain called Maat Mons; via New Scientist].

However, if Venus doesn't interest you there are always "Super-Earths" – "rocky planets up to 10 times the mass of Earth." 10 times! Imagine the canyons, and the mountains, and the caves!
Because of those planets' mass, we read, plate tectonics are apparently "inevitable." Further: "Plate tectonics may boost biodiversity by recycling chemicals and minerals through the crust. 'When it comes to habitability, super-Earths are our best destination,'" we're told – and "life" is just geochemistry in a slightly more mobile form. We're just pieces of the Earth's surface.
But if there are Super-Earths, why not Super-Cities?
Hong Kong wants to remind everyone that it's still a World-Class Destination®, and so it might – just might – merge with Shenzhen.
The BBC explains that a new research report is recommending that "Hong Kong should be merged with Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city across the border, to make a mega-city of 20 million people. Only then can Hong Kong be one of the world's great cities."

[Image: The Hong Kong-Shenzhen Super-City as mapped by the BBC].

Fascinatingly, these plans for extended urban territoriality actually have to do with hydrology. Quoting at length:

Back when Hong Kong was a British colony, its border with China was marked by the Shenzhen River, and like many rivers, it curved.
When the river was straightened, it left a square kilometre of land, technically owned by China and now under Hong Kong rule, known as the Lok Ma Chau Loop.
"Hong Kong and Shenzhen have been arguing about this, who should do what, so we're suggesting, in this place here, the land-right belongs to Shenzhen, but the administrative rights are Hong Kong's," [one of the aforementioned report's authors] said.
"So if we could use this as an example, as a pilot, Shenzhen people could just go there without visas, Hong Kong people could just go there, and let the market decide. Maybe this is a very good place for health care... for high-tech factories... for museums and whatever. This could be an example where the mainland and Hong Kong actually work together, borderless."

And so on. I have at least ten more articles lined up for inclusion here, but I'll have to leave it at that.
More soon.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Quick list 9, Quick list 8, etc. etc., and thanks to Alex Trevi for the Russian cave monastery link).

BLDGBLOG Meets McSweeney's Meets Park Life Meets San Francisco

McSweeney's and the Park Life Store will be hosting a conversation between BLDGBLOG and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Lawrence Weschler on Tuesday, October 16, here in San Francisco – at 220 Clement Street (aka the Park Life Store), starting at 7pm – to celebrate the paperback launch of Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences.
Here's a map.
Expect free wine, no entry fee, missing lakes, salt mines, and loads of inappropriate Hitler references.
It'll be fun.

Greater Los Angeles

I got back from Los Angeles last night and my head is still spinning. I'd move there again in a heartbeat.
There are three great cities in the United States: there's Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York – in that order.
I love Boston; I even love Denver; I like Miami; I think Washington DC is habitable; but Los Angeles is Los Angeles. You can't compare it to Paris, or to London, or to Rome, or to Shanghai. You can interestingly contrast it to those cities, sure, and Los Angeles even comes out lacking; but Los Angeles is still Los Angeles.

[Image: L.A., as photographed by Marshall Astor].

No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use. You can have fake breasts and drive a Ford Mustang – or you can grow a beard, weigh 300 pounds, and read Christian science fiction novels. Either way, you're fine: that's just how it works. You can watch Cops all day or you can be a porn star or you can be a Caltech physicist. You can listen to Carcass – or you can listen to Pat Robertson. Or both.
That's how we dooz it.
L.A. is the apocalypse: it's you and a bunch of parking lots. No one's going to save you; no one's looking out for you. It's the only city I know where that's the explicit premise of living there – that's the deal you make when you move to L.A.
The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic.
It says: no one loves you; you're the least important person in the room; get over it.
What matters is what you do there.

[Image: An extraordinary photograph, called 4.366 Braille, by jenlund70].

And maybe that means renting Hot Fuzz and eating too many pretzels; or maybe that means driving a Prius out to Malibu and surfing with Daryl Hannah as a means of protesting something; or maybe that means buying everything Fredric Jameson has ever written and even underlining significant passages as you visit the Westin Bonaventura. Maybe that just means getting into skateboarding, or into E!, or into Zen, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism; or maybe you'll plunge yourself into gin-fueled all night Frank Sinatra marathons – or you'll lift weights and check email every two minutes on your Blackberry and watch old Bruce Willis films.
Who cares?
Literally no one cares, is the answer. No one cares. You're alone in the world.
L.A. is explicit about that.
If you can't handle a huge landscape made entirely from concrete, interspersed with 24-hour drugstores stocked with medications you don't need, then don't move there.
It's you and a bunch of parking lots.
You'll see Al Pacino in a traffic jam, wearing a stocking cap; you'll see Cameron Diaz in the check-out line at Whole Foods, giggling through a mask of reptilian skin; you'll see Harry Shearer buying bulk shrimp.
The whole thing is ridiculous. It's the most ridiculous city in the world – but everyone who lives there knows that. No one thinks that L.A. "works," or that it's well-designed, or that it's perfectly functional, or even that it makes sense to have put it there in the first place; they just think it's interesting. And they have fun there.
And the huge irony is that Southern California is where you can actually do what you want to do; you can just relax and be ridiculous. In L.A. you don't have to be embarrassed by yourself. You're not driven into a state of endless, vaguely militarized self-justification by your xenophobic neighbors.
You've got a surgically pinched, thin Michael Jackson nose? You've got a goatee and a trucker hat? You've got a million-dollar job and a Bentley? You've got to be at work at the local doughnut shop before 6am? Or maybe you've got 16 kids and an addiction to Yoo-Hoo – who cares?
It doesn't matter.
Los Angeles is where you confront the objective fact that you mean nothing; the desert, the ocean, the tectonic plates, the clear skies, the sun itself, the Hollywood Walk of Fame – even the parking lots: everything there somehow precedes you, even new construction sites, and it's bigger than you and more abstract than you and indifferent to you. You don't matter. You're free.

[Image: Two beautiful photos by Andrew Johnson; here's the left, here's the right].

In Los Angeles you can be standing next to another human being but you may as well be standing next to a geological formation. Whatever that thing is, it doesn't care about you. And you don't care about it. Get over it. You're alone in the world. Do something interesting.
Do what you actually want to do – even if that means reading P.D. James or getting your nails done or re-oiling car parts in your backyard.
Because no one cares.
In L.A. you can grow Fabio hair and go to the Arclight and not be embarrassed by yourself. Every mode of living is appropriate for L.A. You can do what you want.
And I don't just mean that Los Angeles is some friendly bastion of cultural diversity and so we should celebrate it on that level and be done with it; I mean that Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void. It is the void. It's the confrontation with astronomy through near-constant sunlight and the inhuman radiative cancers that result. It's the confrontation with geology through plate tectonics and buried oil, methane, gravel, tar, and whatever other weird deposits of unknown ancient remains are sitting around down there in the dry and fractured subsurface. It's a confrontation with the oceanic; with anonymity; with desert time; with endless parking lots.
And it doesn't need humanizing. Who cares if you can't identify with Los Angeles? It doesn't need to be made human. It's better than that.

Converging on Los Angeles

In case anyone reading this happens to be in Los Angeles over the next few days, I'll be flying back to that city of individualized car geographies tomorrow to give a talk at UCLA's Hammer Museum alongside National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Lawrence Weschler.
We'll be celebrating the paperback reissue of Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, published by McSweeney's.
The event takes place Wednesday, October 10; it's free, open to the public, and it starts at 7pm.
So, sure, it's just another event in a huge city somewhere in the 21st century, but I think it'll be a great time and I can't wait! Los Angeles! Lawrence Weschler! UCLA!
It's free!
If you need further convincing, just take a long look at Weschler's book about the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology...

Deep Space Pharma

[Image: The International Space Station].

Wired reports that "a swaggering Texas investor" wants to turn the International Space Station into a kind of orbiting drug lab – growing hi-tech medicines in space.
After all, you can do "miraculous things" in microgravity:

Disease-causing proteins crystallize so well – growing larger and clearer – that finding a drug to stop the protein's damaging activities could happen months, if not years, faster.

In which case, putting architecture into space might have inadvertantly helped catalyze a cure for cancer.

[Image: A protein crystal – a kind of micro-ziggurat].

While it seems next to impossible to believe that we'll be able to maintain flights back and forth between Earth and the ISS in a post-oil economy, it is nonetheless quite fascinating to think that, someday, depressed teenagers in suburban Arizona might pop space-made anti-depressants, affecting hormonal moods through the use of literally extra-terrestrial substances; or musicians in small apartments in Prague might swallow attention deficit drugs crystallized in microgravity, writing the world's most intricate symphonies in response; or perhaps even illegal new hallucinogens will be developed in windowless, symmetrical rooms hovering 250 miles above the Earth's surface, and they'll be taken by Rem Koolhaas-reading students at SCI-Arc who then draw up plans for self-healing tentacular cities, under the influence of space...

[Image: Another protein crystal].

Either way, imagine that as your summer job! No longer connected to the surface of the Earth, wearing a hermetically sealed white suit, growing proteins.
Read more @ Wired.