architecture

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Millennium Park continued

Adjacent to the Pritzger Pavilion, by Frank Gehry,are 2 other interesting pieces of sculpture that really capture 2 different styles of monuments.The first is a very classical structure, the Millennium Monument in Wrigley Square. It is a slightly smaller version of a Greek (doric) styled monument, designed by Edward Bennett, (who also designed the famous Buckingham Fountain nearby) which stood nearby from 1917 till 1953. I love classical structures like these, but sadly it was the emptiest part of the whole park.The Cloud-gate, lovingly nicknamed the bean for obvious reasons, was immensly more popular. I could see why: totally interactive, people loved to look at their own reflections 'carnival style' and walk in, around and under it. The sculpture sits in the AT&T plaza section: built of polished steel, it weighs in at 110 TONS! The heavy work was the first installation by artist Anish Kapoor in the United States and cost upwards of $23 million -about 5 times more than the classical Millenium monument! It is meant to depict a drop of mercury right before impact with the ground. The sculpture was hand polished on site after delivery to hide the weld-lines. They did a good job because it is amazingly PERFECT (although it could do with a good washing with windex!). You can easily see why this is the most popular piece in the park! If you plan a trip to Chicago (and you must!) plan to visit the Millennium Park!

Urban Chickens Build - 5

Sort of a conceptual jump cut in the process, as two weekends of rain hampered plans to make progress on the Chicken Cube... but a big push this weekend (and a loaner of the wonderful compound miter saw that I am now officially) has yielded a vision close to complete. Not too many pics of the steps, as it was a race to finish. Here's the result, sans a few final touch-ups and details. And alas, it is chicken ready.





The cedar siding is beautiful - and it's now official that I am not allowed near a can of stain ever again. We're going to finish the bottom screening and plant the ecoroof this weekend, as well as installing the gutter and final hardware... Then we look for some (hopefully affulent and homeless) fowl to occupy this unit, because unless anyone knows of a certain breed that lays golden eggs, the payback time for this return-on-investment with current egg prices - 42 years. :)




Today's archidose #329

Afterparty, this year's P.S.1 Young Architects Program by MOS, 2009. The installation opened Sunday and runs until September 28. Also on display at the museum is YAP 10th Anniversary Review, "a visual chronicle of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and The Museum of Modern Art's Young Architects Program, one of the most acclaimed architectural arenas for emerging talent of the last decade."

Previously.

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Frank Gehry and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion

This past weekend I visited one of my favorite cities, Chicago. I was so excited to finally see the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park designed by Frank Gehry. Completed in July 2004, the pavilion is an open stage which seats upwards of 11,000 people in a mixture of fixed seats and the lawn as well as accomodate a full orcherstra on stage.
The pavilion is the gem of Millenium park, which is built over a large parking lot and the Harris Theater. One thing I question is the very lage trellis structure over the lawn seating, seen below. Meant to hold the complicated sound system, I wonder why a vinyl or canvas covering could not be stretched over it in the wintertime for more year round use. It seems much more practical to me and would not break the covenant for no buildings in the park as it would be a temporary structure. Just my 2 cents!
detail of the structure which directs the sound into the audience.
I never have been a fan of Gehry, but I think his style is best suited to outdoor structures like these and it is truly magnificent. Never mind that it cost around $60 million, it was well worth it as it's probably one of the most visited attraction in Chicago these days!
the pavilion seen in the distance above the water wall.
all photos taken with my iphone -which turned out surprisingly well!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:
image01sm.jpg
Spuimarkt in The Hague, Netherlands by BOLLES+WILSON.

This week's book review is 2G 48/49 Mies van der Rohe: Houses edited by Moisés Puente.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment, three solid recent Archinect features:
ShowCase: Storage Barn
A workshop and storage facility designed by Gray Organschi Architecture.

Urban China, Crisis, and the Bootlegging of a Magazine
A three-part interview about publications around the recent Urban China: Informal Cities exhibition.

Working out of the Box: Thumb
Architects designing beautiful books.

Masonry "Masterpiece" or Mistake?

Over at David Byrne's blog I came across this monstrosity by none other than Michael Graves, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, Texas. The former Talking Head memorably says, "This very out of place structure somehow lingers, like a fart left by someone no longer in an elevator."

fed1.jpg
[Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, TX by Michael Graves & Associates | image source]

The architect explains the building "is a 300,000-square-foot office building and regional bank-processing center. A pitched roof marks the wing housing secure cash processing facilities on the lower floors, while a boardroom, meeting rooms, and dining rooms benefit from panoramic views of the Houston skyline visible from the two levels above. The wing opposite contains the storage vault under a green tile barrel-vaulted roof. These volumes are intended to exhibit the Bank’s commitment to security, as the loggia at the building’s entrance suggests outreach and openness."

fed2.jpg
[Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, TX by Michael Graves & Associates | image source]

The Masonry Contractor's Association of America (MCAA) calls the building a true "masonry masterpiece." Why? One reason is because "Mr. Graves used masonry extensively for both the exterior and interior construction." How much is extensive? "The overall exterior consists of 537,000 closure brick (4"x8"x4"), 31,400 blue structural glazed tile (8"x8"x4"), 90,000 modular accent brick and 3,307 cubic feet of cast stone. Additionally, the architect utilized 3,428SF of green precast paving (to match the color of money) at the main entrance stairways and accent pavers in the concrete plaza...over 178,450 fully grouted and extensively reinforced concrete masonry units were used for backup and partition walls...Over 5,800 SF of Hadrian limestone and Palamino tile adorns the main entrance lobby, boardroom and executive restrooms. Green glazed tile units (over 15,000 of them) were used in the walls of the cash processing areas as well." That's alotta masonry!

fed3.jpg
[Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, TX by Michael Graves & Associates | image source]

Another reason the MCAA loves this building is because Mr. Graves made the thing look like it was made of GIGANTIC bricks, like a toy model blown up to the scale of a real building inhabited by real people. Those 31,400 blue structural glazed tiles help make the majority of the exterior walls read in this manner; they are the mortar to the 537,000 closure bricks "bricks." It's deplorable, as if Mr. Graves is regressing into a grade-schooler. I'm surprised that the Federal Reserve Bank sees this postmodern playfulness as appropriate for a fairly serious institution. Perhaps they are trying to paint a goofy face on highly secure facility.

fed5.jpg
[Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, TX by Michael Graves & Associates | image source]

That said, I actually like the footprint and massing of the building, the way it fizzles from the pedimented face fronting the highway to the old building it is linked to. The colonnaded roof deck is equally hokey, and maybe unusable during many months in Houston, but it seems to be in the right place. Nevertheless, it does not make up for a design that continues Mr. Graves' treatment of buildings as purely graphic exercises, apparently removed from the considerations of not only occupants but those that are confronted with his buildings on the outside.

fed4.jpg
[Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in Houston, TX by Michael Graves & Associates | image source]


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Coil

[Image: From OnSite.12, Bed Supperclub, Bangkok (2009) by Sebastien Wierinck].

Sebastien Wierinck's public furniture projects seem to lend themselves to some interesting misinterpretations. For instance, when I first saw the two projects pictured here I thought not only that they were one project, but that they were the black tentacles of some kind of furniture-laying machine.

[Image: From OnSite.12, Bed Supperclub, Bangkok (2009) by Sebastien Wierinck].

In other words, I thought, a tangle of black tubes suspended from the ceiling would, when needed, come coiling down to take the shape of whatever furniture you desired at the time: a bench, a table, a love seat, perhaps even a rug.
When you no longer need that particular chair, bench, or nightstand anymore, the coils would simply rewind upward into a canopy of tubes (or perhaps even be withdraw themselves into a machine somewhere in the center of the room, like what's pictured in the first image, above).

[Image: From OnSite.14, Transmediale, Berlin (2009), by Sebastien Wierinck].

After a long day at work, then, you would walk into your house – which has no permanent furniture – and you'd see a shimmering mass of black tubes swaying in a slight evening breeze above your head.
You'd push several buttons, and the system would begin to move, drooping down in long loops and turning back and forth in tight corners and curves, all laying out the forms of temporary furniture – bed, table – as you get ready for a quiet night at home.

[Image: From OnSite.14, Transmediale, Berlin (2009), by Sebastien Wierinck].

Of course, this admittedly somewhat willful misinterpretation of the evidence at hand is not entirely wrong: after all, though Wierinck's pieces don't uncoil from the ceilings in ad hoc patterns, forming zones of temporary furniture throughout empty interiors, they are meant to be (literally) flexible, (somewhat) mobile, and easy enough to reprogram for other spaces.
But what a beautiful thought: that you could walk into an empty room, hit a few buttons, and then watch as custom, temporary furniture is 3D-printed into the space all around you.
Like a strange rain coming down from the ceiling, or the materialization of a dream, usable shapes gradually form – and then you sit, book in hand.
On demand, from above.

(Spotted on SpaceInvading).

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Today's archidose #328


Alabama Veterans Memorial, originally uploaded by Burton24.

Alabama Veteran's Memorial in Birmingham, Alabama by Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio.

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Local Flavor: OSC Revealed

Last week I posted about this local project, and the process in general. The end of the Phase I feasibility study for the Oregon Sustainability Center revealed a very integrated and transparent process culminating in a potential example of cutting edge Veg.itecture in Portland - albeit in need of some visual refinement. I usually turn to my favorite local, Brian Libby, and his great blog Portland Architecture, for the latest insight.


:: image via Portland Architecture

His initial thoughts: "Pictured above is a rendering of the Sustainability Center as it might look once constructed. It would be unfair to judge a building so innovative and so green on its exterior aesthetics. At the same time, it is written in the summary, "The Living Building Challenge is unique, among programs that encourage and evaluate accomplishments in sustainable design, in that it mandates beauty as well as aggressive goals for energy, water and waste systems." It certainly seems like the team has met the aggressive goals. Have they met the beauty mandate? That's a harder goal because it's of course in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I am not crazy about the look of the roof. But of course the design could continue to evolve."

The executive summary has been published, and Libby mentions some highlights here. Now to see if Portland can actually make this thing a reality.

weekend jaunt

A lot has been said in the media lately about local desinations being popular this summer or the 'staycation'. Use this little reminder as your incentive to get out there and see something new: it is the season after all!
Photos of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco (not local, but a destination none the less!).

Friday, June 26, 2009

A gift for your architect.

I saw these creative cufflinks on Ebay and thought they were so clever! Architectural measurements of the actual cufflink of 3/4" x 1/2"; they even got the script right! Yours for only $45 on ebay HERE (PS: I have no affiliation with the seller at all).

Interview at I Dream of Architecture

Brandon Safford's I Dream of Architecture, a new blog I linked to last Monday, has posted an interview with me, in which we discuss architecture, education, blogging, and other fun topics. Accompanying the interview are images from my CCNY Urban Design studio final project (the flip book one) in Lago Agrio, Ecuador.

I Dream of Architecture

Interview Banner

Launch

[Image: All systems go... Original photo by Jim Grossman, courtesy of NASA].

This is just a quick note to get the word out, but I'm falling out of my chair excited to announce that The BLDGBLOG Book – which is finally shipping throughout the English-speaking world, it seems, with people emailing from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the United States to say that their books have arrived – will officially go live on Tuesday, July 7, with a two-hour launch party hosted by the Architectural Association and sponsored by Wired UK.
Here are the details:Plus special guest(s) to be announced! And here's a map.
The basic gist of the evening is to show up, grab a drink at the AA bar (they serve Leffe, one of my favorite beers), take a look at some of the awesome student projects that will be on display that night throughout the building as part of the AA's year-end exhibition (so bring a notebook! there will be cool ideas all over the place and students who deserve the attention), and then wander downstairs to the bookshop and dining area, in the basement, where the "launch" itself will take place.
So come by, have a drink, talk to people, flip through the book, purchase a copy from the AA bookshop, get it signed, do whatever it is that you want with it – enjoy the images, read the interviews, rest your beer on it, show it to people – and just sort of hang out till 8pm or so, when it all comes to a close. It's not formal, and it's not a lecture. If the weather's nice, you can even step outside and enjoy the blue skies of Bedford Square.
Meanwhile, I owe a gigantic thanks to Brett Steele, director of the AA, for hosting this event and Thrilling Wonder Stories last month; to Ben Hammersley, associate editor of Wired UK, for his own interest in all things BLDGBLOG and for bringing me on board last month as contributing editor at the magazine; and to Liam Young, who was absolutely instrumental in seeing these plans come together.
Hope to see you there – and expect a very long post next week about The BLDGBLOG Book itself, which I'm excited to introduce to everyone, finally, now that is has officially hit the shelves.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

National Gallery of Art

I'm loving my new iphone! While at the National Gallery of Art this past weekend I was having fun playing around with it in the front gardens; probably my favorite spot in the city

Even the video function which I never thought I would use is a really fun toy! The front entrance on the Mall is flanked by 2 small identical gardens with these huge, beautiful marble fountains in the center: Enjoy the fountain video- turn up your sound!

Growing the Shrinking City

Following up on the proposed plans for the 'shrinking' city of Detroit, I was excited to see this link from City Farmer News announcing plans for Hantz Farms, set to be the 'World's Largest Urban Farm' using a patchwork of vacant lands on the lower east side. John Hantz, CEO of Hantz Farms explains: "Detroit could be the nation’s leading example of urban farming and become a destination for fresh, local and natural foods and become a major part of the green movement,” said Hantz, a Detroit resident. “Hantz Farms will transform this area into a viable, beautiful and sustainable area that will serve the community, increase the tax base, create jobs and greatly improve the quality of life in an area that has experienced a severe decline in population.”


:: image via City Farmer News

The first phase of the project will plant 70 acres of vegetables and could be operational within six months. The farm will be operated by a Detroit resident, Matt Allen, who explains the potential: "The combination of land consolidation, blight removal, conservation of city services and the beautification of the city itself are just some of the byproducts that will come from our commitment to urban farming,” Allen said. “We’re very excited to be able to make strides in helping to make Detroit a progressive, world-class leader in providing fresh, locally grown food that’s safe and purely Detroit.”


:: image via Hantz Farms

I'm so curious to see the actual proposal for the farm, as we definitely explored some of the challenges and issues during the SDAT last fall in doing this. Not easy, but also not hard, given the pattern of development and multiple benefits that can be had from this scale and type of land use. It's great to see the Detroit-driven initiative taking hold and beginning to realize the potential - as I've mentioned, the opportunity for Detroit to redefine urbanism for the 21st Century is there, and it looks like it's starting to take root.


:: image via Hantz Farms

Read more about this proposal at the Hantz Farms website.

Quick List 12: Of buried machines, ice tunnels, and stratigraphic euphoria

[Image: Photo of the Atlantic Avenue train tunnel taken by Joshua Lott for The New York Times; see below for more information].

In the interest of cleaning out a long file of recommended links, here's a quick list of stories that I've otherwise missed:

—Two brothers in Louisiana are ridding their property of 40-year old levees: "In what experts are calling the biggest levee-busting operation ever in North America, the brothers plan to return the muddy river to its ancient floodplain, coaxing back plants and animals that flourished there when President Thomas Jefferson first had the land surveyed in 1804."

—"Flu pandemics may lurk in frozen lakes," Wired Science warns. "The next flu pandemic may be hibernating in an Arctic glacier or frozen Siberian lake, waiting for rising temperatures to set it free. Then birds can deliver it back to civilization." I'm reminded here of the novel Cold Plague by Daniel Kalla, which I somewhat inexplicably read on a plane ride from New York to San Francisco this spring; the book's story goes that a bottled water company has begun to ship and sell drinking water pumped from Antarctica's subglacial Lake Vostok – a lake briefly mentioned in BLDGBLOG's earlier interview with Kim Stanley Robinson – only to discover that a prion is in the water, causing irreparable brain damage and eventual death in everyone who drinks it... In any case, the Wired Science article quotes a scientist who "thinks migrating waterfowl regularly deliver influenza viruses to Arctic glaciers and lakes, where it becomes frozen in ice. When the ice melts, birds pick the virus up and transport it back south where it can infect humans." Amazing. Nature's secret virus cycles.

—While we're on the subject of ice, check out this brief video shot inside the tunnels beneath Greenland's melting ice sheet: "Unique video footage taken hundreds of metres inside the ice has revealed a complex subglacial network of interconnecting tunnels that carry water from the surface to deep inside the ice sheet," we read in the Guardian. These tunnels, however, are one of the primary threats to the very existence of the ice sheet, lubricating the glacier's accelerating slippage off of Greenland's rocky base.

—Two cool links from Noah Shachtman's Danger Room: "Military Scientists Explore Planet Hacking" (also see the climate change chapter of the The BLDGBLOG Book for more) and "Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning" (perhaps the future of global warfare will look not unlike medieval sorcery, hurling lightning at one another from desert mountaintops).

[Image: Lightning storm over Boston, ca. 1967; photo courtesy of NOAA's NOAA's National Weather Service Collection].

—Adventures in applied acoustics: according to a short article in Mother Jones, "Dangerous red tides that kill fish and marine mammals and are toxic, even carcinogenic, to humans, might be destroyed using bursts of ultrasound." Audio warfare installations lining the Gulf Coast will vibrate red tides out of existence.

—Krispy Kreme doughnuts – which I was shocked to see all over Melbourne, Australia, on my visit last month – aren't just bad for your arteries: "doughnut grease and other waste from a plant in Lorton have clogged up the county's sewage system, causing $2 million in damage." In fact, "The muck got so bad that a nearby pumping station began reeking of doughnuts, and a camera inserted into one of the pipes 'got stuck in the grease, preventing inspection of the remainder of the line'." The Lorton mentioned here is Lorton, Virginia – but I suspect they'll start seeing the same problems Down Under...

—Finally, many people will already know the story behind the discovery, in 1980, of the Atlantic Avenue train tunnel in Brooklyn, an underground viaduct that had otherwise lain abandoned beneath the city. If you don't know it, the story is awesome. Now, however, Bob Diamond, the man who discovered the tunnel, believes that there's yet more down there to find: "Behind a wall in the tunnel, near Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street, he believes, there is a steam locomotive lying on its side like an abandoned toy train, in 'pristine condition, a virtual time capsule.' And he wants to dig it up." I absolutely love the idea of exhuming buried machines from the surface of the city. I'm tangentially reminded of the bizarre story of the Air Loom Gang – in which an "influencing machine" controlled by British Parliament was accused of exerting mind control upon the citizenry – only re-imagining that story today, with a kind of modernday James Tilly Matthews convinced that the buried enginery of the city around him has begun to influence the thoughts of all the people he knows... He descends into the tunnels and basements of the city, armed with ground-penetrating radar, performing magnetic archaeology on every wall and floor, detecting the hulking, Lovecraftian shapes of machines whose existence other people so vehemently deny. In any case, I'm thrilled by the idea that, somewhere beneath your own apartment complex, in the stratigraphic euphoria of the city, there might be an abandoned train – in fact, there's an earlier post here on BLDGBLOG about something remarkably similar.

(Links via delicious.com/bfunk, delicious.com/rgreco, delicious.com/javierarbona, and Steve Silberman. Previous Quick Lists: 11, X, 9, 8, etc. etc.).

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Origin and Detour

It's hard for me to read stories about human origins without feeling like there's some kind of agenda at work, buried just beneath the surface. Modern humans are not African at all, the Piltdown hoax would have had us believe; our ancestors, lost to deep time, were in fact properly English, an anthropological pseudo-discovery that came just in time, its advocates hoped, to help save the British Empire's reputation... or at least to boost a few specific careers.
Nonetheless, I'm something of an addict for stories about human origins.

[Image: A portrait of the Piltdown forgery in action, by John Cooke (1915); Richard Fortey's recent book Dry Storeroom No. 1 has a great chapter on Piltdown].

Caught up in all of this are the fantasies of belonging that different origin stories allow us to project upon the present. For instance, if you feel at home in the grasslands of South Dakota, can you say it's because you are "from" the plains of Africa? Or, if you love living in the American southwest, is it because humans really originated in the desert valleys of the Middle East? You're simply sensing that deeper attachment?
In this context, the eroded riverine landscape of Olduvai Gorge has become something of the ultimate origin point for all of us, giving geological form to an idea so extraordinarily abstract (our very origins as living creatures) that its value is at least as much rhetorical as it is scientific.
I mention all this, though, because an article published earlier this month in New Scientist suggested that modern humankind's primordial African ancestors might themselves have been immigrants – having walked south after a much earlier and, until now, undocumented evolutionary appearance in Europe.
Referred to casually as an "into Africa" scenario – as opposed to an "out of Africa" one – this would mean that "our ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans are thought to have evolved."
Europe, in this model, is the origin, Olduvai Gorge a mere inn along the way.
I don't mean to overplay the possible political interpretations here – although I do want to say again that I simply cannot read stories like this without wondering what might be at stake in the acceptance of their conclusions, and if there isn't a certain amount of wish-fulfillment going on (finally, Europe is the center once again!) – but do check out the original short article for more.
At the very least, it's worth asking what might happen if we do make it all the way down to the very point of human origin – to that germinal site of all future reference and emanation – only to discover that it's a meaningless detour.
Beneath the foundations, are there always deeper foundations?

(Also on BLDGBLOG: Early Man Site).

Infrastructure as Advertisement

For $200,000 a year, guaranteed for 20 years, totaling no less than $4 million, you could have the second-busiest subway station in Brooklyn named after you... or your product.
This station, "the nexus of subway stops at Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn," we read in The New York Times, is about to be sold, however, to Barclays, becoming Barclays Station.
“They can call it anything they want, as long as my train’s on time,” one regular commuter quips – but to what extent is that really true?

[Image: The Chrysler Building – a sponsored building – montaged by Flickr-user Chalky Lives].

For instance, the same article cites several rejected proposals for the renaming of urban infrastructure – but $4 million is not, in many contexts, even a very large sum of money.
Super Bowl ads famously cost as much as $6 million dollars a minute – in which case $4 million for twenty years' worth of public exposure is almost absurdly underpriced. In fact, the average marketing budget of a Hollywood blockbuster could quite easily absorb the cost of renaming a minor New York City subway station for the next decade – well into that film's second life of digital sales, that is – and, to use another example, buildings are still known as, say, the Die Hard Building twenty years after the fact, even if they were never official renamed.
Somewhat bizarrely, for instance, I read literally just today that screenwriter Joe Eszterhas was paid $3 million, in 1992 dollars, for writing Basic Instinct – but he could simply have had a Manhattan subway station named after him.
Eszterhas Central.
Perhaps Shia LaBeouf should forego monetary payment altogether for the next Indiana Jones film – and get a new freeway in Los Angeles named after him.
In any case, as private sponsorship of public space becomes the urban norm, will we see acts of infrastructure becoming little more than spatially immersive forms of corporate advertisement?
If a Stephen King novel coming out next year had a small bridge in Maine named after it – for the next twenty years – the It 2 Bridge – surely this would not be a bad way to give King's novel near-permanent cultural exposure?
Put another way, why buy one minute of Super Bowl time when you could buy twenty years' worth of high-density urban exposure, associating a certain sidewalk, bridge, museum, or subway station with you and/or your product?
I'm reminded of the recent news that Kentucky Fried Chicken had branded paving installed atop Louisville potholes – fixing the city's broken streets even while reminding everyone who lived there where they could buy fried breast meat.
Jason Kottke points out, after all, that institutions such as Rockefeller Center and Columbia University are also sponsored, in the literal sense that their names were allocated way back when based on who supplied the money. The Chrysler Building is another obvious example.
In the end, then, if you went to work each day boarding the subway at Terminator Salvation Station, surely at least for someone born today, taking that commute in twenty years' time wouldn't even seem that strange?
Sponsor a tectonic plate. Sponsor a moment in time. Sponsor fifteen minutes of foreign bombing: "Aid raids over Afghanistan today were brought to you by Target™..."
When will urban or national infrastructure simply become another form of advertisement?
Perhaps it won't even be long before we start sponsoring lifeforms – newly discovered rain forest birds named after a Latinized version of Bayer, or entire new microorganisms engineered from scratch in university labs, named after the next film from Pixar.

(Via @nicolatwilley and kottke.org).

Today's archidose #327

Here's a couple views of the Mount Bonnell residence in Austin, Texas by Dick Clark Architecture. Photographs are by dick clark_dca.

mount bonnell modern architecture

mount bonnell modern architecture

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The Danger of Digging Deeper

Artificial earthquakes triggered by deep-crust drilling operations have always been of interest here, and The New York Times brings the idea back into the media cycle today with a new article – complete with a sidebar titled "The Danger of Digging Deeper."
Don't miss the interactive graphic.

[Images: Geothermal projects and earthquake clusters in northern California; graphics by Hannah Fairfield, Xaquín G.V., James Glanz, and Erin Aigner for The New York Times].

So the scene this time is the countryside two hours north of San Francisco, with a company called AltaRock. "Residents of the region, which straddles Lake and Sonoma Counties," we read, "have already been protesting swarms of smaller earthquakes set off by a less geologically invasive set of energy projects there. AltaRock officials said that they chose the spot in part because the history of mostly small quakes reassured them that the risks were limited."
Serious seismic problems arise when you begin to tap into – and then break through – very deep rocks. The reference case for The New York Times here is something that happened in Basel, Switzerland, back in 2006 (a seismic event mentioned briefly in The BLDGBLOG Book). The specific drilling technique used in Basel, we read, was one that "created earthquakes because it requires injecting water at great pressure down drilled holes to fracture the deep bedrock."
    The opening of each fracture is, literally, a tiny earthquake in which subterranean stresses rip apart a weak vein, crack or fault in the rock. The high-pressure water can be thought of loosely as a lubricant that makes it easier for those forces to slide the earth along the weak points, creating a web or network of fractures.
A very similar technique, however, will soon be put into widespread use in northern California. There, in the foggy hills and forests, AltaRock "has received its permit from the federal Bureau of Land Management to drill its first hole on land leased to the Northern California Power Agency, but still awaits a second permit to fracture rock."
One resident awesomely points out: “If they were creating tornadoes, they would be shut down immediately. But because it’s under the ground, where you can’t see it, and somewhat conjectural, they keep doing it.”
Artificial tornadoes! The U.S. wind industry should take note.

[Image: Artificial terrain rises from below... A screenshot from Fracture by LucasArts].

In many ways, I'm reminded of the game Fracture by LucasArts, in which "terrain deformation" is deployed as a central part of gameplay. You use weapons like Tectonic Grenades to generate new and temporary, but militarily significant, geographic features: hills, valleys, moraines.
Putting these two stories together, though, perhaps an interesting plot emerges...
You find yourself driving north out of San Francisco one fall, hoping to do some hiking – but the further north you go, the more you notice slight tremors. Every few minutes, there's an earthquake – and some of them are rather large.
Soon, things start to look unfamiliar. You thought you knew this landscape from previous travels, but it no longer looks quite right. There are hills where you don't remember hills being. The road itself, freshly paved and by all indication brand new, weaves and winds around lulls and rises that aren't marked on the map – and the map was printed six months ago.
Finally, you reach your hotel around nightfall, only to experience another set of small earthquakes shake the ground. The clerk laughs as you try to sign for your room, because your signature comes out all wobbly as another temblor strikes. Your suitcase falls over.
"Am I gonna get any sleep tonight?" you ask, trying to play it funny.
But then, at 7am the next morning, your investigations begin...
Turns out, in a geologically-themed science fiction film directed by Roger Donaldson, from a screenplay by BLDGBLOG, that deep drilling operations by a foreign geothermal consortium have been "unlocking" certain well-faulted portions of subsurface bedrock; huge masses within the earth's surface then rise or fall, slipping sometimes quite quickly, thus drastically altering the visible landscape... and causing thousands of earthquakes each year.
The surface of the earth is being rearranged from below.
In any case, check out the New York Times for more.

(Thanks to Nicola Twilley for the tip!)