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Thursday, July 31, 2008
Toyota Supra underwent a few minor changes for 1998. The exterior remained the same, except for the removal of the Anniversary emblems on the front fenders. Inside, a new 3-spoke steering wheel replaced the previous 4-spoke wheel, the cloth sport seats had a bolder design, and the radio was redesigned. The Naturally Aspirated I6 got Variable Valve Technology with Intelligence (VVT-i), which lead to an increase of 5 bhp and 10 lb-ft over the year before. The Twin Turbo I6 remained unchanged. The 5-speed manual transmission was dropped, even though the 6-speed manual was still available only on the Twin Turbo. Therefore, the base model was only available with an automatic. Faced with declining sales for Japanese super cars, this would be the last year that the Toyota Supra would be sold in the U.S.
for detail of Toyota Supra history,go to musclecarclub.com
An archive in the archives:
1) World Wetlands Day, or: why we should sacrifice virgins to wetlands!
2) Floridian Theatrum Machinarum, or: the multi-decade, multi-billion dollar restoration of the Everglades!
3) Dispatches from a Post-Water Chicago, or: how to remake Chicago in the image of its own motto, Urbs in Horto, the City in a Garden!
4) Hyperlocalizing Hydrology in the Post-Industrial Urban Landscape, or: Portland's amazing green street projects!
5) Treating Cancer with Landscape Architecture, or: why covering up reservoirs with plastic balls is super lame!
6) Treating Acid Mine Drainage in Vintondale, or: how to make the future truly brighter!
7) The Return of the Sewer Divers, or: Illinois as the sewage treatment plant to the country!
8) We ♥ Wetland Machines, or: We ♥ Alan Berger!
Quito 1: Paisajes Emergentes
Tempelhof See
The Wetland Machine of Sidwell
The Wetland Machines of Ayala
Ur-wetlands
Prison Wetlands
Marsh Condenser
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Meet the 12-TET Rover. What The New York Times once described as a “shape-changing jungle gym” is, in fact, one of NASA's future extraterrestrial explorers, designed to carry out its mission without much guidance from earth-bound ground controllers.
This autonomy is enabled, in part, by its skeletal frame — 26 extendable metal rods forming 12 tetrahedrons, hence the name — which allows the rover to “reconfigure itself into almost any shape” and adapt to terrains and situations that scientists have not foreseen. So “across flat terrain, it would roll like tumbleweed. It could pull itself, almost catlike, onto rocks or flatten itself and slither through holes.”
You can see it in action in an animation that's available for download at NASA's Autnonomous NanoTechnology Swarm website. The movie file, by the way, is 633.7 MB. Consider yourself warned.
Apparently, there's a prototype roaming a hallway somewhere. You can see it in action here [17.8 MB] and here [5.1 MB].
When not tumbling through the digitized surface of other worlds, these rovers have been drafted by the military for urban reconnaissance or hunting down certain cave dwellers.
Meet the TET Warfighter and its camouflaged pneumatic body.
In many ways, these images remind us of a thesis project by Elena Wiersma, published a few years ago in 306090 07: Landscape Within Architecture.
Quoting Wiersma:
The thesis is a critical response to Bruce Peninsula National Park's plan to build a new visitor center on a very tame site far from the wild shores of Georgian Bay. The images and text that follow portray an architectural fantasy that proposes, instead, to inhabit the interior landscape of the Bruce Peninsula.
So rather than experiencing the landscape from afar, you are inserted into the interior wilderness of carved bedrock, ancient limestone towers, dark fissures and underground rivers. Instead of outhouses, you will be inhabiting a labyrinth of abysses.
In the proposed scheme, an access and guidance system enables people to climb down into fissures and caverns, mimicking cedar tree roots on the site. Flrexible stainless steel attachments and fittings are inserted into fissures in the rock and hold a network of cedar roots imported to the site from harvested forests. The stainless steel structure mimics fossils, or coral bones, and the roots age and become part of the landscape.
And:
In contrast to the park's philosophy of interpreting the wilderness through a building set apart from the wild, the schematic and imagined access proposal of the thesis do not control or tame the wilderness. The wild space of the interior of the rock of the Bruce Peninsula crosses the boundary of personal safety and loss of identity, and revels in the unconscious. It is through our own inner wild that we respond to the natural and relate to the remaining wilderness.
Here are some images:
In a Metropolis micro-interview of Martha Schwartz, we learn that her dream job is to design “a national park in eastern Nevada, where we join together abandoned gold mines—that have just been left there to rot—and redesign them.”
How marvelous would it be, as part of the master plan to link them all together, to deploy NASA's TET rovers into these mines. In addition to using these skeletal tetrahedral frames as geological armatures, to hold back the earth and facilitate access, they will also bore through the bedrock, drilling new passages and eroding caverns to dwarf the nave of St. Peter's, wherein they will lock into place as columns, arches and internal buttresses.
A few centuries from now, landscape architects will go spelunking through this subterranean park. They are actually postulants to a secret society of Freemasons that had splintered off from the American Society of Landscape Architecture. As part of their Masonic initiation rites, these future stewards of the earth must first immerse themselves in the abyss; it's baptism by artificial voids. To become better caretakers of the environment, they must encounter the fullness, the exquisite grandeur, the terrifying unconscious indifference of the landscape.
As they descend deeper and deeper, as their bodies and identities begin to dissolve into the rocks, they must ask of themselves: “How deeply am I willing to go into the wilderness?”
Animaris geneticus, or: Intergalactic planetary landscape architect
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Of course, we have to return for a third time back to P-REX, this time to single out one of their projects, the Pontine Systemic Design.
The result of Alan Berger's year as the Prince Charitable Trust Rome Prize recipient in Landscape Architecture, at the American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with Case Brown, this project proposes to “re-introduce a gigantic new wetland machine” to cleanse and adaptively reuse one of the highly polluted zones of Italy's Lazio region, the drained Pontine Marshes. It is both a productive filtration system and a regional recreation area.
Quoting the project summary at length:
Choosing a gigantic, consolidated wetland site will likely be more viable in the complex patchwork of land ownership. Given Latina’s situation distributed treatment areas would be both enormously complex to purchase and ineffective to manage. The Wetland Machine’s dimensions are directly related to the amount of wetland area needed to treat the amount of water in the Canale Aque Alte—the major collector for this highly polluted zone. At 220 l/s, with a load around 50+ mg/l of N, at least 2 square kilometers of treatment wetland will be required. The design retro-fits and widens existing canals to serve as flow distributors. Furthermore, soil cut/fill operations are used for terraforming shallow ridges and valleys to hold/treat water and make raised areas for new public space and program. At 2.3 sq. km., the new wetland machine will drastically improve the regional water supply and provide needed open space for recreation. At only 6 km from Latina, the site could house programs and environments almost completely lacking in the region—large open landscapes with diverse vegetation. Extensive edge habitat diversity or programs—shallow shoals for juvenile fish and swimming, starker edges for fishing and water storage.
Early this summer, the President of Latina Province launched a feasibility study to evaluate the potential of this wetland machine.
There are more fascinating projects at P-REX. If you are at all interested in how to adapt entropic landscapes — such as abandoned mine pits mountains of slag and pools of cyanice, vacant urban lands, landfills and former military installations — in a holistic, multi-layered strategy for future productive use and more sustainable outcomes, let Alan Berger and his colleagues show you how.
POSTSCRIPT #1: The New York Times on Alan Berger and the Pontine project. ““The solution has to be as artificial as the place. We are trying to invent an ecosystem in the midst of an entirely engineered, polluted landscape,” says Berger.
POSTSCRIPT #2: Much earlier, The New York Times tagged along with the landscape architect and his class to a severely polluted mining area in Colorado.
Mercedes Benz Brabus , as usual, a very nice stand with almost the whole range on show.Several of the cars were equipped with this engine, Brabus´
version of the twin-turbo V12 called SV12, first introduced in the
Maybach but also powering Mercedes´ 600-models. Brabus has increased
the displacement from 5,5 litres to 6,3 litres which is achieved through
the installation of a unique steel-billet crankshaft, larger diameter
lightweight alloy pistons and precision-balanced connecting-rods.
The engine is also fitted with sport camshafts, precision-machined
cylinder heads, a high-performance sport exhaust system and reprogrammed
engine electronics. The engine is amazingly powerful, 640 bhp at 5100
rpm and a maximum torque of 1026 NM from 1750 rpm. This engine is
available for the SL-, CL- and S600 and the upgrade costs 44900 EURO
plus an installation cost of 1980 EURO. But it is also available in
the E-class in a model called EV12. The EV12 is only available as
a complete car, built in exclusive small-series production, which
means that you can´t upgrade your standard E500 with the V12-engine,
you have to buy the EV12 directly from Brabus. It is one of the most
amazing 4-door cars ever built.
the Audi Q5 as an Audi A4 Avant that can wade through 20 inches of standing water and scramble across a mildly muddy two-track trail. The standard Quattro all-wheel-drive system has the same 40:60, rear-drive biased torque distribution, and the Audi Q5 packs the same sweet 265 hp 3.2-liter V6 with 243 lb.-ft. of torque. The engine is paired with a ZF six-speed automatic, and Audi estimates the combination will net 17 mpg city and 24 mpg highway. If we're honest, that is a bit disappointing, especially when compared to the powertrains they'll offer in the homeland. German Audi Q5s can be had with three of Audi's most impressive engines—the four-cylinder gasoline 2.0 TFSI, and two diesels: a thrifty 2.0 TDI or the powerhouse 3.0 TDI V6, which belts out 407 lb.-ft. of torque. Oh yes, they all get better mileage than our V6.
The Audi Q5 cabin is nearly identical to the A4's, which is no bad thing. It is all quite intuitively designed, right to the flip-down rear seats, which are easily actuated from the cargo area. Only leather will be offered, and upscale niceties like a climate-controlled cup holder and ventilated front seats can be optioned. Audi's MMI (Muti-Media Interface) is much improved too, with small pop-up windows sliding onto the screen to note temperature or seat heat adjustments. The navigation system now shows details on buildings, and can be viewed in "bird's eye" format—quite chic, indeed. But we'd still like to have touchscreen controls.
Jiji Press reported that Toyota Motor Corp. is considering raising prices in Japan of its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car and luxury models, company officials said.
The Japanese auto industry leader is expected to raise prices by one to 3 pct on average due to soaring costs of raw materials such as steel, informed sources said.
The company is likely to make a final decision as early as August and start introducing new pricing by the end of this year, the sources said.
It will be the first time for Toyota to raise its vehicle prices without model changes since 1992, when the company increased prices for some commercial vehicles.
Unlike the United States, it is unusual for Japanese automakers to raise prices without remodeling. But other Japanese automakers are highly likely to follow suit as they also struggle with higher costs.
Toyota seems to be finding it easy to raise the prices of the Prius and luxury models because their sales are apparently less vulnerable to a price increase than other lineups including smaller cars.
The Prius is in short supply because of its strong demand. Higher materials prices take a heavier toll on the Prius than on other models because the hybrid car uses a lot of rare metals, of which prices are rising steeply. [ theautochannel.com ]
Monday, July 28, 2008
The famed beaches of Malibu are public; you are the owners.
However, there seems to be a concerted effort to confuse the public, to make one feel like a criminal trespasser in some exclusive enclave of millionaires and celebutants. If you aren't met by security guards at the very few public access entrances, this after navigating through barriers just to get to public parking lots, there are signs warning you that you are passing through “private property” and entering a “private beach.”
There are signs everywhere: “No Parking Any Time”, “No Stopping”, “Right to pass by permission” — the majority of which are false and illegal. It's as if the aristocracy along Central Park West and 5th Avenue has conspired to keep the public away from Central Park.
To see that the public is properly instructed on how to access the beach — your beach — the Los Angeles Urban Rangers provides an easy-to-use field guide [PDF]. From their website, you can also download a reprinted article, by Jenny Price, from LA Observed that gives you more detail.
Having both with you shouldn't necessitate carrying copies of the California Coastal Act and the state's constitution.
For those who are in Los Angeles this weekend, you can also sign up to a “safari” organized by the urban rangers, who will teach you how to navigate those invisible lines separating private-property and public lands. A “public easement potluck” is also scheduled on your beach.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History has made available for download historical photographs of its permanent and temporary exhibits. There are photographs of the museum's dinosaur displays and many more of its famous dioramas. All are in black & white.
Perhaps the most interesting from the catalog are the ones showing the museum staff preparing those exhibits. You see in those photographs landscape facsimiles in various stages of recreation; creatures undressed or nearly dressed; ethology imprinted on a three-dimensional canvas; and exterior habitats crammed into architectural spaces.
So marvelous are these bunch that we are going to post a lot of them.
Meanwhile, we have to mention at this point a very early episode of Chicago Public Radio's This American Life, titled Simulated Worlds. In the second act — just after we meet some Civil War reenactors who don't wear underwear and also after we get a tour of a wax museum and a fake coal mine but before we hear about host Ira Glass's visit with an actual medieval scholar to a Medieval Times dinner theater in suburban Chicago — writer Jack Hitt gives us a short history of dinosaur displays.
According to Hitt, dinosaur displays are not entirely the product of accumulated scientific data, of empirical truth. They are cultural artifacts, our “national psychic erector sets which we've put together in different ways depending on our mood.”
During the first decades of the 20th century, the AMNH posed its T. rex bones in an upright position, propped on its tail. Skeletons were broken, some bent and others removed altogether so that it looked like the “marauding predator” people thought they were. And also so that it didn't look too diminutive in the large exhibition hall. Natural history as a function of architecture: it had to reach high up to the ceiling, fill up all that space, loom large over the crowds. This was, after all, the time of P.T. Barnum, “when you put up your most fantastic stuff in your museum or your circus” in order to attract more people than your competitors.
This was also the time of America's ascendancy. Transcribing Jack Hitt:
These creatures had slept forever and now they were upright for the first time in a hundred million years. What had put them up on their feet literally was the wrought iron strength of Pittsburgh steel, the American industrial revolution. But the exact dates are also timely. The brontosaurus went up in 1906 and the T. rex in 1912, just before World War I, when the slumbering giant of America awoke. To the Europeans we were still a friendly, dumb rube of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but we were about to prove ourselves as international warriors. The crowds that flooded through New York's museum saw two images: the affable but dimmed brontosaurus, and across the aisle, the berserk rage of T. rex. Friendly until agitated, then fury, which is how the world came to see us: an amiable, joshing hick who, if provoked, will kick your ass.
A few decades later, after World War II, dinosaurs were presented in more animated positions, sometimes in “outrageous poses.” They were “jimmied into action poses, locked into face to face combat like two upright grizzly bears or [?] ready to assault. This was the 50s dinosaur, the dinosaur of kitsch. They were no longer held up together by steel but animated by plastic, the essence of America at the time, a substance and a future entirely of our own making.”
In the 80s, dinosaurs gained a new persona. “No longer was the dinosaur a slow, dimmed monster. Now he was a slick, swift, calculating hunter: the Velociraptor. A 6-foot tall predatory entrepeneur, who learned and adopted quickly. He was the perfect dinosaur for global capitalism, who'd eventually starred in a bestselling book and movie, Jurrassic Park.”
As for the 90s, the decade had the eco-saur. Jack Hitt here describes a dinosaur exhibition at the AMNH, then new when this episode first aired in 1996:
We see dinosaur eggs and baby dinosaurs. The ambience is largely about parenting. The scene is more ecological and holistic. We are meant to see these animals as part of the natural ecosystem of their time. Eggs, babies, parents, death, bones. This is a story about the the cycles of life. A warmer tale, a greener tale. This is a story of dinosaurs not as George Patton would see them but as Al Gore would: emblems of a proper view of the environment. The eco-saur, who's seen the light of family values and the beauty of biodiversity.
In an era when the role of America is uncertain, when solutions to many of its problems are unclear, our nation's dinosaur exhibits speak directly to our time in bright yellow stickers attached directly to the display cases. That message: we just don't know.
And like the dinosaurs dying out, that's “probably not a bad thing.”
In any case, more photos! Including this seemingly contemporary snapshot of a bear confronting its own simulation, predating both Jean Baudrillard and Damien Hirst by decades.
Would we have to reassess the history of Abstract Expressionism if we were to discover that this taxidermist was Robert Rauschenberg's lover and that the artist's found objects were not appropriated from the streets and trash heaps of New York City but were actually pilfered from the museum's workrooms during their nighttime trysts?
And the rest.
Marvelous indeed.
Simulated Worlds
