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Monday, November 8, 2010
If you're around Burbank, CA, this Thursday, November 11, and are interested in arid water systems, then consider attending a lecture by Aziza Chaouni and Liat Margolis at the Arid Lands Institute, Woodbury University. Titled Out of Water: Innovative Technologies in Arid Climates, they will cover recent research projects in Morocco, the Sahara, and the Israel/Jordan/Palestine watershed that showcase contemporary design strategies for managing water scarcity.
If you can't make it, there is still their Out of Water website. It archives some of the projects included in their traveling exhibition and no doubt will be featured in their lecture.
Their talk, meanwhile, is part of a very interesting lecture series.
The human need for water has ordered landscapes, given rise to culture, and shaped architecture + urban form throughout history.
Excavating Innovation: The History and Future of Drylands Design examines the role of water engineering in shaping public space and city form, by using arid and semi-arid sites in India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the New World to explore how dryland water systems throughout history have formed and been formed by ritual, hygiene, gender, technology, governance, markets, and, perhaps above all, power.
The line-up of speakers is stellar. The first was our hero, Katherine Rinne, whose ongoing research project, Aquae Urbis Romae, “examines the 3,000-year history of water infrastructure and urban development in Rome.” Her upcoming publication, The Waters of Rome, is a much eagerly awaited book. Here's the blurb:
In this pioneering study of the water infrastructure of Renaissance Rome, urban historian Katherine Rinne offers a new understanding of how technological and scientific developments in aqueduct and fountain architecture helped turn a medieval backwater into the preeminent city of early modern Europe. Supported by the author’s extensive topographical research, this book presents a unified vision of the city that links improvements to public and private water systems with political, religious, and social change. Between 1560 and 1630, in a spectacular burst of urban renewal, Rome’s religious and civil authorities sponsored the construction of aqueducts, private and public fountains for drinking, washing, and industry, and the magnificent ceremonial fountains that are Rome’s glory. Tying together the technological, sociopolitical, and artistic questions that faced the designers during an age of turmoil in which the Catholic Church found its authority threatened and the infrastructure of the city was in a state of decay, Rinne shows how these public works projects transformed Rome in a successful marriage of innovative engineering and strategic urban planning.
The speaker scheduled for next week is Morna Livingston, author of a book on Indian stepwells.
From the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, the people of western India built stone cisterns to collect the water of the monsoon rains and keep it accessible for the remaining dry months of the year. These magnificent structures—known as stepwells or stepped ponds—are much more than utilitarian reservoirs. Their lattice-like walls, carved columns, decorated towers, and intricate sculpture make them exceptional architecture, while their very presence tells much about the region's ecology and history. For these past 500 years, stepwells have been an integral part of western Indian communities as sites for drinking, washing, and bathing, as well as for colorful festivals and sacred rituals. Steps to Water traces the fascinating history of stepwells, from their Hindu origins, to their zenith during Muslim rule, and eventual decline under British occupation. It also reflects on their current use, preservation, and place in Indian communities. In stunning color and quadtone photographs and drawings, Steps to Water reveals the depth of the stepwells' beauty and their intricate details, and serves as a lens on these fascinating cultural and architectural monuments.
A “magnificent architectural solution to the seasonality of the water supply” in India they may be, but our favorite use for them is as the stage for the spectacular death scene of Charles Darwin, the naturalist, and Wallace, his companion monkey and fellow lepidopterist.
The titles of the other two scheduled lectures, Canalscape: Ancient and Contemporary Infrastructures of Phoenix and Indigenous Infrastructure and the Urban Water Crisis: Perspectives from Asia, make us wish they were going to be streamed online.
Monday, August 17, 2009
A quick postscript to our previous post on the Out of Water Project: you can now browse the website that's been set up for the exhibition and its forthcoming book version. Just a few of the projects have been uploaded, though we're assuming more will be online in the coming months.
If you know of a case study or a technology for collection, conversion and distribution of water sources in arid climates — or if you have a project of your own — and want it to be considered for inclusion in the book, send an email to info @ oowproject dot com.
Meanwhile, this week is World Water Week.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Out of Water Project is both a traveling exhibition and a book scheduled to be published by Birkhauser Publishers in 2010.
Organized by Liat Margolis, co-author of Living Systems, and Aziza Chaouni, of Bureau E.A.S.T., the exhibition currently features 24 international case studies of innovative projects and technologies for water scarcity on multiple scale, plus 10 Futures Scenarios designed by invited young designers such as Fletcher Studio, Proxy and MatSys. The book will be more comprehensive in scope and will include a set of self-generated mappings of global water scarcity, as well as an in-depth catalogue of cross-referenced case studies and future scenarios.
The exhibition will travel to Ohio State University this Fall semester. Previously, it was presented at the Daniels Faulty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto. Mason White, who is a faculty member there, posted some of the projects in his blog, InfraNet Lab.
Below are some of the other projects, courtesy of Liat Margolis.
One is Porous Skin by Wayne Jenski.
Quoting the project brief in full: “Porous adaptive membrane was developed as a deployable structure for a clinic for Doctors without Borders. The membrane consists of dispersed micro-pore structures. Those form a series of self-adjusting thermal flues, intended to regulate the temperature of the air as well as the collection of air-borne moisture. The morphology of the pore was developed to open and close in response to changes in ambient temperature, solar gain and humidity. The skin, through its pores collects, then conveys condensation via an inner skin down to a large water bladder. The bladder acts as the foundation ballast but is also used to filter and store local water for sanitation and drinking use. Condensation replenishes water supply. The bladder is oriented to absorb solar energy, utilizing the water as a heat sink to filter the collected water by solar radiation. Both skin and bladder operate in accordance with solar radiation to collect, convey and convert water.”
Another documents an existing infrastructure for effluent reclamation in Israel. The main organization in charge of this is KKL (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael), or JNF in English (Jewish National Fund), which is the philantropic organization overseeing all aforestation projects in Israel for the last 50 years. In the last 20 years or so, they started building waste water recycling infrastructure for agricultural irrigation.
Again quoting the project brief in full: “Israel's reuse of wastewater accounts for 75% of crop irrigation and alleviates severe shortage of drinking water, which is comprised of 10% desalinated water (project to increase to 50% in the next 20 years). Without treated effluent, intensive agriculture would be impossible. This national program (KKL-JNF) consists of an interlinked network of over 200 open-air reservoirs, with static volume of 150 MCM and a dynamic volume (emptying and refilling) of 270 MCM of treated effluent a year. Those distribute water seasonally via an extensive pipe infrastructure. In the case of the Jezreel Valley, the most production valley in Israel, 15-20 MCM of effluent per year enable irrigation of 4000 ha of cotton . While loaded with fertilizing nutrients, effluent environmental quality is significantly ungraded due to settling and oxygenation, microbial breakdown of remaining organic matter, and UV to suppress pathogens.”
Next is a network of water storage units by Ruth Kedar. It is modeled after indigenous water management systems.
Yet again quoting the project brief in full: “The cistern is a contemporary adaptation of historical and regional desert technologies. The modular storage structure utilizes available and pre-cast concrete to offer a kit of parts that can be sized and aggregated according to the catchment area, topographical conditions, and inhabitant demand. The cistern network is modeled after the Nabatean systems of runoff agriculture, which used very low channels and surface modification to collect water from great catchment areas. The reservoir employs the principles of the Qanat, an underground tunnel that diverts runoff into a series of vertical wells. Each cistern is outfitted with an outlet to interlink them together, but also allow for diversion toward irrigation. As the need for water increases, the system can be expanded to accommodate additional catchment and storage. Specifying a smaller reservoir and a shorter exposed conveyance distance can reduce evaporation.
Last is the Dixon Land Imprinting Machine, which was covered by InfraNet Lab but it's so cool that we're going to replicate it here and enter it into our archives.
Final copy-paste: “Absorptive soil ensures against the devastation wrought by the twin desertification hazards of drought and deluge. The Dixon Land Imprinting machine restores the microroughness and macroporosity of compacted and barren soil to accelerate infiltration and revegetation processes. It is most effective in areas with low rainfall, degraded-, brushy-, rocky-, sandy-, and clayey soils, overgrazed ranges and abandoned agricultural land. The roller drops seeds onto the soil surface and imbeds them in the imprint surfaces. The imprinter forms interconnected water shedding and absorbing v-pockets, which function as rain fed micro-irrigation system. Down-slope furrows feed rainwater into cross-slope furrows where it collects and infiltrates. Revegetation is rapid because the imprints hold rainwater in place and captures seed, water and windblown plant litter, which works as mulch to suppress evaporation.”
We'll be pining for the rest of the projects, and if permitted, we'll post them here as they come in. We will certainly be posting updates on where and when the exhibition will be traveling to next. Keep a look out here for those.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Remember in our post last month about the Tarim Desert Highway when we said it would be worthwhile to track down some of the research that went into protecting the road from the creeping sand dunes? We've been doing just that since then, though scientific journals being what they are, we kept stumbling into firewalls after firewalls. In other words, all that we have gathered so far are abstracts, which are perhaps fine for now. They're enough of a fodder for unhinged minds.
One abstract in particular describes an experiment using different kinds of “liquid polymers” to stabilize sand. These were sprayed onto test sandbeds in a wind tunnel and also on patch of the Taklimakan Desert, where they “produced a strong crust 0.2-0.5 cm thick.” The last sentence reads:
Our results suggest that all the stabilizers exhibited good infiltration, crushing strength, and elasticity, and that they could thus be used to control damage to highways caused by blown sand in the Taklimakan Desert.
Obviously, the most logical next step here is not to do more studies but to give us an oil tankerful of the stuff. With it, we'll paint the whole desert, freeze the landscape in time and space.
Better yet, how about re-sculpting the Talimakan to mimic the landforms of, say, the Painted Desert of Arizona. The dramatic, stratified coloring won't be copied, but all its contour lines would be replicated exactly. Of course, in China, simulating exotic terrains isn't new. Remember Huangyangtan?
How about gouging deep canyons, which are graded, arranged, oriented, networked and coated with the binding agent in such a way as to enable strong, steady wind currents flowing through this bifurcated aeolian-shed? These air channels would then be planted with a forest of wind turbines. Or wind-dammed.
How about taking the sand glue to Inner Mongolia? Its desert dunes feed the powerful sandstorms that regularly blanket northern China and choke Beijing in a thick, suffocating fog of pulverized earth. These granular blitzkriegs then cross over high seas to bombard cities in the Koreas and Japan, causing respiratory and eye diseases. With the desertification of the region continuing apace and water resource too scarce to support afforestation, maybe these chemical encrustation will be increasingly considered as a viable solution to a whole list of environmental problems.
And again, instead of spraying it around willy-nilly, how about “stabilizing” a city: a false ruin seemingly long buried in the sand but only just recently revealed by the wind. Hundreds of such cities forming a new Great Wall of China protecting real cities against advancing deserts.
One could even suround Ordos, wherein the lucky owners of one of the 100 boutique cabins can undertake an Antonionian adventure. Their carefully planned disappearance will surely be the talk of the whole village. And everyone will be grateful to you, because what else could be interesting to talk about? For many, “trying” to find you would be good sporting fun in the middle of nowhere. “So Monica Vitti,” one habitué of The Moment Blog will remark.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Last year, the above photograph of the Tarim Desert Highway in western China was used to decorate a post in our now retired Prunings series. We've always thought that it should have its own separate post, so here it is.
As described by Wikipedia, the highway “crosses the Taklamakan desert from north to south. The highway links the cities of Luntai and Minfeng on the northern and southern edges of the Tarim basin. The total length of the highway is 552km; approximately 446km of the highway cross uninhabited areas covered by shifting sand dunes, making it the longest such highway in the world.”
“In 1994,” says People's Daily Online, “the Tarim desert highway was expanded to the central area of the Tarim Basin, and the completion of the central Tarim oil-gas field, the largest of its kind in China, will make Xinjiang become a strategic substitute area for China's oil and gas resources. Following this, the highway continued to expand in the desert and has turned into a macro-artery for bringing along the economic development in southern Xinjiang.”
In other words, it plays a key role in the country's energy security. And if we may be allowed to indulge ourselves for a moment and parse that last sentence, the highway is also an important tactical infrastructure of pacification through which state control, in the guise of “economic development,” can easier be meted throughout the mainly Muslim and violence-prone region.
To protect this supposedly strategic highway from getting buried by the encroaching sand dunes, rows of vegetation were planted on both sides of the road. An extensive irrigation network was laid down to sustain this artificial ecosystem, pumping water from underground reservoirs and then distributing it throughout. Although the water has a high saline content, this greenbelt has successfully taken root. The desert blooms.
While we cringe at reading that this greenbelt has somehow “improved” the ecology of the desert, it would be worthwhile to track down some of the research that were conducted in preparation for the project. We might, for instance, find out some new techniques that would help plants survive extended periods of drought. We're also interested in their plant list. Perhaps they have discovered that some species, previously not known for their hardiness, actually have a high tolerance for sandy soil and salty water, and then later, have genetically modified them to improve their survival rates. And who knows, maybe their experiments are paving the way for food crops, not just ornamental ones, to be cultivated in deserts and watered with sea water.
Considering that climate change will turn many places into deserts, these Tarim xeriscapers could offer us some helpful advice in adapting to our arid future.
And what's happening in the photo above? At first glance, we thought that they had covered the desert with hardscaping material, but on closer inspection, those are just rows of plants.
Still, we're hoping that someone will come along and leave a comment saying that for large sections of the highway where the vegetation cannot take root, the Chinese government had hired someone to pave over the dunes, a sculptor wanting to stop the migrating dunes dead on their tracks as a kind of long-form performance art. And then, due to several bouts of heatstroke and because that abrasive sand keeps getting into his crotch all the time, he just went out of control.
He's now concretizing the whole desert!
Meanwhile, notice the red-roofed blue buildings. According to National Geographic, they “appear every few miles [and] house workers who maintain the greenbelt.” The workers sign up for stints that may last up to two years. They may be with their spouses or get paired up with someone else, but essentially, they live solitary lives, an eccentric group of monastic botanists in a mystical struggle to arrest this ephemeral landscape in time and space.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
A motorist in Al Ahsaa City, Saudi Arabia captured these few minutes of the earth exhaling. It's lo-res, cinematically shaky but still a sight to behold, wondrous and sublime. As it must be commented on — for it's hardly unnoticeably — we are told that the soundtrack is an exaltation of one or several of the divine's multitudinous attributes but we are sure it's a paean to the hidden but knowable geological forces at work eternally shaping the landscape. And just slightly off camera are a flock of demoiselles about to re-enact Busby Berkeley's famous pyramid fountain of lascivious ladyflesh. Of course.
Earth-Fountain
Earth-Fountain Redux
Granular Blitzkrieg
“A wound in the geological bowels of the earth”
