Monday, June 01, 2009 | Permalink
Registering once more, if not for the first time, our fascination with so-called, or rather so-tagged, testing grounds, an interest which we weren't acutely aware of having until we started labeling our posts only a couple months ago and realized that we have actually posted many examples of this type of landscape, these sites of experimentation, simulations, and novel theories and forms of landscape and architecture: this rack map of concrete slabs at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' materials testing facility at Treat Island, Maine.
There, these test specimens are exposed to natural severe environmental conditions to test for durability. They are subjected to between 100 and 160 freeze-thaw cycles, cyclic inundation of saltwater and air-drying, chloride intrusion, wetting and drying, and abrasion-erosion.
There and in many other testing grounds, arranged in museological, Donald Judd-like intervals of solids and negatives, these perfect geometries are coming undone. The building blocks of future cities and monuments fracture and decay in a way that belies their solidity and intended permanence. Bit by bit, atom by atom, structures get nullified and give way.
Labels: archives, islands, testing grounds, weather
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