Terreform ONE has released the brief for this year's ONE Prize Competition, challenging entrants to envision urban design strategies for coping with present and future “severe climate dynamism.”
How can cities adapt to the future challenges of extreme weather? The ONE Prize is a call to deploy sophisticated design to alleviate storm impact through various urban interventions such as: protective green spaces, barrier shorelines, alternative housing, waterproofing technology, and public space solutions. We wish to reinvigorate infrastructure and repurpose spaces towards environmental adaptation in order to put design in the service of the community.
Perhaps a network of smart dikes snaking through daylighted marshes and mangroves wherein retreating villages of soft pavilions inhabited by Ethel Mermans and Fred Astaires perpetually cycle through periods of colonization and diaspora? A city of a thousand and one artificial mesas?
The deadline is 31 August 2013, meaning you have plenty of time to develop your submission or multiple entries. There is also no registration fee.
Over the years, I've been slinging drive-by proposals for island nations in the Pacific to cope with sea level rise. These have included landfill-turned-megaparks, skyscraper enclaves and climate change reservations. In a throwaway line in a post about the floating artificial islands of Vincent Callebaut, I suggested that China should slice off a piece of the Tibetan plateau and then, in a kind of perversion of carbon emission trading, export it as flood-proofing fill.
As it happens, The Guardianreported yesterday that China is planning to decapitate 700 mountains! Projected to cost £2.2 billion, this “mountain-moving project” will level off “500 square miles (130,000 hectares) of land 50 miles from [Lanzhou], which is the provincial capital of arid Gansu province” in the country's northwest. On this future plateau will be a new metropolis with “gleaming skyscrapers and leafy parks.”
The article doesn't mention how much volume of earth will be displaced, but with 700 mountains, it's probably safe to assume that there will be enough to lift, for instance, Kiribati high above the flood waters. I say Kiribati because they recently announced plans to buy land in Fiji, about 6,000 acres to possibly act as a backup homeland for some of its 103,000 citizens. East Timor has also offered some of its land. But why move to other islands (mountains, really), when you could move the mountains to you?
Perhaps there's actually more than enough earth to save everyone from drowning. If that is indeed the case and all endangered islands get topped off, it raises the possibility that China will eventually claim sovereignty over a vast swathe of the Pacific. After all, the most important bits of the islands will quite literally be Mainland China. Paralleling its wacky adventures in the South China Sea, it will forcefully take control over all the natural resources inside its newly annexed Exclusive Economic Zones. So U.N. Conventions be damned, again. As an added bonus (or maybe even the ultimate goal), it will gain a potent countermeasure against America's Pacific Century.
But surely the U.S. will notice the whole thing before it's too late and hastily start exporting chunks of the Rockies and the Appalachians? Surely a trade war in lobotomized mountains is inevitable?
A co-winner in the Sea Change 2030+ ideas competition, the Embassy of the Drowned Nations is a proposal by the Sydney-based landscape architecture office OCULUS for an inverted Ellis Island sunk in the middle of Sydney Harbour.
Here, in this “blend of Atlantis and Eden,” refugees from former island nations are welcomed and “given the opportunity to grieve, to rest, to recuperate, to learn and to eventually rise up and join Australian society.”
Apart from temporary housing, the embassy will also host a research and cultural center devoted to climate change.
For Glacier/Island/Storm Week, we rummaged through our archives for some thematically relevant material. Rather than simply linking to the analogous hashtags (our #ice for #glacier, for instance), we decided to do a bit of curating, ending up with 10 posts per hashtag. We've got nuclear-powered glaciers, a proto-Archigram city in quasi-flight, a pyramid for serving glaciers, ice caps turned space observatories, Thoreau's frozen New England pond reconfigured vertically, avalanche protection structures, an anti-hurricane toy for the rich and famous, vapour cities and more. Go see. #glacier#island#storm
Meanwhile, above is the Morris Island Lighthouse, which has been standing on the same spot on the South Carolina coast since 1867. As the island migrated towards the mainland (as coastal islands wont to do), fans of the lighthouse decided to save the historic structure from certain collapse by armoring its base. The island kept on retreating, and they kept on fortifying. Once it overlooked a wide stretch of beach, but now the lighthouse is itself an island located half a mile out to sea, an immovable geoglobule secreted by its parent island. However, the two islands may yet rejoin, perhaps in the next Ice Age. Or it might attach itself to a different nomadic island just passing by. No doubt that after awhile, it will be secreted once again. Other islands, other shores and other continents will come and go, and the lighthouse will fuse with and disentangle from them all, a static marker recording not just the dynamic processes of geomorphology but also the irrational geopolitical mechanics of coastal development and the mercurial aesthetic tastes of those that will (or will not) seek to preserve it for eternity.
The recent climate change media event organized by the government of the Maldives reminded us of an exhibition mounted by a group of architects, designers and artists for EXPO.02 in Switzerland. Working under the collective name Waterproof, they imagined a(n) (im)possible scenario in which the water level in Switzerland has risen to 1400 meters (4600 feet), turning the landlocked, Alpine country into an island nation, its rocky peaks rising above a vast ocean.
Waterproof's imaginative, sometimes hilarious, but always thought provoking images reflect something we've always been interested in: how countries might adapt to a climate changed world.
If in the unlikely event that everyone becomes carbon negative, not just carbon neutral, tomorrow, climate change isn't likely to be reversed anytime soon. Before whatever historical climatic condition that was codified as the international goal is reached, countries will experience water and food shortages, hotter and wetter weather, habitat loss, perhaps even extinction. During this interim, how will countries cope logistically? They will be geographically transformed, but will they also (intentionally) mutate culturally, even biologically?
We don't know if our readers are as interested in coastlines as we are, but we do want to point out a new competition to generate ideas for a near-future San Francisco and environs inundated by sea level rise caused by climate change and with a population perhaps too unwilling to be displaced.
To grapple with the realities of sea level rise, a new suite of shoreline design concepts is needed. The Rising Tides ideas competition seeks responses to various design challenges, such as: How do we build in an area that is dry now, but that may be wet in the future? How do we retrofit existing shoreline infrastructure such as shipping ports, highways, airports, power plants and wastewater treatment plants? Can we imagine a different shoreline configuration or settlement pattern that allows temporary inundation from extreme storm events? And how do we provide flood protection inland of marshes without drowning the wetland when the water rises?
We're hoping not to see stilts and barges, because there are just too many of those littering other ideas competitions. How about more of this and less of this? But then again, we'll be eating everything up — any and all ideas — with sustained glee: monstrous Army Corps megaengineering; the Golden Gate Dam; stilt forests; mobile sewers; genetically modified water sucking post-arboreals; SpongeOakland; San Francisco, Utah; bay-to-river-to-rivulets land reclamation; Climate Refugee ID cards for an odd/even year system of temporary displacement; walking houses; container wetlands as wildlife preserves and wastewater treatment plants; The Super Awesome Supersurface of Super Awesomeness.
In one of our recent climate change fantasies, we proposed that the richest and most intensive carbon producing countries should set aside “reservations” in their own territories — and not just in some arid, treeless corner of New Mexico, for instance, but in prime real estate, say, Malibu — for refugees whose Pacific island nations have been swept under the ocean by sea level rise.
Now someone has pointed us to a Wikipedia article on the Nauru Phosphate Corporation, the government entity in charge of phosphate mining in Nauru. Specifically, we were directed to the unfortunately small section about the country's long-term investments intended to support its citizens once the phosphate reserves have been exhausted.
There, we read that “the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Development group has constructed two of five hi-rise luxury condos in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The five towers (two completed as of 10/05) are located on prime Honolulu real estate with ocean views, and represent a benchmark in Honolulu luxury high-rises. Other investments included Nauru House [N.B. divested in 2004 to pay off debts] in Melbourne and Hawaiki Tower in Honolulu.”
Should Nauru's co-investors feel charitable and transfer their shares of these luxury condos to the struggling island, we can imagine these towers, then, being granted extraterritorial status. In spacious floorplans and lushly decorated rooms, Nauru's citizens can ride out the flood in foreign land while still preserving their sovereignty, if not their island culture.
Put in some wind turbines on top, drill a few geothermal pipes into the molten underbelly of Oahu, harness the power of the waves and maybe New Nauru can become a sustainable settlement, something which its most recent incarnation was definitely not. Of course, they may have to battle their neighbors who must protect the market value of their multi-million dollar condos.
Alternatively, they could be employed as migrant service workers by the tennant associations, their wages being sent back home as remittances.
Earlier this month, the president of Kiribati warned the nations of the world that his country will be gone by century's end. Submerged under rising sea level, a casualty of climate change.
And even if, by some ridiculously well-timed miracle, everyone reduces their carbon footprint to near zero, the 92,000 island inhabitants “may be at the point of no return” where reversing the effects of the emissions already in the atmosphere will not come before their atolls get flooded. The president thus asked for help in resettling his people.
While very impolitic, he should demand from the worst polluting nations that as an act of “redemption” they should set aside “reservations” in prime real estate, for instance, some of the Hawaiian islands, where the entire population can collectively forge a new set of geographic identitites instead of being dispersed in diasporic communities around the world.
Maybe China is open to the idea of deleting a part of the Tibetan plateau and exporting the pulverized geology to the Pacific. They will, of course, argue that this a form of carbon emission trading.
Perhaps more appropriately, the European Union could give the president an order or two of Vincent Callebaut's Lilypad.
Quoting Archinect, where we first saw this featured.
LILYPAD is a true amphibian - half aquatic and half terrestrial city - able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed, ballasting the city. It enables inhabitants to live in the heart of the sub aquatic depths. The multi functional program is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated to work, shopping and entertainment. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline. The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of humans and nature, exploring new modes of cross-cultural aquatic living.
Kiribati would probably need a less pimped out version, unless, of course, they realign their economy away from fish and phosphate towards eco-tourism — which leads us to wonder: will future climate change refugees become a new caste of service sector workers inhabiting a sort of Floating Hotel & Duty Free Mall, the port of call that comes to you, wherein the fine art of the greeting and linen folding is treated as a Masonic secret passed down from one generation to the next?
In any case, some more unabashedly digital images.
The ruins of a medieval village above Barcelona, under 150 feet of water at the bottom of a reservoir since the 1960s, has “re-emerged into the light.”
An 11th-century church spire, entombed in the murky depths for decades, towers once again over dry ground. And that is because “in a year that so far ranks as Spain's driest since records began 60 years ago, the reservoir is currently holding as little as 18% of its capacity.” To make matters worse for the people depending on its waters, climate scientists have forecasted “still drier conditions to come in the approaching decades.”
So what other remnants of civilizations lie patiently waiting at the bottom of reservoirs to once again bath in the glow of the sun?
Or more interestingly, not ruins of villages or cities but a monstrous beast birthed by a landscape suffering from too much water, concocted in a toxic stew of asphyxiated forests, leftover sewage and drowned lives, incubated by climate change. Cloverfield in the Mist.
“As Barcelona runs out of water,” New Scientistreports, “Spain has been forced to consider importing water from France by boat.”
“Barcelona and the surrounding region are suffering the worst drought in decades. There are several possible solutions, including diverting a river, and desalinating water. But the city looks like it will ship water from the French port of Marseilles.”
The amount of water being considered is “small – 25,000 cubic metres, less than what's needed to grow an acre of wheat, and not enough to keep 30 Spaniards going for a year.” But should this drought continue, growing worse and worse for years to come, we could see a new river, armored in metal and artificially propelled, flowing through the Mediterranean Sea.
And possibly more than one, all circulating through other seas and oceans: a braided, de-terrestrialized hydrology connecting parched landscapes and water-rich regions, knitted by climate change.
POSTSCRIPT #1: The plan is no longer being considered; it is being carried out. From The Guardian:
“The tanker Sichem Defender arrived at the port of Barcelona yesterday carrying something far more precious than its usual cargo of chemicals.
“Nearly 23m litres of drinking water - enough for 180,000 people for a day - was the first delivery in an unprecedented emergency plan to help this parched corner of Spain ahead of the holiday season.”
Dredging the bottom of our archives brought up an interesting project by Edinburgh-based landscape architects Gross. Max. to counter the effect of global warming.
Submitted as part of the 6000 Miles exibition organized by Glasgow's The Lighthouse in early 2005, they proposed to use the Torness Nuclear Power Station to create a nuclear-powered iceberg and park it nearby on some stretch of Scotland's 6,000-mile coast.
This is called “local freezing.”
Of course, our immediately response is — why only one iceberg?
If we are to believe Gross. Max. that “the only way to reduce the levels of CO2 emissions is to rely on nuclear power,” then the next logical iteration of their proposal is to build dozens more — a radioactive necklace of giant refrigerators — and then turn all those firths and lochs into glacier fields, maintaining Scotland's national climate as it awaits atmospheric conditions to return to pre-modern levels.
Historic preservation for the climate-changed future.
But whether or not you believe that nuclear power stations should have a role in combatting climate change or even whether or not this concept would alleviate the local effects of ungeographically high temperatures, this will surely be a popular destination.
In Berlin a tropical indoor beach has just been opened while even in Scotland we now see the first indoor ski slopes with real snow. As a matter of fact people can't resist climate change; they actually hold a deep desire for it. Change of climate is the most important factor in selecting holiday destinations!
And in case you get tired of all that ice, “the actual heat generated to cool the iceberg is utilised to create hot water lagoons in the nearby cement works quarry. The limestone of the actual rock formation will generate amazing dazzling blue lagoons.”
For UK residents at least, it'll be a cheap alternative to Iceland.
No one really wants global warming. Unless you are mentally disturbed, you wouldn't want to see whole nations and cities hydrologically erased or entire ecologies and cultures go extinct. Some may find designing for climate change refugees an extremely fascinating studio project, but the growing inevitability of catastrophic displacements and their attendant economic and social upheavals must surely make everyone sleepless at night.
But then there's Greenland.
BBC News, off-grid and National Geographic tell us that higher temperatures and retreating ice caps are opening up the island's “vast mineral rich wilderness” to exploration. From the off-grid article:
The belief in Greenland’s potential riches stems from the fact that the geology is identical to that found across the now ice-free north-west passage in Canada, which has led to large opencast mining in the Arctic region.
But Greenland has other potential riches too. Gold has been discovered and is already being mined, although so far at a loss, and there are deposits of other minerals such as zinc, that could be exploited. Oil giants are negotiating licences to explore blocks of the coastline covering thousands of square miles.
The melting glaciers themselves may even have some economic benefits, as a source of hydroelectricity. In fact, according to the BBC News article, “Greenland has signed a memorandum of understanding with the US company Alcoa to build a huge aluminium smelter using the country's plentiful water reserves.”
What all these mean, then, is that Greenland could achieve financial independence from Denmark, who each year gives the province about $600m, and perhaps full political independence. So while global warming could end a traditional way of life, particularly those of the Inuit in the north of the country, they may gain a new nation with a new (and very large) immigrant population of prospectors.
A newly revealed landscape for creating new cultural identities.
2) What if Greenland — realizing how strategically important it will be in an iceless-Arctic-Ocean and navigable-Northwest-Passage future — rents the Thule Air Base to the U.S. for a whopping $600m+ a year? What if instead of letting Halliburton or some other sinister oil company run rampant around its virgin territory, the U.S. military somehow becomes a sort of environmental steward? There will be some fascinating examples of greenwashing, obviously, but what subtopian landscapes will come about?
The coastal landscape of the United Kingdom is undergoing “climate ghettoisation,” The Guardianreports.
“About 1,062,000 flats and houses, 82,000 businesses, 2.5 million people and 2m acres of agricultural land, worth about £120bn in all,” are at risk from flooding and erosion brought on by global sea level rise. Some of them will be saved, and some will simply drop to the sea.
Their fates will depend largely on how much money they have and how much political influence they can wield. Those that have ample amounts will likely receive the government funds to protect the shoreline — even if there is no economic, social and ecological justification. On the other hand, those that are poor and politically weak, they will see their precious homes and towns disappear and be forced into a “managed retreat.”
Bear with us as we quote the article at length. It's the tale of two villages: “Kilnsea, in the East Riding just north of Spurn Head, is an example of how to play the system; Happisburgh, in north Norfolk, a classic example of a climate ghetto in the making.”
Late last year, the Environment Agency published a document about the future of the Humber estuary. Without warning, the villagers of Kilnsea, a small and pretty settlement, read this: “The coastal defences near Kilnsea are being threatened by erosion, and could be breached within five to 10 years, but possibly in as little as two years. There is no economic justification for realigning or replacing these defences, so they are likely to be abandoned.”
A village of poor and retired people might in these circumstances have meekly accepted their fate and shuffled off to the council housing that was being offered. But Kilnsea, which has 28 businesses and a fair share of forceful and articulate inhabitants, was not going to accept that. What riled them most was that a colony of little terns just north of the village was going to receive careful attention and money from the Environment Agency and Natural England, as the birds were to be protected under a potent European nature designation. Stuart Haywood, chairman of the village action group and an electrical technician with BP, is still angry. “It appeared to be a fait accompli. That was it. The human side of it was being abandoned, but our feathered friends were being accommodated.”
The village activated itself, found money from a dazzling variety of sources, badgered its MP and councillors, and has managed to get flood protection authorised for at least the next 20 years. The banks and channels to save their houses are being dug this autumn.
Happisburgh is at the other end of the spectrum. Beach Road, a yard or two of which is disappearing almost monthly, and which has lost 26 houses in the past 15 years, is at the poor end of quite a smart village. It has been without any sea defence since 1991, when the groynes and revetment below the cliff were partly smashed in a storm and the rest removed. The people at the end of Beach Road have implored the authorities to spend the money to defend their houses, but Defra maintains that the cost-benefit ratio is too high: perhaps £2m for 18 rather poor houses. Exceptions can't be made. Campaigns have been waged, but there has been no movement on the part of the government.
One wonders if the term “climate ghetto” can also be ascribed to Kilnsea, or at least when it is walled-in completely by its own fortification, when its neighboring villages up and down the coast have eroded away so long ago and is now an island surrounded by concretized channels, levees, revetments, sea walls, and groynes. If so, we could have two types of climate ghettos: one receding inland, forming ocean-filled valleys, and one jutting out to meet the coming sea, peninsular — in other words, the English fjords.
