Police Bees

(How law enforcement agencies might monitor narcotic gardens and genomic dark spots of illegal pharms, according to Thomas Thwaites. Via GOOD's Food HQ via we make money not art.)

More Spatial High Jinks 1: Tactical Horticulture

(Growing anti-terrorist shrubs and trees in the sun-dappled landscape of eastern France. Photo courtesy of The Daniel Soupe Group. Source.)

Discovered via the breathless Bryan Finoki of Subtopia and his epic feral version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is Sinnoveg, a France-based tree nursery and horticulture research center specializing in “securitizing sites, goods and persons by a concept of anti-intrusion security integrated into the environment.” As described, this “natural concept is based on planting of a hedge of thorny plants, weaved into each other and into metallic elements of reinforcement.”

According to Agence France-Presse, the company has planted “vegetation barriers around a nuclear research centre outside Paris, a juvenile detention centre, train stations and airports.” And now, they want to take their patented shrubs to Baghdad's Green Zone and replacing its “vast network of concrete blast walls with terrorist-proof trees and bushes.”

To make the vege-walls more secure, “traditional barbed wire, tyre spikes, sensors and even metal barriers can be placed within the hedges - an invisible back-up layer of security sure to surprise any potential suicide bomber.”

(This is the first in a series of five time-saver nanoposts on somewhat related items. Other spatial high jinks.)

Programming (In)Security

(Image by Bret C. Wieseler.)

Winners of the ASLA 2007 Student Awards have been announced. Filtered through the jumble of thematic threads on Pruned, one remains.

It's the entry by Bret C. Wieseler, from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He writes: “(In)Security explores a new design vocabulary in direct response to the climate of fear and paranoia that currently drives the program and aesthetic of much contemporary urban design. The project addresses the current and future state of security in and around the Wall Street financial district, creating viable security alternatives while simultaneously questioning our nation’s current philosophy that security = freedom.”


(It's THE TITHING, “a shallow, cor-ten steel” that's a cross between a public sculpture/vaporous fountain and a Medieval moat. Image by Bret C. Wieseler.)

“Four security barricades were conceived. By creating thresholds into and throughout the district, (In)Security sets the tone for the experiences within this walled city. During the design process, archaic and contemporary methods of fortification were researched. Forms were explored as a result of the hybridization of the two. Each barricade is an investigation of both fortification and subversion; designing for the defense of each checkpoint, while simultaneously attempting to undermine it’s perceived raison d'être through a means of confrontation, provocation, or absurdism.”


(It's THE PRONGS, a “tectonic hybrid of tire spikes and medieval Abbatis castle fortifications.” Image by Bret C. Wieseler.)

There are other projects that are equally great and worth mentioning here, but for those, you'll have to visit the ASLA website.

In the Archives:
Anxious Terrains

Dugway Proving Ground

(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)

During one scopic drive through the American West, we took a brief stop at the US Army Dugway Proving Ground, the nation's premier biological and chemical defense testing facility.

From GlobalSecurity.org: “The mission of Dugway is to test U.S. and Allied biological & chemical defense systems; perform Nuclear Biological Chemical survivable testing of defense material; provide support to chemical and biological weapons conventions; and Operate and maintain an installation to support test mission. Dugway is located approximately 80 miles west-southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in Tooele County. DPG, covering 798,855 acres, is located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, approximately 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges, the proving grounds terrain varies from level salt flats to scattered sand dunes and rugged mountains.”

What goes on the ground sounds utterly fascinating and frightening at the same time, but only a lucky few ever gets to see them. For those without the necessary security clearance, TerraServer provides the perfect alternative. Taking a cue from Polar Inertia, here are some satellite photos of the military installation.


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)

First of all, the sights from above are stunning. Despite the fact that they are the landscape markings of killing machines, capable of annihilating the entire global population, they are graphically beautiful. The US Army surely has outdone both Richard Long and Walter De Maria several times over. More sublime (in the true sense of the word) than Spiral Jetty. More relevant than Double Negative. The Department of Defense should definitely donate the site to Dia if and when it's decommissioned. Still contaminated, still littered with unexploded ordnance.


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)

A comparison can certainly be made to Thomas Jefferson's Land Survey grid system imposed over much of the American landscape, overriding topography and pre-settlement cultural and ecological systems. Like its counterpart, the landscapes of lines at Dugway are governed by analytical methodology, mathematical hierarchies, mechanics, trigonometry. But rather than being an expression of democracy, settlement, domesticity, even the heroic rural life, this Jeffersonian grid has mutated into a sinister expression of global terrorism, surveillance, and chemical and biological warfare. The Apocalypse distilled as geometry and algebraic equations.


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)


(Dugway Proving Ground. Image courtesy of USGS; via Terraserver.)

Future Tense:
Dugway Proving Ground National Park

Anxious Terrains

(Jersey barriers surrounding the monument. Photo courtesy of ASLA.)

The Washington Monument will open this weekend in time for Independence Day celebrations in Washington, D.C. A refurbished landscape by Laurie Olin delineates a 400-foot security perimeter with an elliptical pathways lined with a 30-inch high retaining wall, a strategy that is part English ha-ha and part medieval moat. In a post 9/11 city and country where obtrusive Jersey barriers and closed access permeate the landscape, Olin's design finds a balance between the aesthetic gaze and contemporary realities.


(Plan of the Washington Memorial. Image courtesy of OLIN.)


(Circulation plan overlaid on top of existing paths. Image courtesy of OLIN.)


(Section of pathway and retaining wall for the Washington Memorial. Image courtesy of OLIN.)

Articles:
Petula Dvorak, “Washington Monument Subtly Fortified,” The Washington Post (1 Jul 2005)
Catesby Leigh, “Balancing Security and Aesthetics,” The Wall Street Journal (30 Jun 2005)
Vernon Mays, “Invisible Barriers,” Landscape Architecture Magazine (Sep 2002)

(Spotted at The Dirt.)