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Earthquake Baroque
 Take a panographic tour of St. Augustine Church in the Philippines, one of the better examples of Earthquake Baroque. More about the church here and here. Meanwhile, we're hoping to stumble upon some examples of Tsunami Baroque, Hurricane Baroque, and even Avalanche Baroque, those mind-bogglingly beautiful fusions of landscape and architecture. UNESCO World Heritage List
“A wound in the geological bowels of the earth”
Living in Indonesia must be very trying these days: “First came the 2004 tsunami. Then Indonesia was afflicted by the Merapi volcano and a major earthquake in Yogyakarta. Now, a heavily populated region of East Java has been consumed by an unstoppable 'mud volcano' that may have been caused by a gas- and oil-drilling project.”
 “The geyser,” we are told (in fantastically descriptive prose, by the way), “bubbles, gurgles and occasionally emits loud bursts, constantly spurting steaming, inky dark mud from the bowels of the earth. The putrid stench is sometimes interspersed with the odor of petroleum. The plume occasionally contains larger amounts of hydrogen sulfide, producing sulfur's telltale odor of rotten eggs.” But no one knows for certain what's causing the eruption; how long it will continue; who's to blame, i.e., how much is the drilling company to blame; and how to stop it. If anything, it may take “[m]ore than 100 magicians, shamans, and witches,” the “Queen of Bali,” and “hordes of engineers and scientists” to plug the hole. In a totally unrelated but nevertheless visually related event, here finally is the answer to a long-standing question here on Pruned: what if Busby Berkeley had a handful of depth charges? And still yet another completely different but visually related phenomenon, “geysers spewing sand and dust hundreds of feet into the 'air' have been discovered on Mars.”  All they need now are some “environmentally sound” boardwalk, one or two interplanetary park rangers, and vacationing Martian terraformers. And finally, since we obviously cannot help ourselves, the unmistakably man-made gushing wound in the geological bowels of a comet:  Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers Geoff's Earth-Fountain©
Prunings XXIII
 On hydrology. As a tourist attraction.
The “public nomad freestanding gardeners”
The Sarcobush is the design entry by Carolyn Wittendal, Benjamin Jacquemet, and David Farvaque for Shelter in a Cart, an international competition organized by designboom.
 Below is the team's design statement written in the first person of a homeless person. “The Sarcobush is an hybrid between a sarcophagus and a bush; it’s my new integrated bike and shelter, it’s a simple kind of capsule with a planted roof top. The city government gave it to me. I didn’t really like it, but I had no choice. And it may be a fair deal: In exchange of this vehicle and minimal sleeping and storage shelter, I will have to take care of the bush garden which is on top. The city actually lacks of green spaces; their creation requires available open spaces, as well as funding for creation and maintenance. The city is also overcrowded with homeless’ like I am, it usually hates people like us, our presence reduces popularity of the places, frighten people… So, as an environmental and social action, a 'green wash', they came with the idea that when they give a Sarcobush shelter to an homeless, they could benefit of a well maintained green area. In a three year setup, these prototypes will be entirely amortized and the city will benefit of a unique and surprising kind of mobile form of public and participative landscape. They even expect it to attract tourist. The shelter I have is minimal, it contains a sleeping area, a possibility of creating a bigger space and a secure chest (400l) where I can keep my stuff (they even gave me an adapted trolley for my dog!), it is well insulated, especially with the green roof soil, it can be opened in a wider tent like space, for day time. After several years spent in the street it’s the first time I get intimacy. The garden is entirely mine (I grow flowers, vegetables and weed), and I feel very proud to have a piece of land and a sample of territory, where I can express myself. When people see it, they are always curious and often start to talk to me. I am feeling again useful; I found back a role in society as a public nomad freestanding gardener. I think often about death, I am happy to know that, when I will be buried, my garden (this is the most precious thing, I’ve got) will be planted back in 'nature' and serve as my grave stone. I hope it will be a beautiful garden that people will continue to admire.”   Shelter in a Cart @ designboom
Grain Elevators
 Some photos of concrete grain elevators taken from the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) in the Library of Congress.  There's something about grain elevators that lend themselves easily to adaptive re-use. If we were to hear that some of them have been turned into urban lofts and business offices, or even into a Midwestern palatial homestead for a Hollywood mogul who has grown tired of Montana ranches, we wouldn't be surprised. If we see them converted into megachurches, we wouldn't be surprised as well. For anyone who has ever driven by a rural town, grain elevators appear like cathedrals, rising above the Great Plains, imposing and majestic. Hearing that one has been recycled into a cultural center, we'd say that it's probably symptomatic of the current vogue in the industrial sublime. We would then wait for someone to fill the gutted, cavernous interior of a silo-turned-museum with another, though smaller, grain elevator as an art installation.      Another peculiar thing about these buildings is how they can play multiple symbolic roles. They are industrial objects, for sure, but they are also intimately connected to the land and to its seasonal cycles. Able to evoke the romantic rural life as well the gritty realities of contemporary urban living, they wouldn't look out of place in a John Ford or an Elia Kazan movie. For anonymous government bureaucrats, they must seem like potent propaganda tools, a uniquely American object signifying economic vitality and national progress. To see one is to see a future full of promise. It would not surprise us to see them in a New Deal-era documentary or in any one of the political ads presently proliferating exponentially before next month's U.S. mid-term elections. On the hands of an auteur, however, they will be used to set the mood for a nice Kubrickian dystopian epic. Or maybe Gattaca II.      Finally, they may be pure, simple, strikingly graceful on the outside, but these interior shots tell a different story.    Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) Grain Elevators by Lisa Mahar-Keplinger
Yongbyon Happy Family People Complex
 Perhaps the intelligence community has got North Korea's major nuclear facility at Yongbyon all wrong?
Climate Ghettos
The coastal landscape of the United Kingdom is undergoing “climate ghettoisation,” The Guardian reports.
“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.”   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. Cornelia Dean, "Next Victim of Warming: The Beaches," New York Times (20 June 1006) |
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