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Earthquake Van
 One of Nagano Prefecture's earthquake experience vehicles, wherein foreigners can get acclimated with or a preview of the common and the really big tectonic events. Go see it in action. Portable Hurricane Disaster Lab Poseidon vs. Aeolus
New Chernobyl
 A couple of weeks ago and again last week, Wired featured a nanocrystal that can absorb carbon dioxide. Discovered by scientists at UCLA: The sponge-like material, called ZIF-69, promises to hold 60 times its volume in carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas scientists say is primarily responsible for climate change. And: ZIF-69 is like a carbon dioxide trap, allowing only CO2 in, while screening out molecules with different shapes. Under pressure, the compound allows the carbon dioxide in, but not back out. Then, when scientists decompress the material, the gas is released, allowing scientists to dump the captured CO2 into a storage system. But what is this storage system? Wired, again: “Right now, engineers are planning to inject the CO2 into the ground in a process known as geological sequestration.” Of course, there are critics to this approach of combatting climate change — “a pie-in-the-sky idea that entrenched fossil fuel companies promote to stave off the implementation of truly renewable technologies like solar and wind power.” It's greenwashing, in other words.  Meanwhile, with this ZIF-69 greenwashing now commingling in our minds with Gross. Max.'s proposal to use nuclear power to help reduce CO2 emissions, we were reminded of a waste treatment reactor built by the Israeli firm Environmental Energy Resources (EER) that can turn “radioactive, hazardous and municipal waste into inert byproducts such as glass and clean energy.”  This technology will not make nuclear power plants any safer; it can only make their waste and collateral damages that much easier to eradicate — i.e., not carted away into distant storage sites where they remain dangerous; they are actually decontaminated — and in a manner that, we are told, “does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake.” But the process does leave something in its wake: The EER reactor combines three processes into one solution: it takes plasma torches to break down the waste; carbon leftovers are gasified and inorganic components are converted to solid waste. The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry. In other words, you can use these carbon leftovers to build an entire city.  The morning after Russia's presidential election and the vodka-soaked celebration parties at the ruling oligarchy's palatial ballrooms, one of Putin's henchmen and now president-elect Medvedev's vassals — a Russian nouveau riche who made his multi-billion ruble fortune from oil and gas — inexplicably becomes afflicted with the Rockefeller syndrome. After nearly a decade of being a party to the environmental degradation and human rights abuses of post-Yeltsin Russia, he now wishes to make amends. He wants redemption. He looks into donating a substantial amount of money to charitable organizations and philanthropic works. He meets with museum curators and trustees to see if they want him to buy for them that new expensive Old Master painting that's just entered the market or fund that new gallery wing for which they have been fruitlessly whoring themselves around. He even explores the possibility of creating a world class university from scratch. These may or may not undo his sins, but at least he will look his best in the amnesiac eyes of the future. But then he reads something about EER's reactor. He immediately realizes that it could provide a way to clean up Chernobyl, where he was born, where he had spent the halcyon days of childhood and from where he was exiled by the 1986 meltdown of its nuclear power plant. He realizes that salvation awaits him there. To save Chernobyl and his soul, then, he will raze everything down — offices, Soviet apartment blocks, hospitals, roads, pavements, gardens, playgrounds, schools, trees, forests, everything within tens of kilometers around the reactor — and scoop up everything else — soil, roots, bedrock, sewers, etc. An entire landscape surgically excised, as one would a tumor, and then incinerated. And then using the harvested chunks of “lava-like rocks,” a new Chernobyl will spring forth from the detritus of interrupted lives — radiation free and inhabitable once again. Twenty years from now, when this new city has been repopulated with former nuclear exiles and new gardens and verdant parks have sprouted — on a morning just like any other when the sun has just appeared in the horizon — the whole city will glow in bright emerald iridescence.
Image of the (Leap Year) Day
 The anxious terrain of Drangagil Neskaupstaður in the east fjords of Iceland — where catching dams, braking mounds, deflection earthen walls, diversionary canals and other tectonic reconfigurations of the earth's surface lay waiting in the summer for winter's snow. They're avalanche protection structures, but they may as well be MOUT facilities where landscape architects are trained to deal with future disasters that may or may not come; a new subgenre of public art; or the shooting location for Guy Maddin's sequel to Careful. Wearable Anti-Avalanche Homes Sites of Managed Anxiety
“It silted up”
 We've been blogging for nearly 3 years now, and this is the first we've ever been tagged. The culprit is Jacky Bowring, of Passages, whose Park of the Lost Object was featured here last year. We're only too glad to keep this going. Here are the rules: 1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages). 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the next three sentences. 5. Tag five people. From the Penguin Books 1993 revised and updated edition of Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner: Another bypass was cut; it too silted up. Finally, after much negotiation, the developers persuaded the Mexican government to let them cut still another channel below the border. Because it was meant as a temporary expedient while the original channel was cleaned out in advance of the spring floods, the Mexican channel had the flimsiest of control gates. As luck would have it, the spring floods arrived two months early. In February, a great surge of snowmelt and warm rain spilled out of the Gila River, just above the Mexican channel, and made off with the control gate. We fiddled with the rules a bit. We're not supposed to include the fifth (complete) sentence; we did. And we're only supposed to post the three after it; we included the fourth, because it sounds as though it's the perfect punch line to a hilarious joke about hydroengineering. So there's a total of five...or six if you count this post's title, which is actually the fourth (complete) sentence on the page. And Cadillac Desert wasn't even the nearest book. Reisner's volume was underneath that book, which was the 2000 paperback edition of Annals of the Former World by John McPhee. However, on p. 123, this is what we found:  Because we're having fun, the third book in that pile is In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles, edited by Jeffrey Miller. On page 123, the 3 sentences after the fifth are as follows: How far is it from there? Or to somewhere nearer than that. But do be specific as to time, day period, week. Taken out of context, this could be an instruction for a well-designed landscape architecture project. But onward it goes. We're tagging Archidose, BLDGBLOG, Subtopia, Super Colossal and Where. POSTSCRIPT #1: Where's page 123. POSTSCRIPT #2: Archidose's page 123. POSTSCRIPT #3: Subtopia's page 123. POSTSCRIPT #4: Super Colossal's page 123.
Nuclear-Powered Glaciers
 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.
Titanic Lakes
 Behold some 400 “lakes and seas” on Saturn's moon, Titan, as captured by the spacecraft Cassini. Rendered with the auric exuberance of Klimt and the bold angularity of Schiele, through complicated parabolas and hyperbolas, one wonders if NASA astronomers and computer scientists aren't attempting to formulate an official visual style. Instead of sci-fi realism, extraterrestrial landscapes and future colonized worlds will be illustrated in a sort of hyperdecorative post-art nouveau style. Or not. In any case, as the above resized image does no justice to the original, you should download the full satellite composite image, either the 10MB jpeg version or the 186MB tiff version. Sugimoto in Titan
Treating Acid Mine Drainage in Vintondale
 While writing the post on the Silver Lake reservoir, we were reminded of AMD&ART Park in Vintondale, Pennsylvania. The two share quite a few in common. For instance, both employ constructed wetlands to detoxify contaminated landscapes. In the case of Silver Lake, it is the Los Angeles River's heady stew of 14 EPA-listed chemical pollutants; AMD&ART, for its part, has targeted acid mine drainage (AMD), hence the name. Additionally, both were conceived as pedagogical landscapes, teaching visitors their respective historical context and technologies. As such, they are occupiable open spaces. There is one major difference though: AMD&ART Park is actually built and has been in operation for almost 15 years.  Beginning in 1994, a multi-disciplinary team — which consisted of T. Allan Comp, a historian and director of the non-profit AMD&ART; Robert Deason, a hydrogeologist; Stacy Levy, a sculptor; AmeriCorps interns; and landscape architect Julie Bargmann, of D.I.R.T. Studio — were tasked to create “a large-scale, artful public space that directly addresses the problems of AMD and much more.” AMD in the entire Appalachian Region, we read, is “the most widespread water quality problem, as well as a significant economic and social constraint.” Indeed, the EPA has designated it as the biggest environmental problem in the eastern mountains. Seeping or surging from abandoned coal mines, AMD is the metals-laden water, often acidic, that coats stream beds with orange sediment, killing the bottom of the food chain. Often desolating entire watersheds, these rust colored streams are the consequence of a proud past filled with hard work and dedication in an era that paid little attention to environmental consequences. Today, AMD is a painful reminder of the poverty and economic abandonment that still exists in coal country, the emblematic orange silent signature of dying communities. The result of the collaboration is, if not innovative, gloriously inspiring.  Several discrete elements make up the park. Located in the eastern part is a passive water treatment system and the so-called Litmus Garden. On the other side is a wetland habitat zone and in between is a recreational area. Interspersed throughout are several art installations, hence the second part of the name, though one could call the whole site an art installation itself. The treatment zone is easily distinguished by a series of 7 keystone-shaped treatment ponds. No cutting edge nanotechnology or the latest transgenic organism or even heavy machinery is used. Turning the highly toxic water into one that you can swim in is done with elementary physics, chemistry and biology. Regular limestone, for instance, is applied instead to lower the water's acidity. Plants simply dying off and decaying in the winter and then returning in the spring also helps to change its pH level. Even gravity is utilized to help suspended metals settle out of the ADM.  Meanwhile, the function of each ponds are best explained by the following signs, themselves an important component of the park.     Running along these ponds is the Litmus Garden. It plays no role in the water treatment, but it does act as a “visual representation of [the] changing health of the river.” Small groves or bands of thirteen native tree species were chosen for their autumn foliage colors. In the fall, the Litmus Garden trees will turn deep red around Pond 1 and grade through orange and yellow to blue-green at the end of the treatment system in Pond 6, creating a visual reflection of enhanced water quality — and a great reason for a Vintondale community fall celebration. It's a horticultural and hydrological rhyming scheme, in other words.  Once cleaned or “legal”, the water is then diverted to a seven-acre wetland built on what was “once the busy industrial heart of Vintondale.” Once an industrial wasteland, our History Wetlands now serve as home to a growing number of plants and animals. Over 10,000 native wetlands plants have been planted, providing a habitat for many insect and bird species including wood ducks, geese, and killdeer. Beaver, fox, deer, and other animals have also been spotted in the wetlands. Ten bat boxes complement the landscape of our wetlands in anticipation of attracting native bats to the area. From wasteland back into Eden, albeit with the marks of its exile. And this isn't so much a restoration or a reclamation as it is redemption. But in any case, knowing what wetlands can do, the water can only get cleaner than when it had left the treatment ponds.   Once the treatment and wetland sections were completed, attention was then turned to developing a multi-purpose, four-acre recreation area that now hosts soccer, baseball, football, and many other outdoor games. “Closely reflecting the aspirations of the very first design meetings with the community, the park is rapidly becoming the new social center of Vintondale, bringing new pride and new activity to the community,” we read. Parks nowadays seem to be programmed to the hilt and then some. Tomorrow, they'll be asked to save the world.  Meanwhile, Eric Reece, author of Lost Mountain, wrote an article about the park for Orion Magazine. There, he speculates that “one of the most important elements of Vintondale may not be its water-treatment system or its sculptural installations, but rather its function as a potential model for many other such projects across the country.” He quotes T. Allen Comp, the park's project director: AMD&ART is now both the name of a park in Vintondale and the name of an idea, a commitment to interdisciplinary work in the service of community aspirations to fix the environment. Indeed, as Reece adds, “since the completion of the park, Comp has established the Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team, a group of fifty-five OSM and VISTA volunteers who are working with the AMD&ART model to engage coal field communities in projects that will remediate damaged waterways and rekindle the power of place.” The future can truly be bright.
On cemeteries
 Of course. Manila Living Obelisk-on-Wheels Burying the Villa Savoye Destination Necropolis The Igualada Levee The Hanging Cemetery of Babylon The Cenotaph Machine Cemeteries as Major Disaster Response Protocol The geography of displacement Memento Mori The Kuiper Belt Necropolis Landscape architects as landscapes Forever Fernwood, Part III Posting the Dead Roadside(memorial)america.com Hill of Crosses Forever Fernwood, Part II Forever Fernwood Nature is dead. Long live Nature. A Little Columbarium in the Atlantic A Little Columbarium Forest in the Arctic A Real Columbarium in the Pacific Neverending Days of Being Green Acer necropolis |
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