Month: November 2005

[Image: A scene from Deep Impact].

Will civilization end? Will the planet be destroyed? Will a hundred cities burn?
Just consult the Torino Scale.
The Torino Scale is supposedly a “Richter scale for earth impact hazards.” It’s been freshly revised to inform us how worried we should be about near-earth objects in space – it’s even color-coded.

[Image: NASA; click on to enlarge – but surely number 10 is not the worst it can get? Are they withholding parts 11-20? Earth splits in two. The solar system is destroyed. The universe disappears].

Meanwhile, they need Torino Scale: BLDGBLOG Edition. It tells you what sorts of hazards to expect if someone starts hurling architectural masterpieces at the earth. Saarinen’s TWA terminal – wham! Your house shakes. Philip Johnson’s – ooh: that’s not a masterpiece. The Great Wall of China – close one. The ground is still shaking.
The Eiffel Tower.
St. Paul’s.
The entirety of Manhattan?!
Robo-Venice!

[Image: Let’s see what President Freeman has to say… (from Deep Impact)].

“Each second,” the New York Times reports, “about a cubic yard of new mountain—roughly a pickup truck’s worth—is pushed to the surface [of Mount St. Helens], adding to a dome growing inside the crater.” Each second.

[Image: “Mount St. Helens, its second dome visible, is being shaken constantly by earthquakes.” John S. Pallister/USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory/New York Times].

The mountain, it seems, as evidenced by a recent and ongoing series of minor earthquakes, is undergoing a slow, quiet eruption. “Beneath the mountain,” we read, “the magma rises through fractures in the rock from a fairly small magma chamber about five miles below. Beneath that chamber is probably another pipe that taps the deeper mantle.”

Those fractures and pipes look something like this:

[Image: New York Times; this diagram kicks ass at a larger size].

Further, “As the current eruption empties the conduit, scientists have detected a slight deflation of the flanks of the volcano, though not quite as much as predicted, which suggests that the chamber has partially been refilled by new magma.”

The insane thing here is that one of the scientists profiled in this article knows that the magma chambers are refilling because he has found fresh glass on the mountainside. I can’t help but wonder if, at any phase of the earth’s history, there might have been whole mountain chains made entirely of glass, translucent, marbled, veined with stained metals and colored by minerals, like cathedral windows in mountain form—

[Image: ArtLex].

—that would would have fractalized sunset into angles and shards, the horizon ablaze. Mountains, shining from within.

Whole islands emerge from the Pacific, made of translucent colored glass. You can watch fish through them. Comets reflect in ripples across their smoothly ridged surfaces. A minor earthquake makes the planet ring like a fragile glass bell.

What species could evolve on glass islands? What would they eat? What would riverbeds look like, and could you watch streams from below?

Could you watch treeroots pop slowly, expanding through layers of bedglass? Glass tectonics. The mountains are literally shattering from below.

Or imagine Shelley, arriving by ship at a tropical archipelago made of glass. Thousands of small islands, and he sails between each one. He soon begins a series of epic poems to be published exclusively on BLDGBLOG, inspired by a moonlit tour of ruined glass arches shaped by natural erosion. He carves a cup directly from the mountain and he drinks wine with it. The earth breaks down into transparent soil.

Anyway, the New York Times article also includes this photographic demonstration of the volcanic dome’s growth. I guess I just like volcanoes…

[Image: “Peter Oppedisano at his home with paved yard in Malba, Queens.” Suzanne DeChillo/New York Times].

“The grassy front lawn, once a staple of the American dream, is steadily being usurped by the pave-over. Many homeowners, opting for grayer pastures, are pouring concrete over their patches of green.”
Perhaps living proof that you can read too much J.G. Ballard, when “Christina Groza moved from an older building in Astoria, Queens, into a recently built one in College Point, the new home had a major selling point… the original lawn outside the new building had been paved over with concrete.”
One instantly wonders how many pave-overs you could get away with, and what law it is you’d be breaking if you tried: wait till everyone’s away on holiday vacation, wake up your cousins – then pave everything.

More Do-Ho Suh, this time photographed by gravestmor‘s own Marcus Trimble. It’s a set of stairs woven entirely from translucent nylon. Hanging in space.
Meanwhile, check out the previous post for information on Do-Ho Suh – and don’t forget to stop by gravestmor: it’s worth the trip.

Artist Do-Ho Suh replicated the complete interior of his old home in Korea – only he did it using translucent nylon.

He took sewing lessons from old dressmakers so he could assemble the whole thing himself – and then he built another replica: of his apartment in New York City.

It sounds like the whole thing was inspired by a combination of nostalgia and insomnia; but he talks more about it here, in an interview with PBS.

Meanwhile, you can learn more at Brown University and at Artnet – which is where I found these images.

(Originally spotted at Blanketfort).

[Image: Battersea Power Station, London, from where else but International Urban Glow (see earlier)].

As the Independent reported this morning, England’s river Mersey may soon become “the first river in Britain to generate electricity from its tides” – using a tidal fence.

Plans are afoot to take advantage of “the Mersey’s vast renewable energy potential by constructing a tidal power fence which, according to initial estimates, could generate up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15 per cent of the North-west’s electricity requirements. The Mersey offers more tidal power potential than virtually any other river in Europe, by virtue of its 10-metre tidal range and strong currents which are a by-product of its shape and its position on England’s windy North-west coast.”
It is, in other words, about to become a machine.

First, water at high tide will be shut into a sequence of locks and gates; in this respect, the tidal fence is not unlike a standard shipping canal. But then, as the river drops with the tide, the trapped water – now at a higher elevation – will be “allowed to escape through the turbines of a hydroelectric plant.”
This will turn the water’s gravitational potential energy into electricity.

Tidal fences, however, are only one technical option – there are also tidal turbines, for example, and there are important differences between turbines and fences. (For more on this, see Daily Kos).
But why should we care about tidal power at all?
“Tidal power is more dependable than wind due to its predictable nature thus making it a better source of electrical energy for feeding the baseload of the national grid. The tides run almost 6 hours in one direction and then reverse and run for 6 hours in the opposite direction thus giving a power source that is available 24 hours a day unlike wind and solar.”
Or, as we read in this press release: “Seawater is 832 times as dense as air; therefore the kinetic energy available from a 5-knot ocean current is equivalent to a wind velocity of 270 km/h.”
The point is that tidal power kicks wind power’s a**.

Meanwhile, the technology itself verges on the occult.
Norway, for instance, is experimenting with moon power at a new station built by Hammerfest Strøm AS: “The rise and fall of the sea, caused by the Moon’s gravitational tug on the Earth, could be generating electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes within five years if the new Norwegian power station proves successful. The power station, which resembles an underwater windmill, began generating electricity for the town of Hammerfest. Although still largely a prototype, the generator is the first in the world to harness the power of the open sea and be connected to an electricity grid.” (See the details in their own technical PDF).
So, sure, all tides are lunar, and therefore all tidal power is lunar power… but it’s still fascinating.
It’s like something straight out of Aleister Crowley.

Meanwhile, the images that you’re seeing scattered throughout this post are all by Italian Futurist architect, Antonio Sant’Elia. Not a single one of them is of a tidal fence, a tidal turbine, or even of a hydroelectric dam; but his obvious exuberance for monumental power-generation structures is: 1) so bizarre it’s almost touching; and 2) just waiting to be copied by a new generation of architects, gamers, novelists and filmmakers.

Herculean and abstract concrete structures humming with hydroelectric power. Submerge ten of these things in the Mersey… and England just got a whole lot brighter.

Turns out those plans for elevating Venice aren’t even new!

[Image: New Scientist, July 2004; worth clicking on to enlarge].

BLDGBLOG has been doing its homework, and we’ve found that the New Scientist explained all this way back in 2004: “Venice’s problem is largely one of subsidence, both natural and man-made. From the 1930s to the 1970s, fresh water was pumped out of underground reservoirs beneath the city to supply surrounding factories. As the water was pumped out of these aquifers – which are rather like rocky sponges – their water-filled pores compressed and the ground sank. Combined with sea-level changes, this has produced an effective rise in sea level of 23 centimetres over the past 100 years.”
Thus the whole raise-the-city-with-water-pumps idea.
“Numerous plans have been proposed to prevent Venice succumbing to the floodwaters, many of them controversial,” New Scientist continues. “But if the latest idea gets the go-ahead it will raise more than a few eyebrows. Rather than trying to control the rising water level by keeping the sea out, engineers at the nearby University of Padua want to lift the entire city out of harm’s way by raising the ground upon which it sits.”
Fair enough.
But I still think they should put the whole thing onto an arched labyrinth of mechanized legs – inter-connected offshore oil platforms that can walk – and let the city flee inland by itself.
King Kong 2: Contro Venezia! The love-crazed simian dukes it out – with Spider-Venice.

I was looking at this UPS label when I realized it contains some interesting architectural assumptions.

It offers me a porch, a deck, a garage, a back door, a patio, etc., on which to collect my package.
But no cheese cave or tower or footbridge; no Zen rock garden or prefab container village; no offshore Texas tower; no private helipad…
How does UPS account for other architectural styles? Oh – you tic Other! Now I get it. The international option.
“Just leave it in the harem,” I’ll say. “Leave that one beneath the torii gate, sir.” “Leave it in the Other.”
It’s the UPS Vernacular.