Tent City, USA

[Image: A "tent city in Pass Christian, Miss." – Ozier Muhammad/New York Times].

"From a distance, it looks like an Army base camp... But here, a little more than a stone's throw from the Gulf of Mexico, on a muddy gravel lot that used to be a Little League field, a makeshift village has emerged for some of the many families who, as winter approaches, are still homeless because of Hurricane Katrina."
As the subtropical ruins of New Orleans continue to mold, buried under mountains of now toxic rubbish ("Contractors have disposed of more than six million pounds of waste... There have been 222,000 refrigerators, washers and dryers gathered, and more than a million containers of hazardous waste have been plucked from land and sea"), the less fortunate members of that obliterated city's displaced population now live in temporary camps – "canvas cities," as the New York Times calls them.
Here, the tents "are set up in long, straight rows and distinguished only by alphanumeric addresses painted on their exteriors." With rough plywood floors, they're far from luxurious: "The toilets are portable, without running water, and are lined up near a tractor-trailer that serves as a shower house."
So in a nation faced with rapidly failing civic infrastructure, are these the cities of the future? Instant, poor, and shoddily maintained?
"Boredom is perhaps the biggest problem in the tent cities," we read. Yet one can clearly add the words: for now.


[Image: "Workers in protective gear inspecting drums for toxic chemicals last week at a reclamation site near Buras, La., near the Mississippi River levee. The detritus included piles of discarded spray cans, top." Ozier Muhammad/New York Times].

(For more on Katrina, housing, and the architectural response to disaster, see this excellent resource at Archinect).

Falling factories and the drum chamber

These photos by Haiko Hebig were taken in "one of Europe's deepest workplaces (-1,565m)," the Heinrich Robert Colliery "located in the city of Hamm."
Unfortunately, they show only the surface workings.


[Image: Haiko Hebig, sliding contacts of the west winding machine].


[Image: Haiko Hebig, DSK Bergwerk Ost coal storage building].


[Image: Haiko Hebig, shaft headgear].

More images of the colliery can be found on Hebig's site. (Though I still want to see what's 1,565m below the surface...)
Then there's the closing of the Phoenix Steel Mill, in Dortmund, and the ensuing demolition of its so-called Hoerde Torch, which Hebig also captured on film.


[Image: Haiko Hebig, overlain images of the torch's final collapse – other photos show the process in more detail].


[Image: Haiko Hebig, inside one of the blast furnaces, Phoenix Steel Mill, Dortmund].

Before they destroy buildings they should build small bunkers with bombproof roofs beneath those structures; for $1000 you can sit inside the subterranean chamber while the building – a waterfall of masonry – collapses onto your head. You emerge, an hour later, unscathed. Ears ringing.
Home for a sound artist, by the architects at BLDGBLOG.

(Originally spotted by Jill Polsby [thanks!])

Planet Glove

It's quite hard to get excited about stories like this: "Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet." The asteroid is called Apophis, after an ancient Egyptian spirit of "evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness."
Scientists are now "imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it" – because the earth is in danger...! Again.
Only this time, the story has inspired an architectural idea.


[Image: The Roman Coloseum, photographed from space].

The exact trajectory of Apophis is apparently well-calculated (albeit with a few minor blindspots, such as whether or not it will actually come anywhere near the planet).
But surely you could just use a bigger computer – or cancel your lab workers' vacation time – and soon you'd know, to the exact square-meter – to the very time of day! – where Apophis will land.
At which point we'll build a huge baseball glove.


[Image: Michael Sorkin, Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles (with a new Dodgers Stadium); from the excellent, Christmas gift-worthy Wiggle].

Massive amounts of fiber-glass padding and reinforced concrete – plus entire subterranean, manmade lakes – will deflect the tectonic pressure of the asteroid's impact, softening the outward-rippling aftershocks; the glove will even collapse in upon itself, blocking the explosion of dust that would otherwise cloud the atmosphere.
Best of all, we'll know the exact moment of arrival, so the whole thing will be captured on film. A billion dollars' worth of ad time has already been sold.
But maybe the calculations are off, you're thinking. Perhaps we know Apophis will hit in 2029 – but what if it's outside Springdale, Utah, or somewhere in the Gobi Desert, maybe even in the middle of the sea.
No problem: we'll just build huge, kilometer-wide baseball gloves all over the planet. Floating through the Pacific. In 2016 an artist will apply for a one-year residency on one of the floating gloves, and her notes and photographs will be published the next year to great critical and commercial acclaim.
Then, in 2029, live on TV: catastrophe averted.
The glove-stadium actually works.


[Image: Planet Glove, by BLDGBLOG].

(Inspired by a brief discussion on Archinect; see also BLDGBLOG's earlier post, The Torino Scale, for more on the architecture of impact).

Beijing Boom Tower

The Dynamic City Foundation describes Beijing Boom Tower by architect Neville Mars as an "inspiration against sprawl," through which "an entirely new urban reality is being created."


The Boom Tower, they say, is an example of "the market responding to all future demands: suburban living in the heart of China's capital." Which is interesting, because this is possibly the least suburban thing I've ever seen.


Be sure to dress colorfully.
"Can the city withstand 15 more years of uncontrolled expansion?" they ask. "Can architecture even comprehend the scale of the urban problem? Can the mixed-use megastructure combat our segregating society?"
Why the answer to these questions is a city within a city, constructed from what look like huge stacks of white film canisters plastered with corporate logos, is beyond me – but as a set for a science fiction film?
Go for it.


At least it would attract a lot of tourists.
If you want to learn more about the complex, you can actually watch this (often surreal) short film, wherein you will learn that Beijing Boom Tower... includes a driving range.
Or just download this PDF, which contains an interview with project architect Neville Mars, including his thoughts about the desegregated garden-city towers of the future.


(Originally spotted at we make money not art).

It's parking space time

Any public parking space can be prime real estate: well-located, easy to access, convenient. You rent the space out for a given time while you park your car – but surely you could engage in other activities while there? You've paid your money; the space is yours for two hours; why not have a barbecue, or play a game of chess, have a picnic... even open a short-term public park?


This was the premise behind PARK(ing), by the San Francisco-based group Rebar (also responsible for the Cabinet National Library – a filing cabinet in the middle of the desert).
As Rebar writes, "more than 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the private vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm. Feeding the meter of a parking space enables one to rent precious downtown real estate, typically on a 1/2 hour to 2 hour basis. What is the range of possible occupancy activities for this short-term lease?"
How about "a metered parking spot for public recreational activity"? In other words, a temporary public park.
Take a look:


Rebar's caption for that last photograph is: "the need for green open space is apparent." Indeed.

Aurora Britannica

[Image: Jan Curtis].

The Northern Lights are on the move.
"The Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America so fast that it could end up in Siberia within 50 years, scientists have said."

[Image: Jan Curtis].

"The shift could mean that Alaska will lose its northern lights, or auroras, which might then be more visible in areas of Siberia and Europe" – including, of course, the cities: Northern Lights coiling above cathedrals, bus routes, and sidewalk cafes.

[Image: Jan Curtis; see BLDGBLOG's Radio Aurora New York for another].

Auroras have already been spotted as far south as Rome, crackling above the Pantheon; following these recent, accelerating movements of the earth's magnetic field, however, Roman auroras might occur every night.
Hotel rates will skyrocket.

[Image: "The magnetosphere is a kind of elastic fire. It forms where the Earth's magnetic field meets the hot plasma – the ionised gases – at the edge of the planet's atmosphere." It is "occasionally rocked by an explosive convulsion that flings some of its energies at the Earth, switching on spectacular auroras, damaging satellites, and knocking out electric power grids"].

At least one possible architectural project here would be to construct a tower of some sort, or a superstadium full of ring magnets and electromagnetic coils; these would attract, then trap, the planet's north magnetic pole.
The pole would be permanently anchored; its terrestrial migration – and ultimate reversal – would stop.
The stadium would hum quietly, and all compasses would point toward it.
Massive sheets of auroral light would then torque downward every night at high speed – breaking away at the last minute to fold off toward the suburbs. You could stand on the roof and drink beer with your mates. Forget fireworks.
It's a Project for a New North Pole.

Globes

[Image: "Preferred Continental Drift"].

[Image: Global life expectancy].

[Image: "Nameless Places"].

[Image: Satellite blind spots].

[Image: The Cold War].

[Image: Energy consumption].

[Image: "Population Volume"].

[Image: Global seafloor].

[Image: Nuclear energy dependency].

Literally hundreds more of these globes can be found at Ingo Günther's Worldprocessor globe catalog.

(Thanks Leah!)

Deep Space Hilton

[Image: The "inflatable multilayered polymer hull" of this orbiting hotel room "will be around 30 centimetres thick and will contain layers of Kevlar – as used in bullet-proof vests – to provide some protection against micrometeorites and space debris" – as well as from rowdy hotel guests. Click on to enlarge; from New Scientist].

Might future space tourists need an inflatable space hotel? Of course – and "Las Vegas hotelier Robert Bigelow is aiming to supply it. Bigelow made his fortune as the owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, and he is now launching a $500 million effort to expand his business off-planet."
The design for Bigelow's space hotel was taken from "TransHab, a never-used NASA design for an inflatable space station." (TransHab also appears in an old BLDGBLOG post on astrobiology).
The space hotel "will provide 330 cubic metres of living space for space tourists or industrial researchers" – or even maximum security prisoners...? Instead of a secret prison city, they build a secret prison satellite-archipelago... Forget the death penalty: you're sent alone into outer space.
Setting up the prison break film of the century.
They whiz you up there in a space elevator –


[Images: Check out the Space Elevator blog, the LiftPort website and image gallery ("dedicated to building a mass transportation system to open up access to the inner solar system"), and some other technical drawings here].

– but don't forget to pack your toothbrush.
If the your hotel room begins to wander, of course, a space tether could save you (a "100-kilometre-long 'fishing line' that spins freely in space may one day catch and fling satellites to higher orbits... using just solar power and the Earth's magnetic field"); and if the tether fails, you can always use Richard Gott's map of the universe to find your way home. ("Gott realised that... if he drew our galaxy to fit on the page, he'd need another 100 kilometres of paper to show the most distant quasar" – skip to bottom of link to see how he made the map work).
Or it serves as home for an exiled author, writing back from deep space.

(Meanwhile, a lost hotel room may have been found beyond Pluto; and with thanks to the excellent Interactive Architecture dot Org, as well as the always ahead of its time we make money not art).

Where cathedrals go to die

When large container ships can contain or ship no more, they're sent halfway round the world to so-called "breaking yards," where they're dismantled (basically by hand), their metal is salvaged, and their intact structures, down to the doors and toilet seats, are put back onto the global marketplace.
Today, these yards tend to be in Bangladesh or India – but location is just a question of cheap labor and (nonexistent) environmental regulations.
It's toxic work.


In his book The Outlaw Sea, William Langewiesche visits the Alang shipbreaking yard in Gujarat, India. It is "a shoreline strewn with industrial debris on the oily Gulf of Cambray, part of the Arabian Sea."
His descriptions are great: "Dawn spread across the gargantuan landscape. Alang, in daylight, was barely recognizable as a beach. It was a narrow, smoke-choked industrial zone six miles long, where nearly two hundred ships stood side by side in progressive states of dissection, yawning open to expose their cavernous holds, spilling their black innards onto the tidal flats... Night watchmen were swinging the yard gates open now, revealing the individual plots, each demarcated by little flags or other markers stuck in the sand, and heavily cluttered with cut metal and nautical debris."


He visits a hull rerolling mill where "perhaps a hundred emaciated men moved through soot and heavy smoke, feeding scrap to a roaring furnace leaking flames from cracks in the side. The noise was deafening. The heat was so intense that in places I thought it might sear my lungs. The workers' clothes were black with carbon, as were their hair and their skin. Their faces were so sooty that their eyes seemed illuminated."


These photographs of a shipbreaking yard in Bangladesh are all by Edward Burtynsky, however, which makes this at least my fourth post about the man – but what can I say? His work is amazing.
There's something almost mythological in the sight of men standing round campfires amidst the toxic debris of a structure they themselves have taken apart. A displaced landscape of rare metals leaching into the sand beneath them, poisonous deltas flowing to the sea. Metallurgical micro-hydrology.
Surviving – or not – on the scraps of a first world that sent its waste elsewhere.


But what I was actually thinking – what this post was supposed to be about, in fact – was how cool it'd be if old buildings weren't destroyed by wrecking balls, bulldozers, or well-placed explosives – they were instead uprooted in their entirety, packed onto Panamax cargo ships and dropped onto some beach somewhere, in a tropical archipelago. Complete, intact, ready for salvage. Two hundred old stone cathedrals lined up in the mist at dawn, arches ready for cutting, naves yawning open like hulls of old tankers. Behind them, American football stadiums.
On another island, skyscrapers.
Notre-Dame is collapsing? Well, ship it to the islands, where flying buttresses, arches, and colonnades are stacked round like an inland reef.
Chartres has irrepairable structural damage? The cathedral in Köln? St. Peter's? The entire arabesque'd core of Venice? Off to the islands! Strapped to the flatbeds and cargo holds of unregistered ships, the Houses of Parliament go floating by.
The Seagrams Building? Swiss Re? Canary Wharf? The Empire State Building? The White House?
Stonehenge?


Recognizable chunks of famous architecture litter the island shores of a barely visited archipelago. Sent there on a rusting fleet of container ships.
European cathedrals overgrown with palm trees, half-buried in sand, their crypts exposed, stained glass catching every sunset. Wind-blown bank towers lilt to one side, covered in creeper vines and home to bats.
The intact floors of formerly grand 5th Avenue high-rises, complete with chandeliers, are laid-out in familiar rooms and corridors – but now they're infested with crocodiles and half-burnt by fire.
A photojournalist arrives, walking stunned through the python-infested arches of what was once Westminster Abbey...


(With thanks to Leah Beeferman for the tip, and with the oddly synchronicitous realization that gravestmor just linked to Burtynsky's shipbreaking photos, too...)

The Arbonian Sea

[Image: Dallol, Afar Desert, Ethiopia].

A brand new ocean basin has formed in the Afar Desert of northeastern Ethiopia. Following an earthquake in September 2005, the remote desert region simply split: "the split is the beginning of a long process, which will eventually lead to Ethiopia's eastern part tearing off from the rest of Africa, a sea forming in the gap."

Soon the basin will flood; someday it will be an ocean.

Already it's thirteen feet wide.

[Image: "Ash and pumice was thrown out at vent sites along the 60km segment." BBC].

If you're hoping to sail across it, however, you'll have to wait at least a million years. (Something I'm fully prepared to do, by the way).

And maybe Leah Beeferman can map the future coastline...?

(Via Archinect's resident aquaman, Javier Arbona).