Category: water
-
Historical Waterways
My fascination with historical mapping, particularly that focused on hydrology is a well known fact. A great resource spotted via Seeing Landscapes and Watershed+ gives a link to an older map of Manhattan published in the NY Times. ‘When There Was Water, Water Everywhere‘ looks at the 1874 map prepared by Col. Egbert L. Viele,…
-
Waterscape Urbanism
I was struck by a recent mis-use of the term landscape urbanism in this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the need for climate change inspired floating homes. Quoting Thai landscape architect Danai Thaitakoo on the need for dealing with innundation. “Climate change will require a radical shift within design practice from the solid-state…
-
Europe Journal: Diana Memorial Fountain
Located at one of the far ends of Hyde Park in London is the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, an elegantly curved ring of water opened in 2004 (design by Kathryn Gustafson from her London office of Gustafson Porter). Although somewhat controversial, I found the feature quite engaging, even experiencing it late in the…
-
Mississippi Modelling
An article that came up amidst discussions on the Landscape Urbanism Reader revisits the question of scale brought by up Linda Pollak in her essay ‘Constructed Ground’. On Design Observer, Kristi Dykema Cheramie investigates the wonderful history of the massive model built to simulate river conditions in her essay The Scale of Nature: Modeling…
-
RBC: Zeekracht (OMA)
Zeekracht | OMA A related follow-up to the essay by Koolhaas, this short essay explores Zeekracht, a master plan for the North Sea, driven by it’s “high wind and consistent wind speeds and shallow waters…” making it “…arguably the world’s most suitable area for large-scale wind farming.” The project master plan (below) outlines the strategy. …
-
More Hidden Rivers – NYC
An interesting post from Urban Omnibus from earlier in January entitled ‘Grey vs. Green: Daylighting the Saw Mill River‘ is less intriguing in design concept that in larger idea of envisioning the expression of the variety of waterways that are hidden/buried/forgotten within our urban areas. As referenced by Eric Sanderson through his work on the…
-
More Hidden Rivers
Always a fan of explorations of lost rivers, this one is takes the existing urban pattern and erases the former route of the Fleet River in London (via the Londonist) “As most readers will know (and we’ve seen first hand), the river is now entirely underground and used as a sewer, but you can still…
-
Aquifers not Aquitards
From the recent post on watershed boundaries, a reader mentioned the concept of underground aquifers and their relation to geographical boundaries and . My title is in jest (sort of) referring to ‘Aquitards’ which according to Wikipedia is “a zone within the earth that restricts the flow of groundwater from one aquifer to another“, but…
-
Disaster Imagery
The Gulf oil spill – documented by Photographer Edward Burtynsky, best known for his fabulous work ‘Manufactured Landscapes‘… capturing the essence of the breadth of disaster and human-wrought destruction. (via Treehugger, more images on the exhibit at the Metivier Gallery). :: image via Treehugger
-
Reading Owens Lake
One of my favorite chapters of the great Infrastructural City (read my review here) is the chapter by Barry Lehrman entitled ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’ which delves into the ‘accidental preservation’ of the Owens Lake basin due to the depletion of water resources as they were diverted to Los Angeles. As part of the…