the irony of desert flash floods

images from 'Haaretz' online newspaper

This was the week, these past few days the Negev got more rainfall than it usually receives in a couple of years. Two people who partook in "flood hunting" i.e. the dangerous sport of driving down to the desert to catch a rare glimpse of it filling up with water, did not make it out alive. These floods occur rarely, but when they do, they bring with them destruction to infrastructure and potential casualties. Wouldn't it make sense to find a way to harness this much needed water?

half-baked ideas

The crops from MX reviews at the end of last term- This half baked water system (+ some after holiday slump..). The components are supposedly there, just (!) need to do the mixin' and the bakin'. And of course, the two other systems... In the meanwhile, trying to get educated about desert greenhouse practices, a mission proving to be challenging, considering I live in a country where the average temperature for this season is -10c.

Pharan floods- site II

tighten her up

Abstract take IV, similar to the third version, slightly tighter. Still needs work. Some design input will be useful...

Terrain Vague-

“When architecture and urban design project their desire onto a vacant space, a terrain vague, they seem incapable of doing anything other than introducing violent transformations, changing estrangements into citizenship, and striving at all costs to dissolve the uncontaminated magic of the obsolete in the efficacy.” -Ignasi Moralés Rubio

The term ‘Terrain Vague’, commonly interpreted as ‘Wasteland’, is most often used when referring to reclamation of abandoned or non developed sites within a dense urban fabric. The desert’s genius Loci embodies this dual quality of the ‘Terrain Vague’; it is an ambiguous territory, conceived as void of all life while at the same time impregnated with sublime qualities and the imminent potential for a genuine, even cosmic existence.

Unlike the city condition, where the ‘Terrain Vague’ lifts its head underneath a carpet of urbanity, in localized and isolated exceptions, the vastness of the terrain dominates the desert and patches of urbanity are an anomaly. Nevertheless, in a similar manner we aim to conquer the wilderness, establish boundaries, order mechanisms and control devices enabling the annihilation of the void. In fact, this act is in the very essence of architectural utopianism.

However, the desert is not truly a void, nor has it been so in the past. It is a realm of ample history and presence of natural and human life. Desertification processes are affecting a fifth of the world population, and further regions are developing increased vulnerability to aridity. In Israel, the Negev desert, accounts for 2/3 of the land area. It is a site of continuous environmental and social experimentation, situated in the southern blind spot of Israel. Existing practices of settlement and resource management, particularly water and energy infrastructures may reach an inevitable end in the wake of an escalating global energy crisis, and trends of climate weirding. Nevertheless, there exists an innate and often disregarded capacity in the desert for solar energy generation, water collection and livelihood. This thesis aims to unveil these embedded potentials through developing an understanding of the ecological, cultural & political dimensions of the systems in question, and their interactions.

Under the conviction that aggression towards the environment and towards other human beings is rooted in a similar affliction, this work aspires for a relationship of empathy between the land and its inhabitants. It wishes to highlight the often neglected qualities of the desert via a proposal for a hybrid of solar, water, greenhousing & urban infrastructural system with the natural system of Wadi Pharan. The system proposed is intended to capitalize on the qualities of this unique territory, while resisting its violent abuse.

Pharan floods- site I

First try at mapping wadi Pharan seasonal variations and flooding patterns. This is the first site out of 3 which I am planning to map. Each site has a different condition in terms of the workings of the wadi. At this site, site I the wadi intersects with the Jordanian border, the Jordan rift valley (Arava in Hebrew) and road 90. This is also the only place along the wadi which is currently populated. As seen in the maps, the small settlement placed to the south of the wadi is Moshav Pharan named after the wadi. The moshav, consisting about 100 families, was founded in 1971 as a Kibbutz and then converted into a moshav structure. Meaning there is still collaboration on agricultural activities, yet other aspects of life are managed individually. The moshav relies on agriculture export for its source of income, mostly flowers and peppers, which are grown in the extensive greenhouses seen above. Some families run dairy farms, and recently solar fields are promoted as an upcoming source of income.

Mapping the unknown

Ancient courses of the Mississippi River meander belt.
Harold N.Fisk, 1944

Looking now at 'Mississippi Floods' by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha.
This book is an interesting and beautifully executed mapping essay by the authors documenting and synthesizing maps, surveys, photography, paintings and models of the Mississippi river and its varying Meanders, Flows, Banks & Beds.

Mapping as the first act of agency, seeks to create order in the undefinable. An entity as powerful as a river or a wadi, which is also inconstantly changing and is manifested in a scale beyond human comprehension both in time and space is not simply harnessed. The map, as a base for the plan is an extremely powerful mechanism in defining the existing, forgetting the unwanted and prophesying the future.

I am now struggling with how to map wadi Pharan, on which little information is available. This is a crucial moment which has implications on the argument, the organization of information and ultimately the proposal. The scarcity of existing information on itself is evidence of an alternate set of priorities, favoring certain investigations than others. From a more positive standpoint, finding that appropriate 'voice' to a map enables a more sensitive interaction.

"The elusiveness of these terrains has not stopped the corps from pursuing their definition. The efforts of the corps have resulted in interventions that match the Mississippi in magnificence. These interventions have an impact not only on the river but on larger lands of the Mississippi's making. They also bring life to these lands, forcing them into the inexhaustible gray zone between man and river that marks the lower Mississippi landscape." (p.9)

Mx

MX reviews last week were quite useful in establishing new goals and resolving some contradicting trends. The outcome points towards a triple threaded infrastructural "package": solar energy, water harvesting + desalination, and greenhouse agriculture. The package would operate symbiotically with a wadi condition to promote desert survival and prosperity. The "package" system could then theoretically be applied as an infrastrcutural thread connecting existing communities, forming new ones, or potentially be free standing.

Site specific

Choosing a site in this vast emptiness, or appearance of, is not obvious. It is tempting to look for an existing urban form to intervene with. However, the thesis is concerned with how infrastructural systems can be stretched to provide an added economic value (energy export) while creating a renewed sense of community. It appears that the best strategy to achieve this would be to start with a 'tabula rasa'. The determining variables will then be the existing large scale infrastructure, natural or man-made. The site considered is the intersection of wadi Pharan and Road 40. Pharan is an ancient watershed, the largest in the Negev, which is today dry most days of the year. During rare rainfalls it overflows, draining the entire Negev Plateau. Road 40 is bisects the desert connecting its northern node Beer-Sheva, with the southern one Eilat. This road functions as a life line for all the Negev's communities, connecting them to the electrical grid and the national water carrier. They both meet in the very center of the Negev, a distance of approximately an hour away from any other populated settlement. Following is a closer examination of the four potential sites and their relationship to the Wadi and the road: