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)

Terrain Vague

The thesis abstract is now going through major modifications, which in turn brought about a new title for the blog and potentially the thesis itself. For now, I am satisfied with 'Terrain Vague' as a working title, which I feel is a better representation of the content in question. Here is take 3 of the working abstract:

Terrain Vague- a desert survival kit

“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 tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Than we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism.” -Walter Benjamin/ Illuminations

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, both void of all life and hope 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 rules 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.

Despite an abundance of constructed memories, the desert, as other colonized territories is not truly a void, nor has it been so in the past. It is a world of ample history and presence of natural and human life. At present, the Negev desert, comprising 60% of the land area is a site of continuous experimentation, situated in the southern blind spot of Israel. In the wake of an escalating global energy crisis, and trends of climate weirding, numerous other regions are developing vulnerability to aridity. Nevertheless, there exists an innate and often disregarded capacity in the desert for solar energy, water collection and livelihood. In order to survive and prosper under these harsh circumstances, we ought to become increasingly more educated on the inner workings of this ecosystem while reconsidering our previous value systems.

Under the conviction that aggression towards the environment and towards other human beings is rooted in a similar affliction (Shezaf), this thesis aspires for a relationship of empathy with the land and its inhabitants. It wishes to highlight the often neglected qualities of the desert. The thesis proposes a hybrid of infrastructural systems 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.

a 1000 wells

Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.

"Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible landscape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky.

Consequently two forms of religion exist in Isaura. The city's gods, according to some people, live in the depths, in the black lake that feeds the underground streams. According to others, the gods live in the buckets that rise, suspended from a cable, as they appear over the edge of the wells, in the revolving pullyes, in the windlasses of the norias, in the pump handles, in the blades of the windmills that draw the water up from the drillings, in the trestles that support the twisting probes, in the reservoirs perched on stilts over the roofs, in the slender arches of the aquducts, in all the columns of water, the verticle pipes, the plungers, the drains, all the way up to the weathercrocks that surmount the airy scaffoldings of Isaura, a city that movesentirely upward."

From: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino



Venice, Italy

While I am well aware that 'Invisible Cities' has been quoted to death, in any imaginable context, this excerpt seems so relevant to the Wadi condition, I just couldn't resist, so bear with me while I get it out of my system.

As Marco Polo is describing the wonders of Venice to Kublai Khan, each time as if it were an entirely different city, I can't help but remembering the wonder I felt sitting in a Venetian Piazza, wondering if it would have been such a great public place if it weren't for the fountains in the center. Since most of them are today out of use, thanks to modern sanitation systems, one is kept wondering, what could replace these ancient wells. What would be a current necessity of the urban infrastructural kind, that doubles as a mechanism for the creation of a public realm. It has to do with need. Of course, the necessity preceded the emergence of a public space, I imagine these places became Piazzas because people congregated there to draw water from the well. Nevertheless, the symbiosis works tremendously well. With regards to the two gods of Isaura- one of them is the natural system; the lake or the wadi. The other is the man-made infrastructure that enables the use of the natural resource. One can not exist without the other. Both combined enable the prosperous life in Isaura. A depleted lake would not sustain a city, no matter how ingenious its infrastructure may be. The wadi alone, without a mechanism to manage its flows, can bring loss and devastation, with proper flood management and water harvesting it could be a source of desert livelihood.


Neve Tzedek, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Ein-Karem, Jerusalem, Israel

directions

Unrelated yet informative...



This is borrowed from:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
a site well worth exploring for its abundance of random maps, revealing unsuspected trends, which are of curious interest.
As a side note on mapping- I realize more and more how mapping carries with it a very particular kind of deceiving agency. This is the kind of agency that does not own up to its own impact. The author of a map, much like the author of an excerpt in the museum, remains anonymous. Thus his narrative is transformed to an uncontested truth. The agency of mapping has the power to rewrite the memory of our past, be a focal lens of the present and direct the construction of the future. All this, while camouflaged as a tracing of reality.

arid waters

Now you can view this video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLyXlpZThTE

productive lattice schematics

hot, flat and crowded

What better day than today to be reading 'Hot, flat and crowded' by Thomas L.Friedman... Summer is upon us in full fierce, and even if only for 3 days, in Canada too we comprehend, by the pores of our skin, what difference only a few degrees make. Now imagine this as a daily average for 4-5 months of the year. Imagine 10 degrees more during reoccurring heatwaves. Imagine very little shade, no air conditioning and depleting water resources. For many this is the current state of reality. For many more (estimated by Friedman at about 5 billion) it will become so by 2050. The good news are that Canada, North America and parts of Europe will likely not take much of the heat. The bad news is that we should still care. According to Friedman population is growing mostly in underdeveloped countries, which are also surprisingly close to the equator. The world is flattened by the internet and communication revolution, and all these billions of people who are soon to be born will want to turn on the light, drive a car and post on their blogs. So we then realize global growth is something we need to manage, since it can not be avoided. However, the effects of its carbon footprint, at its current emission rate, on global climate change may be well beyond our ability to set things right, once the process is beyond a certain tipping point. "Avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable", in Friedman's own words. Friedman's green revolution is not a revolution of feel good recycling and efficient light bulbs. It is an infrastructural revolution of global magnitudes. The goal is to avoid doubling CO2 emissions by 2050, while still supporting growth. One of the strategies suggested, as a part of a global solution, is to increase solar power seven-hundred fold and eliminate all coal fired power. Our 5 billion friends by the equator might be able to help with that.