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$16 display until october 2013
Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 curated by Lateral Office
As Nunavut celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2014, Arctic Adaptations will present innovative architecture proposals rooted in Nunavut’s distinct land, climate and culture, reflecting local traditions of migration and mobility. It will explore how, in light of dramatic environmental, social and economic forces transforming the Arctic today, architecture might help nurture robust Northern communities.
Venice Biennale in Architecture June 7 to November 23, 2014
The Canada Council for the Arts and the RAIC are working together to provide financial and project support for Canada’s representation in Venice. This collaboration is part of a larger project to promote the presentation and appreciation of contemporary Canadian architectural excellence in Canada and abroad.
canadacouncil.ca raic.org lateraloffice.com
geology on site review fall 2012
contents
violent land Dora P Crouch Giulia Piana
4 8
Geology, Water and Antiquity: Ephesus, Prienne, Silenus Geological Rome Slippage: the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta Volcanic Auckland Shifting Cities: False Creek, Vancouver
12 15 16
Michael J Leeb Thomas Mical Ryan Coghlan mining Heather Asquith Martin Abbott Greg Stone
18 22 28
Staking Claim in Cobalt, Ontario The Commonwealth of Australia: Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Broken Hill Hollow Ground: Kiruna, Sweden
geology of waste Shane Neill Dustin Valen Clinton Langevin, Amy Norris and Chester Rennie Karianne Halse John Calvelli
30 34 38 42 48
ASARCO: near, but not quite Ciudad Juárez, Mexico Constructing Geology: Singapore
The Sisyphus Project Landscape Processes Becoming Mineral, in Oregon
going underground Vanessa Eickhoff Ted Landrum Will Craig Mary Kavanagh Nick Sowers mapping surfaces Bradford Watson Trent Workman Joshua Craze Douglas Moffat Daniel Canty other things Stephanie White calls for articles masthead cover front: Louis Helbig back: Nanaimo Community Archives
50 53 54 56 61
Hidden Stratum, Galt, Ontario Tunnelling
Fear of Falling Into Thrihnukagigur, Iceland Atomic Tourist, Trinity Site, New Mexico Listening Prostheses
62 66 70 74 76
Unstable Ground: the outer edges of Denver, Colorado Notes from the Field: the Assiniboine River, Manitoba Under the Soil, the People: Abyei, South Sudan
Montréal Phonographe Montréal Phonographe
2 79 80
1 Introduction Call for articles: on site 30: ethics and publics, on site 31: photography and cartography who we are 1918-2012: scales of resource extraction Highway 63 Bitumen Slick, Mildred Lake, Alberta Borehole Sections on Fox’s Farm, Nanaimo, British Columbia, 1918
geology
introduction | why now ? by stephanie white
from David Suzuki’s activism to Greenpeace – was often a subtext to these investigations of space at the scale of the earth, rather than the canvas or studio or gallery. Land Arts of the American West, for example, has a program that tours installations in the southwest states of the USA, combining land art (visiting Heiser’s Double Negative for example) with the use of the American West’s vast, ‘empty’ territories for military testing – craters and irradiated landscapes, and for infrastructural projects – water management and mining. In On Site review 26:DIRT we looked at the surface of the earth as the tray upon which we conduct our lives and work, but surface is just the top thin layer of the deep geology of the earth. When the crust is cracked open, either by meteors, or volcanoes, by heat from an over-thin atmosphere, or by mining, which is by definition below the surface – when the surface is cracked, life as we know it is changed and often endangered. Environmentalism has moved beyond just the reclamation of small brownfield sites or disused mines and is now engaged at the scale of the planet; the inevitability of climate change is a global issue that transcends national projects and local political issues. The local invariably refers to the global, so one can see a similar escalation of scale in environmental art. The conversations are linked. There appears to be a recognition that surface intervention, at the scale of dirt, is only the top layer.
This issue , on architecture and things geologic, was suggested by the work of Smudge Studio and the Friends of the Pleistocene website. I came across them at a Musagetes Foundation café in Sudbury in September 2011, where they handed out their guidebook to New York, Geologic City: a field guide to the geo- architecture of New York . This was followed by the symposium The Geologic Turn: Architecture’s New Alliance , curated by Etienne Turpin of Scapegoat . The geologic turn. No doubt it is happening, this interest in identifying deep history through geology, but why is it happening? and in the sense that new art is often activist, or critical, why now? Land art has had a large influence on architecture ever since Robert Smithson’s jetties and islands of the 1960s, Alan Sonfist’s forests and Michael Heiser’s earthworks, encoded in critical books such as Lucy Lippard’s 1983 Overlay . Parallel, or co- incident to, were Richard Long’s walking projects in Britain and Andy Goldsworthy’s leaf assemblages. These were all artists who intervened in the landscape either at an uncommodifiable scale, or else to draw attention to some condition, such as the loss of the countryside in Britain. The Boyle Family’s forty years of cast sections of the earth’s surface is a record of something we sense is under threat. The growth of environmentalism and awareness of climate change – from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to the Sierra Club,
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We start with a brief sampling by Dora Crouch of her brilliant 2003 book, Geology and Settlement: Greco-Roman Patterns . The complexity of tectonic plate movements in the eastern Mediterranean is both frightening and active, but there is a built record of up to 3000 years old that demonstrates the very roots of the geological imperative in building. Giulia Piana shows the influence of Rupe Tarpea in Rome, Michael Leeb – the Frank Slide, Thomas Mical follows with volcanic Auckland and Ryan Coghlan with Vancouver’s False Creek. In all these pieces, geological upheaval happens, we stumble out of the rubble. Then comes a group of articles on mining and its impacts: Heather Asquith looks at Cobalt, Ontario, site of a silver rush in the early 1900s; Martin Abbott looks at hinterland mining in Australia with the astounding metaphor that massive excavation in the west is piled up literally and productively on the east coast of Australia’s dense urban shoreline. Greg Stone finds a company town in Sweden at the mercy of the mining corporation which seems able to move it around the countryside at will, and Shane Neill writes about lead, ASARCO and the remediation of a very scarred landscape. Remediation and reclamation figures in the next grouping: Dustin Valen raises important questions about the technological ‘disappearance’ of waste which actually encourages the production of more of it; Clint Langevin, Amy Norris and Chester Rennie present a demonstration of this elision of waste dumps and pleasure, and Karianne Halse has sent a beautiful project for the re-use of a concrete plant at Fresh Kills landfill. John Calvelli thinks about mineralisation. In the next section, the articles are connected through the sense that there are hidden worlds beneath the surface. Nick Sowers listens to it; Vanessa Eickhoff writes about a creek treated like a sewer pipe under a small Ontario town and Ted Landrum tunnels through life. Mary Kavanagh visits Trinity Site in New Mexico, the site of postwar nuclear tests now turned tourist site, and Will Craig goes into an Icelandic volcano and is very afraid. Bradford Watson presents a critique of Denver’s relentless suburban push into unsuitable geologies – because foundations are by definition hidden, politicians, developers and buyers remain unaware of the unsuitability. Maps and the making of maps are the subject of Trent Workman’s work on charting the prairies and of Joshua Craze’s essay on determining the location of Abyei on the border between Sudan and the recently declared South Sudan. And to end, we have Douglas Moffat’s aural mapping of Montréal and Daniel Canty’s thoughts and words as he walks the island. The map is just the top layer of deep histories, deep geologies. c
The deep movements and forces of the earth, its deep geological processes which we have either ignored, discounted or taken for granted, have more influence on our species’ future than we have previously thought. This is new territory for artistic practice: activist, scientific, historic, at the scale of aeons not just the post-industrial era. If we look at oil extraction, particularly bitumen, what we find is that where previously we focussed on the product and what use could be made of it, we now realise that the process of extraction releases many unforeseen conditions and other, usually toxic, products that were hidden deep in geological strata historically released slowly by erosion. Thus, for example, there is a concentration on the process in artist Mary Kavanagh’s works on the oil sands and the infrastructure it takes to collapse the slow- release of arsenic or barium in amounts that do not threaten life in favour of a rush-release in the bitumen-extraction process. We know that radiation occurs naturally in the atmosphere. What we have developed is a way, through weaponry, to concentrate it in lethal amounts. It is this concentration of the earth’s products that has parallels with concentrated cancer cells, an uncanny metaphor as it is the concentrated release of things deep under the surface (uranium, asbestos, oil, carbon) that causes cancer in the human body. The value of land and territory today is evaluated entirely on the basis of extractable resources, whether platinum (South African miners’ strike), bitumen (the 2012 US presidential election – selling the US to China in exchange for energy) or potash (the end of the Wheat Marketting Board as surface production of grain is marginalised by the under-the-surface production of potash, ironically, for fertiliser). Wars are no longer fought for ideology or for humanitarian causes, but for geological reasons. This is the general awareness within which we now work. There is a reason why there is a geologic turn now and here. It is because it is larger than consumerism, it is unthreatened by information technology (other than rare earth extraction) and it is, as many of the essays in this issue of On Site review show, omnipresent.
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opposite page: Dora Crouch (see page 4) sent us this 1778 drawing by James Hutton, Theory of the Earth , the first published study of geological patterns. This illustrates an unconformity at Jedburgh, Scotland. Near-vertical beds of Silurian sandstone are topped by angular detritus over which lie flat beds of Devonian sandstone, topped with vegetation, humans and horses.
Giulia Piana (see page 8) sent a copy of this eighteenth-century etching of the uses of geology: Punition de Cassius, an de Rome 268. Joseph de Longueuil, after Silvestre David Mirys.
karst geologies | water systems by dora p crouch
geology water antiquity
in my studies , i have examined entire water systems , from finding the water at a spring in the mountains , bringing it to the city , distributing it to houses , businesses and recreational structures , and carrying away used water in sewers . this whole interconnected pattern constitutes the water system . all the illustrations here are from my book , geology and settlement : greco - roman patterns . oxford university press , 2003
Diagram of climate changes over five thousand years, from 3000 BCE to 2000 CE, comparing the advance and retreat of European and North American glaciers, the rate of growth of bristlecone pines and the fluctuating levels of C14 in the atmosphere The trees and glaciers have matched phases, while C14 reflects solar radiation and hence climate warming A warm period coincided with the flourishing of the Roman Empire, 200 BCE-400 CE
Plate boundaries and motions in the eastern Mediterranean area (MacKenzie 1972) Plate edges in western Turkey and the Caucasus are shown only generally. Arrows show direction of motion, their lengths proportional to the relative velocity Double lines indicate extension across plate boundaries. A single heavy line indicates a transform fault. Crosshatching represents boundaries across which shortening is occurring Plates are numbered: 1 Eurasian 2 African 3 Iranian 4 South Caspian 5 Turkish 6 Aegean 7 Black Sea 8 Arabian. This simplified map suggests the complications of plate movements in the area.
Water and geology is my specialty; I’ve spent a lifetime researching Greek and Roman water systems, starting with my PhD in art history from UCLA, a study of Roman-era Palmyra in Syria. At the time, although there had been some studies of individual Roman city water systems, no one had looked much at Greek water systems. Between 1970 and 1985 I met Henning Fahlbusch at the Technical University of Lübeck, found the Frontinus Geschellschaft, a society for the study of water systems, and helped organise the Cura Aquarum which conducted field trips to the ancient cities of the Roman and Greek empires. Greeks and Romans ran their water delivery lines along the slopes of hills and through tunnels underground, depending on the terrain. Their technology was able to bore through existing rock formations, using them, for instance, at Syracuse in Sicily, where an important aqueduct is visible for part of its path
running diagonally along the inside edge of a cliff, carved into the stone. Today the aqueduct is broken, so no water runs in it, however, the object was to bring water into the settlement and to connect its outfalls with further sets of tunnels and pipes that carried away used, dirty water in a set of sewers set at a lower level, but that still flowed down hill by gravity and then poured into a river or the sea. Sometimes water system elements are still visible, such as the channels in the Athenian agora, but often they have been destroyed or misplaced such as at Ephesus in Turkey or Merida in Spain – urban centres where pipes have collapsed and simply been piled up next to the houses or stored in the extant public structures of the site, in the storerooms (former shops), for instance, of the lower agora at Ephesus.
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Ephesus shorelines and sacred harbours. One can see the first settlements were on the highest ground, and descended closer and closer to the shoreline, which kept moving away further and further into the sea. Sediment deposits that filled the valley between the hill above Ephesus and Pion provided an unstable building foundation. The temple of Artemisia is perched on the very edge of a calcerenite (a soft limestone developed from shell calcium) lens. below, right, the degree of sedimentary infilling of Aegean bays and inlets.
John C. Kraft, Helmut Brückner, Ilhan Kayan, and Helmut Engelmann. Geoarcaeology: an International Journal, vol 22, no. 1. p13
from Kraft and Brückner, courtesy Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut
In ‘Urban Design amid Flooding and Sedimentation: the Case of Ephesus’, a study I had done with the engineer Charles Ortloff on the Ephesus water system, it was made clear that one cannot discuss the water system, an inventive and sophisticated distribution of aqueducts and pipes to water-using buildings, without looking at the geological record of Ephesus, a Greek city, then a Roman one, now an archaeological site near Selçuk in Turkey. i ephesus and priene Between 200 BCE and 600 CE – over eight centuries, the shoreline at Ephesus was dramatically altered, with the location and construction of buildings moving around as the landscape changed. Political and geological processes and events destroyed and rebuilt structures many times within the core area. When I was studying Ephesus and its neighbour Priene, my first significant realisation at Ephesus was that archaeologists of the twentieth-century had taken for granted that the modern-day
appearance of the terrain at Ephesus was essentially the same as the arrangements of the Greco-Roman period. Not so! In that earlier time, the shoreline had rapidly moved forward to the southeast, gradually filling in the entire valley. The earliest features of Ephesus are now more than several dozen kilometres inland. This process was repeated in both the Upper Meander and Lower Meander Rivers in the Ephesus area and in the Prienne- Miletus area in the next valley to the south. Peoples had arrived at what is now the Ephesus archaeological site, in the fourth millennium BCE, later exploiting the marble, limstone, dolomite, schist, hornstone and breccia of this terrain for tools and building materials, and for sources of water. The first people settled near springs at or near the later temple of Artemis, or beside creeks that drained the plain between the mountains and the sea, accommodating their settlement sites to the changing valley. The annual deposit of silt in the delta allowed farming; cattle grazed in the swamps; the bay and sea encouraged fishing and marine trade.
Plan of ancient Ephesus with numbered buildings. The city lies between Bulbul Dag and Panayir Dag (mountains)
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Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna
At Priene, lying in the next valley to the south of Ephesus, the water supply was closely related to the availability of karst water on the site, still visible today on the mountain above the city. When Alexander the Great was invading this area in the early fourth century BCE, he located his base camp for further campaigns on the platform that became the Greek city of Priene, still called by its ancient name. In my 30 years of study of ancient Greco-Roman cities I was at first amazed and then enraptured by the interaction of these ancient Mediterranean peoples with the subterranean factors of the land they were building on. By the sixth century BC they had learned to harness the often invisible water to supply their common areas and individual houses. An awareness of geological processes and products flourished in a pre-scientific culture, because these people already had the most important facilitating attribute – the inquiring mind. For example, Priene engineers of the fourth-third century BCE designed a sophisticated device – a mixing valve, which prevents a possible overflow of water from the central channel of the street that receives drainage from flanking residential districts. We found it built into the end of Priene’s main street, under the gate. By the inclusion of a baffle below the gate, the water was diverted from the exit channel, spun in two different directions, trapping any debris that might be lodged in the water channel. Without moving parts, this device solved what was always an unpleasant and unhealthy problem. In all water-related activities, Greeks and Romans were keenly aware of the geological base. Urban sites were chosen for their underlying workable stone and clay that could be used for defensive city walls and for the structures within. Cities in the Mediterranean area were almost always built on limestone – of all the cities I have studied, only Morgantina was built on sandstone, a decision which brought some awkward construction problems, especially at the theatre, where from lack of proper foundations, one side collapsed more than once, and an accompanying row of two-storey shops was never finished. City builders everywhere made a point of securing essential spring water for drinking, whether adjacent or at a distance from the city gates. The longest water line that I know of was a Roman one that stretched 60 miles into the northern hinterland of Constantinople – Istanbul today. Priene drain: operates in three dimensions. The left side of the gutter goes into a cul-de-sac that creates a horizontal eddy, the right side follows a dip in the gutter floor, creating a vertical eddy. Working together they collect rubbish in a gyre, out of which it can be scooped.
Geological section of Priene. The town’s centre is indicated by the three columns. Varieties of marble are suggested by block patterns in the layers. Local builders preferred the gray, thick bedded massive stones comprising the terrace and mountainside under and behind the town. The alternation of marbles with schists facilitated the appearance of springs (Gungor and Alkan, 1998) below: Roman water supply and drainage system at Ephesus, based on extensive field work and computer modelling (Ortloff and Crouch 2001). Supply lines provided water for public display in fountains and baths, supplementing traditional springs, cisterns and wells. Drainage of used water and wastewater was by gravity flow to the harbour.
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II Selinus Aesthetic differences from the use of different kinds of stone were consciously chosen. The finely carved edges and slender forms of the buildings on the Acropolis at Athens were possible because they used strong local Pentellic marble. Casual visitors might not realise that the softer calcaranite found at Selinus in Sicily forced the architects of the temples there to design and build columns with thicker drums covered with a stucco made from marble dust to preserve the surface from the strong winds off the nearby sea that caused pitting of the surface. An earlier temple at Selinus – built out of the same calcarenite – with wide stretching capitals to strengthen them for support of a heavy entablature above, was situated over a lens of calcarenite strong enough to support the weight of the temple. This site decision shows that the builders must have dug down, located the edge of the lens and deliberately pulled the temple back from the edge for the temple to better survive earthquakes which were known to happen there. It has been my pleasure to work with engineers and archeologists on these investigations. Now I look forward to interacting with new interested persons — the readers of On Site review . c
Geological sections at Selinus. top: N-S acropolis section, with the sea to the south, at left. d – detritus subject to landslide, cb – whitish calcarenite, as clayey sand, cg – yellow calcarenite with calcareous modules and macro fauna, ma – clayey marl. above: N-S section of the east hill with south to the left. The ruins of Temple G overlie a thick lens of calcarenite, which thins to the right (north)
below: one of the over-sized columns at Selinus, ca fifth century BCE
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Site map of Selinus and environs. left to right: Gagera spring area with remains of temples. Citta (Manuzza) with acropolis and three temples to the south; and three more temples on east hill (with Casa Floris). The site is divided E-W into three sections by the two rivers. At the lower centre between Citta and the acropolis is the semicircular bastion of the north gate, connected to the perimeter wall along the right side of the acropolis. The the north above Citta is a long, narrow ridge where cemeteries and quarries occupied the southernmost section, and quarries and spring the area farther north. C Cavallari and S Cavallari, 1872
urbanism | frightful landscapes by giulia piana
geological rome
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Studying the geological origins of an urban area is about understanding the reasons for its form, and most of all, its primal underpinnings. Geology is much more fundamental than other instruments to explain the evolution of large historical cities such as Rome and its spatial and temporal scale. The two factors here are the nature and hazards of the terrain and the topography generated by the millenarian interaction of geological activity. Geology is a common ground for the whole urban agglomeration, reducing the superficial heterogeneity of the city to a territorial homogeneity. Rome’s urban landscape is a wonderful but unresolved superposition of countryside, Agro Romano , and a constructed city. One of the main conditions for the spread of an urban area is the balance between the potential and the risks inherent in a site, both dependent on the level of technology reached by society. In the case of Rome, the hilly nature of its landscape has represented, since its origin, both a potential and a problem. At the beginning of third millennium BC several villages settled along the left bank of the Tevere (Tiber River). The sites were strategically located in a volcanic area cut through by the Tiber fluvial network, leaving isolated tuffaceous cliffs that dominated the alluvial plain. Such a setting was favourable because of the
abundance of springs and building stones, very useful for the technological development of building and infrastructures. The good microclimate of these higher elevations was a strong protection from malaria, endemic to the plains of the river and the Tyrrhenian coast. Rome was one of these proto-historic villages, settled on the Campidoglio (Capitol Hill), the closer of the seven hills to the Isola Tiberina (Tiber’s Island). This location permitted both easy defence and permanent control of the mercantile trade at one of the rare points where it was possible to cross the flow of the Tiber. Indeed, the proximity to the other six hills guaranteed a certain degree of continuity, despite the difficult topography. The hilly landscape of the Campagna Romana originated in a Quaternary tectonic, erosive and volcanic phenomena that started one million years ago when the region was lifted out of the sea. The sandy formations of Monte Vaticano were suddenly eroded by a fluvial network – at the time, the Paleotiber (the ancient Tiber River) started in the Appennines and had its delta in Ponte Galeria. Between 600,000 and 700,000 years ago the Monte Mario ridge emerged in the northwest of the area. Together with the Pomezia formation, the Monte Mario ridge forced the Paleotiber eastward, moving its delta nearer the Anzio village.
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opposite: Rupe Tarpea, Roma right: Climbing Via di Monte Tarpeo
giulia piana
Tarpeia, the daughter of Tarpeio, defender of the Campidoglio, loved the king of the Sabines, Titus Tatius, although at the time, Rome was at war with the Sabines. To build Rome, Romans needed women to increase their population; they invited the Sabines to a festival and abducted the women. Titus Tatius convinced Tarpeia to liberate the women; the Romans executed Tarpeia for treason by throwing her off a cliff, known since as the Rupe Tarpea. A difficult topography, seen originally as a positive thing, developed another meaning: it was a site of punishment, a site of fear. This sense of fear in the hilly territory of Rome is still visible in the way the contemporary city has spread. Entire zones have grown up following the crests of the urban valleys of the Agro Romano , leaving them isolated and sometimes dangerous. This urban fabric takes the form of rings; there is little desire to cross the empty space at their feet. Not unlike the pomerium beyond the city’s walls where any urban or commercial activity was forbidden, the uneasy topography is embedded with sacred historical boundaries. c
At the same time exploding volcanic activity in the Sabatini district, 20 km northeast of Rome, and the Colli Albani district, less than 20 km to the southeast, made further changes to the region. All the water stagnating in a low area delimited by the Monte Mario-Pomezia ridge and the Appennine chain interacted with the magma, resulting in violent explosions. The morphology of the area at this point was that of four flattened plateaus (Trigoria, Tor de Cenci, Palatino and Cavaliere) eroded by the Tiber which, by this period, had reached its present course. Valley erosion was repeated several times during the Quaternary through climate oscillation and huge volcanic material deposits; one of the most violent erosions gave birth to the seven hills. For centuries the advantages of an irregular morphology with flattened summits were preferred to the hazards of the alluvial plains of the Tiber, drained and urbanised only in the last 150 years. This demonstrates that a society appropriates territory according, functionally, to its basic needs, which were those of defence and trade only up until the last two centuries. Despite this, the legend of the Rupe Tarpea (Tarpeian Rock) which dates from the Roman period, is an interesting metaphor of how threatening an un-planar topography can be.
above: Balduina area seen from Parco Regionale Urbano del Pineto below: Valle Aurelia area seen from Parco Regionale Urbano del Pineto
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giulia piana
weather | disaster by michael leeb
slippage
the ‘ mountain that moves ’ is the local indigenous name for turtle mountain . the centre peak collapsed due to a number of climatic conditions . above average rain and snowfall , strong winds and a rapid ice thaw within mountaintop fissures destabilised one of turtle mountain ’ s three peaks , causing a landslide that burried the town of frank on april 29, 1903. see the report on the great landslide at frank , alta ., 1903, by r c mcconnell and r w brock , edmonton geological society . edmonton , alberta . 2003.
Gravity having kinetic potential alone awaits an early morning Spring, of unseasonable rains the disparity of temperatures, an icy thaw among fissures, and the cold air inversion of a gale force wind.
An early morning storm unknown to most with a town asleep below and the mountain that moves above, now sets into motion
a landslide
of epic proportions.
Dust and boulders, slide rocks and mud That slip across the flats of the river valley below.
A mud slip that slides across marsh and meadow and runs down the slope, then across the valley beneath.
Velocity having destructive capacity alone won’t await
^
the mountain that moves and a storm set in motion All over
a mere single moment.
Limestone boulders a phantasm of features
of varying mass, a not distant past.
The loosely bound mudstone, an amorphous mass; the conglomerate of pebbles, gravel and silt; a textural beauty of deep ochre colour.
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Geomorphology; a metaphor for change
of bounded stone at the perimeter.
now only
perhaps
a lithic memorial amidst the tragedy, of a not distant past.
difficult geology | settlement by thomas mical
Volcanic Auckland towards a geophilosophy of architecture
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National Library of Australia Map NK3720/2
to selectively codify and frame desire and subjectivity as a contingent act, comes in the Deleuzian sense from “material process of connection, registration, and enjoyment of flows of matter and energy coursing through bodies in networks of production of all registers, be they geological, organic, or social”. 4 The flows and processes, no matter how imperceptible, are what link the landscape, inhabitation and the reflexivity of both. If the Deleuzian ‘geological’ is a vast network of sorting computational machines, the volcanic model can be seen as an extreme geological mechanism. 5 The current tranquility of Auckland’s volcanic field conditions mask vast apparati whose working parts are tectonic tension, heat pressure and molten depths. The volcanic field conditions belie the transportation of future sedimentation, the repetition of the genesis of automatic landscapes. On this physical and geological time scale, architecture would appear as etchings on the slow pouring surface. This architectural etching leads us to a calligraphic-diagrammatic model of urbanism, one that demands a more insightful examination of the geological. The city as a geological extension is conceptually drawn as an urban pressure map, as a three- dimensional mapping of stratifications, as metaphoric and conceptual fault lines in the socio-spatial assemblage, bringing us closer to answering De Landa’s question, ‘is it possible to find a diagram (or abstract machine) that operates across geological, meteorological and social formations?’ 6
The unique contingencies of the architecture and urbanism of Auckland derive from equally contingent geological, meteorological and social movements. Auckland’s volcanic geology, read as a geo-philosophy, allows us to project it upwards to Auckland’s urban architecture and landscape, specifically as dissonant outgrowths of the geologic drift or or buoys on the geologic flow, as an archaic field condition. 1 Once-molten volcanic cones in and around Auckland, quarried and excavated since Maori settlement, form an uneven and unstable ground condition of irregular concentricity, which architecture networks must negotiate. 2 The dynamic volcanic field condition produces unique social and spatial institutions, and as such it functions as a philosophical and a contextual grounding for design processes. Geophilosophy, as a discipline, examines emergent socio-spatial networks as extensions and assemblages in, of and through a core of geological thought. It is concerned with processes of stratification – literal and metaphoric, and the interpretation of relations between geology, the built environment and structures of thought. Mobility, of people and ideas, tracked as excess and flow, allow the empirical prospect of geophilosophy to refigure architecture as an artificial landscape operation adrift in a much deeper and older series of densifications and stratifications. 3 Speaking geophilosophically, architecture and its extension into the urban is an assemblage, always in flow, with minimal grounding, The necessary function of architecture
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Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries: NZ Map 6409, used with permission
facing page: Ferdinand von Hochstetter. The Isthmus of Auckland with its extinct volcanoes. Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1865. Originally published in Geologisch-topographischer Atlas von Neu-Seeland (Hochstetter and Petermann, 1863), and republished in English in 1864. above: Street map of Auckland City and suburbs circa 1950
Geology, climate, weather and society all subtly inflect the sedimentations of Auckland’s urban architecture. Its topography derives from the mechanics of its volcanic geology, its weather is closely tied to the mechanics of the ocean and Auckland’s social formations derive from a complex, contested, colonial and post-colonial, historical mechanism. Between Maori settlement in Aotearoa in the thirteenth century and British colonisation, volcanic formations had sacred and mythic status; the geologic understanding of the archipelago of islands, of which Aotearoa is but one, was as a mirror of the stars. 7 Geology didn’t change with colonisation, but the emergence and the projected meaning of the geological did. Surveying and measuring soil-bearing capacity for architectural development scratches the geological surface while the volcanic landscapes dig deeper into our imagination. Although constructed urban towers, like a forest in a city becoming a forest of signs, might seem to have more in common with an arborescent model than the volcanic cones, these towers are also solar, thermal, aerodynamic and meteorological baffles and barriers; in their entirety a laminate upon the ground, a spongy layer of inconsistent smoothness, density and depth, rich in voids and openings. The city is sandwiched between a drifting volcanic field condition and multi-directional winds. Works of architecture in Auckland’s topography are, geo-philosophically, masses of porous stones, sponge-spaces, in brachiated coral reef configurations between street-channels. From plate tectonics to architectonics, these urban abstractions reframe architecture in a changing relation to site as depth-in-motion. The short term of urban development is a sharp contrast to the eternal geological time scale. The fast temporal mix of late- modern life in the geo-philosophical city of Auckland holds our attention, as does the quick construction of new architecture. This acceleration is always in dialogue with the manifold geological processes that serve as the bedrock to all architecture and urbanism. 8 Now, consider architecture in urban geologic terms – consider architecture as mass, as configuration, as flow and as density. Consider how and why settlement was consciously located where it is in the volcanic fields. From a topographical or aerodynamic model, the fabric of the city is differentiated along a spectrum from rough surface topographies to smooth field conditions, and is only partially determined by thought structures. However, the geo-philosophy of Auckland’s architecture is defined by the reciprocity between built structures, thought structures and geological structure.
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2013 Auckland, from Mt Eden to the harbour. Mount Eden was named after George Eden, First Earl of Auckland; before this it was named Maungawhau, terraced and used as a Maori defensive position until 1700.
Freud drew an analogy between the structure of the human mind and the rigid and complete archaeology of Rome – layers of repressed and buried memories, the present over-determined by submerged earlier structure. In contrast, Auckland’s volcanic geology is one of movement, flow and eruption, into which the transitory style and functions of architecture are loosely fitted. In our Anthropocene era, the furnaces and the forges of the industrial revolution are themselves but domesticated volcanic processes. We could substitute site planning for a more telling mapping of volcanic thermodynamics and process-oriented design protocols – for example, using the heat signatures of the processes of making and dwelling in the city instead of master plans. From a meteorological position, the city of Auckland appears as thin surface clusters of crystalline growth and coral- like formations upon extended volcanic beds. As an architectural proposition, the geo-philosophy of Auckland’s volcanic field conditions allows for these curious analytic models, however geo-philosophy also welcomes a projective mode of design. The geo-philosophy of Auckland’s architecture would include design thinking around found and invented micro-climates, the fertility of slow-moving soil (and the magma engines beneath), the proximity and pressures of the oceanic and the changeable winds that create dynamic weather systems – all unorthodox but geologically-informed design generators and design parameters.
c
6 See Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, Critical Digital Studies: A Reader . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.
1 The formal device of the field condition as organisational diagram is rendered a simplification in light of this pressure-based geological topography in Auckland, rich with contingencies of historical and geological fact. See Stan Allen, ‘Field Conditions” in Points and Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City , NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. pp 90-103 2 For a better understanding of this fascinating geological field condition, see the study by Ernest J Searle, City of Volcanoes: A geology of Auckland . revised by Mayhill, R D; Longman Paul, 1981. First published 1964 3 See Gregg Lambert, ‘What the Earth Thinks’ in Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert, editors, Deleuze And Space . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp 220-234
7 For an introduction to the earliest readings of the location of Maori culture in the volcanic landscape, see R C J Stone, From Tãmaki-makau-rau to Auckland . Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001. see also Ian Smith’s chapter, pp 367-380, in Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach and Sue O’Connor, editors. Islands of Inquiry: Colonisation, Seafaring and the Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes . Canberra: ANU E Press, 2008. for a brief theory of the Auckland geological landscape, see Albert L Refiti and Anthony Hoete, ‘Sites Pacific’ in Anthony Hoete,editor, Reader on the Aesthetics of Mobility . London: Black Dog Press, 2004. pp 228-237 8 See Ian E M Smith And Sharon R Allen, Auckland Volcanic Field Geology, vol. 5 , by the Volcanic Hazards Working Group of the Civil Defence Scientific Advisory Committee, online at: http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/ Science-Topics/Volcanoes/New-Zealand-Volcanoes/Volcano-Geology-and- Hazards/Auckland-Volcanic-Field-Geology.
4 Mark Bonta and John Protevi, Deleuze And Geophilosophy: A Guide And Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p 76
5 Manuel De Landa, ‘The Geology of Morals’ in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History . Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. p60
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urbanism | priorities by ryan coghlan
shifting cities
ryan coghlan
actually predict what can come and that we would want to resist it. But as numerous individuals and history have shown we are often wrong about the first and cannot do the second.2 So what is our alternative? Simply becoming passive riders on a shifting geology hardly seems better. Yes, we’re now open to a better city, but we are also open to the possibility of a much, much worse one. In between these extremes of total control and total freedom lies a middle ground. We can recognise that we can’t predict our cities’ futures with certainty, but also know we can predict and want to stop some specific changes from happening. In short we can aim to create cities that can adapt along with their geology. How adaptable should our cities be seems to depend on where in the city we are. We are probably more willing to accept change at our grocers then in our own house. But if there is no fixed amount of adaptability that will work for all places, we need a method to help decide what the right amount of adaptability is for a particular place. * To begin to think out what a method might look like, let’s examine a section of False Creek in Vancouver, BC and decide what’s the right amount of adaptability there. We first need to answer – adaptable to what? An area or city simply cannot be made to adapt to everything, so I’ll focus on asking how this area can adapt to earthquakes, given the city’s earthquake risk. We need to determine what parts of the area are vital to it and absolutely cannot change. Here the residential skyscrapers and
The geology of a place is, in a very real sense, a record of change. Sediments pile on, compact, and form a record of what a place has been throughout its history. We can see when floods occurred, when glaciers came and went, when earthquakes struck. They tell us what has come and often what could come. And if we follow these records about the ground to the cities above the record of change continues. Building styles have changed over time, cultures have come, stayed, left, and different groups have (or haven’t) managed to find a place within the geology of the city. This record of a place, its geology, never remains still. Buildings are dismantled and replaced, mountains are worn down by the wind, new groups migrate to an area and shape the cultures already there. Geological change can be welcomed, but they are more often unpredictable, even undesirable. Our typical response to geologic shifts has been to build cities that are increasingly resistant to change. For instance, cities require buildings able to cope with more and more powerful earthquakes1 and enact zoning bylaws that to keep neighbourhood aesthetics static over time. On the face of it, these moves make sense – when faced with something as powerful as an earthquake and the unpredictability of what can follow, it is reasonable to want to preserve what exists now. And often these approaches manage to do what they plan to do – they preserve the existing geology of a city, or at least the aspects we want to preserve. There are two gambles we make in this approach to geologic upheavals. First we gamble that what we have now is better than what could come after. And second, we gamble that we can
above: study area with adaptable areas in colour, resistant areas in gray below: study area post-shift
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ryan coghlan
nearby rapid-transit line are prime candidates as both would cause huge loss of life if they were damaged. Everywhere else seems at least open to change. We need to know the area’s geology. Previously a highly productive tidal flat that was filled-in in the 1910s and developed, much of False Creek would likely liquefy if an earthquake hit, given its loose soil base. The waterfront would probably fall back into the sea and return to a flood plain form. This could be a huge boon for local ecosystems and allow us to create a distinctly local flood plain environment, where before there was mostly grass. Thus the ground beneath the skyscrapers and transit lines must be able to withstand liquefaction while the waterfront and other non-vital areas could be allowed to change. We maintain what is vital while allowing for the possibility of a more productive and unique waterfront. Clearly this is a simplified conclusion and there are many other factors to consider before redesigning this area for adaptability. But this example provides an initial set of questions for those who want to create adaptable areas. Adaptable to what? What is vital to the area and can’t change? What does the place’s geology tell us? Through these questions we can frame our approach to adaption, decide where adaptation can occur, and how we can design adaptable and resistant spaces. Although answering these questions can quickly become complicated as we begin to add other factors such as changing demographics, we must start somewhere. Geology is the base condition. With these questions we can begin to build cities that can shift with, instead of against, their shifting geologies. c
photos courtesy of City of Vancouver Archives. right, from the top: AM54-S4-3-: PAN N86 (Taken by W.J. Moore), AM1376-: CVA 1376-355, AM54-S4-: IN N12-, above, from the top: AM54-S4-: VLP 57.3, AM54-S4-: In P1.2, COV-S511-: CVA 780-505, AM54-S4-: Air P26 (Royal Canadian Air Force), AM54-S4-3-: PAN N86 (WJ Moore), Ryan Coghlan
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this page: East False Creek in Vancouver, late 1800s to to the present
1 Kirk Williams. (Mar. 17, 2011). ‘8,000 Vancouver buildings vulnerable to quakes’. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ story/2011/03/17/bc-vancouver-buildings-seismic.html 2 see: Klaske Havik, Véronique Patteeuw, and Hans Teerds, editors. OASE: Journal for Architecture – Productive Uncertainty (Issue 85). Nai Publishers : Rotterdam, 2011
courtesy of Archives of Ontario
The early Cobalt mining camp with Conigas Mine in distance, 1910
cobalt staking claim
boom towns | silver by heather asquith
as a student in the late 1990 s i participated in a cause study in cobalt . these studies , run by the ontario association of architects , helped towns with ideas for urban renewal . although we were not expecting a bustling urban centre in this former mining town 500 kilometres north of toronto , when we reached cobalt we were surprised at just how little was there .
Reminders of a silver mining camp
Cobalt is a northern Ontario town of just over 1,000 people, located west of Lake Timiskaming near the Quebec border. When silver was found, largely by accident in 1903 during the construction of the Northern Ontario Railway, Cobalt became the site of one of the greatest mining rushes in Ontario history. Large veins of silver were found running along the surface of rock. Surface mining attracted experienced and inexperienced prospectors alike and quickly the town grew to a population of 10,000 with 100 mines in operation at its peak.
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we would soon be astounded to learn what it had been .
courtesy of Archives of Ontario
Mining a silver vein: Nippissing Mine, Cobalt 1910
The Rush The discovery of silver provided a catalyst for enormous growth in this small outpost. A new town quickly emerged in hastily- built houses organised haphazardly amongst the mines. It was truly a camp and over the years spread itself across the rocky outcroppings with little planning. The only boundaries were defined by claims staked as prospectors established their operations. Miners’ shacks gradually replaced prospector’s tents and the town spread. Such was the speed of development and lack of planning that an electric streetcar line ran between Cobalt and the nearby town of Haileybury passed directly through some of the mine sites. Headframes were the town’s highrises and provided a constant reminder of its industry. The excitement and energy of hardworking miners, prospectors and businessmen made for a lively and energetic place. Hotels, taverns and even a hockey team in the National Hockey Association, later the NHL, provided entertainment for those with newfound riches.
The prospect of extracting more silver at increasingly rapid rates led to the development of new hard rock mining technology and techniques, providing expertise for future exploration in northern Ontario and the establishment of a mining college in nearby Haileybury. Local innovations fed the rapid growth and energy demands of both the town and mines: three new hydroelectric plants were constructed to replace coal-fired plants, and to feed power for ever-hungry mines and mills, the first compressed air plant was constructed at nearby Ragged Chutes supplying compressed air by pipeline.
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courtesy of Archives of Ontario
facing page top: Cobalt ‘s train station, 1922 bottom: Cobalt’s general store, built around headframe of mine shaft, 1962 this page: a map of the Cobalt Silver Camp showing ore production and dividends paid from various mines, 1913
courtesy of David K Joyce
Easy come easy go The silver began to run out in the late 1920’s. With World War II, the demand for cobalt, a by-product of silver extraction for which the town is named, increased. This kept mining operations active for a while, however eventually it too came to a close. Like other gold rush towns, today Cobalt struggles to keep this history alive, though there is little evidence of the mining camps except for the ghosts of headframe ruins dotting the surrounding landscape. Its remote location makes it too far off the beaten track for tourists and passers by to visit. The town nostalgically retells the story of its very proud past and recreates it in bits and pieces, in rock samples in museums, gem shops, galleries and books. But the silver and the town the discovery brought with it are long gone. Perhaps latent in our perceived value of the mineral is an appreciation for the earth’s time and energy spent in creating it. Upon discovery, claims are staked and the value we see is commodified and quickly put into motion. Its energy is dispersed into invention, industry, propelling an economy of its own — Cobalt’s short life was alive with innovation building the fortunes of many businessmen, banks and leaders of industry. The earth’s slow creation of the silver took millions of years. The silver veins in Cobalt were extracted from the earth in only a few.
Epilogue Like many a town hastily stripped of its valuable commodity the scars remain: voids where the silver veins were removed, open shafts, tailings and contaminated water. Acres of land were stripped of vegetation to expose silver veins near the surface. The trees have yet to re-surface. The land is left to rehabilitate itself – so few are the people left in Cobalt, no one seems to give much attention to the problem. Issues of environmental contamination and pollution of ground source waters, a fundamental by-product of mining, we leave to the earth to rehabilitate in its own slow process. The time and place of discovery is potent, but the rush is brief. The convalescence of the land will be long. c
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Cobalt Community Assist for an Urban Study Effort Study , 1995 Ontario Association of Architects Cobalt Mining Legacy : www.cobaltmininglegacy.ca Angus, Charles and Brit Griffin. We lived a life and then some: The Life, Death and Life of a Mining Town . Toronto: Between the Lines, 1996
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