Only Entropy A recurring theme in the 26:DIRT is a repeated quote from Mary Douglas: ‘dirt is matter out of place’. Nearly every article suggested dirt is either raw material or is waste and coupled this with some moral commentary. I too was intrigued by Mary Douglas’s quote and wondered if this invocation of matter and place offers two doors – one towards the sensate world of human artifacts and the other towards the abstract world of physics and entropy. It is this latter world that attracted me to so many of these articles. Dirt is the entropic by-product of human or natural processes. For example the ash drift across the prairies from Mount Mazama outlined by Gerald Forseth or the nickel deposit left by a meteorite impact in Sudbury described by Kenneth Hayes are generated by cataclysmic natural events. However, the ensuing dirt or nickel represents a lower energy state. In any physical system there is a tendency to achieve an even distribution of energy, which means a homogenous neutral end-state. Dirt typifies this end state. Dirt in all these processes is a homogenous mix of salt, mineral and crystal. Perhaps our negative reaction to dirt is a reaction against dirt’s inherent disorder. Only when we can sort and separate do we value dirt as it re-enters our ordered universe. The act of separating dirt into its constituent and useful parts requires energy; the need to believe in an ordered universe is re-enforced when we see energy used to convert dirt into something useful. However this belief in order is defied by the presence of dirt and the absence of energy. Dirt is matter out of place. And matter out of place offends our moral sense of order by reminding us that in architecture as with all of human endeavour, the natural entropic end-state is dirt. Paul Whelan Toronto Fitting In Tanya Southcott’s essay ‘Last Housing Standing’ (26:DIRT), while specific to Vancouver, offers insight into a common Canadian urban condition too often ignored. Unlike the tabula rasa renewal programs, policies and actions of the 1960s and 1970s, today’s urban regeneration takes a more messy approach to urban development that can severely disrupt the integrity of traditional housing stock while paradoxically spurring urban regeneration. In a pattern found from Vancouver to Halifax – and perhaps most evident in Toronto – the viability of much of our historic housing stock within contemporary regeneration plans seems to be in question – or, more precisely, not questioned at all. With ever-increasing develop pressures in all of the major city centres across the country, can the traditional single-family house survive? Should it survive? As Southcott eloquently points out, at odds with both time and space they struggle to find a place of permanence in a continually evolving urban landscape. Can single-family homes be more than the residue that results from piecemeal, ad-hoc, contemporary urban renewal and redevelopment projects? The future of single houses in areas of intense urban regeneration seems to be a question of agency. As a home, it sits in a hostile environment. As an element of urbanity, surely there is much to take from it – a form to possibly influence redevelopment, but does it have the capacity to adapt to contemporary functional, spatial and technological demands? Southcott suggests the need for a ‘retention strategy’, yet exactly what would be retained by such a strategy is still unclear to me. In this regard, a retention strategy seems premature. Perhaps some urban ‘soul searching’ is first required to discover just where these fragments may fit, if at all, in the evolving space and program demands in our cities. As an urban condition of partial and incomplete destruction, regeneration and densification of city blocks, the juxtaposition of single-family house and residential tower seems difficult to maintain without an overarching and complete spatial strategy that would ensure a long-term, integrative and mutually beneficial coexistence. Matthew Neville Halifax
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to week. At times it was the presence of man-made structures and the way they seemed protrude from the horizon that caught my attention. Other times
it was the subtle topographical variation of the land that became noticeable thanks to the repetition of elements such as wooden posts.
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