Unnatural Waters

This post stems from a fascinating post I spotted a while back on Treehugger. The topic was the Foreclosure Fish... a resultant reaction from the abandonment of homes, and more specifically swimming pools. "The mortgage crisis is not only wrecking peoples' lives, it's not doing much good for the environment, either. The swimming pools of abandoned homes are perfect mosquito breeding grounds, there are worries about rampant West Nile Virus infections. In California, authorities are using airplanes to find green pools and are filling them with the Gambusia affinis, or mosquito fish, which eats the larvae."


:: image via Treehugger

Another in a long line of biological management strategies... the idea of these fish being able to escape into native waters is frightening. Again via Treehugger, re: the Gambusia affinis: "In Europe, the fish developed a taste for everything but mosquito larvae, and have displaced native fish. In Australia Gambusia caused extinctions of native fish and amphibians. In California they have decimated native species - yet civic authorities will give you a bag of them free if you have a mosquito problem. It may not seem risky putting them in a plastic and concrete pool, but the fish are champion escape artists, and can travel in as little as three millimeters of water."

This technique is used in Oregon as well, with Gambusia affinis recommended, and even supplied for free to people with open water bodies. This comes in handy in localized pools and man-made ponds, but what about this scourge being unleashed on local lakes and rivers... and they're so cute.




:: female and male Gambusia - images via Multnomah County

A variation of unnatural water... the innovative plant for providing drinking water to the Dead Sea area... via Inhabitat.


:: image via Inhabitat

"A research project from New York-based architect Phu Hoang Office seeks to address and solve these site specific issues with ‘No Man’s Land’, a series of artificial islands that would provide recreation, tourist attractions, renewable energy, and create fresh water. ... As a network of built islands with three distinct designs, ‘No Man’s Land’ would create an artificial archipaelago that employs a variety of building technology. In order to become a source of fresh water, the islands will extract water molecules from the air to be desalinated. Salinity gradient solar ponds, water purification tanks, and water filtering processes will all be integrated into the designated “water islands” of the chain. The other two island designs will be for tourists and solar energy production, providing self sufficient power as well as creating revenue."


:: image via Inhabitat

Shifting gears a bit, to a more functional topic, that of stream restoration... or the unnatural recreation of nature. A New York Times article in June investigated some of the science of Stream restoration: "...scientists say 18th- and 19th-century dams and millponds, built by the thousands, altered the water flow in the region in a way not previously understood."


:: image via NY Times (click to enlarge)

While it is reported that over $1 billion per year is spent on stream restoration, this 'inexact' science often leads to failures. As William E. Dietrich, a geomorphologist at UC Berkeley mentions: "...an awful lot of stream restoration, if not the vast majority of it, has no empirical basis... it is being done intuitively, by looks, without strong evidence. The demand is in front of the knowledge.” The results, are often, sporadic.

:: image via NY Times

Often, this work is done by eye (as mentioned above) not through the scientific empirical basis of fluvial geomorphology... as mentioned in the article, Dr. David R. Montgomery from the University of Washington says: "...most people agree that the best approach is to create landforms and water flows that streams can maintain naturally. “But how you translate that into action and at this stream rather than that stream really requires a lot of work to figure out,” he said. With an ailing waterway, he said, “sometimes there’s a clear line between the symptoms and the cause, and sometimes there’s not.” Read the remainder of the article for more info...

A final version of unnatural waters, a visionary post-apocalyptic view of London. Via Inhabitat: "As part of London Festival of Architecture 2008, award-winning media production studio Squint/Opera envisions London life in 2090, long after sea levels have risen from global warming. Imitating some of the techniques of the super-idealistic Victorian landscape painters, Squint/Opera have used a combination of photography, 3d modeling and digital manipulation to present five unique visions of a tranquil utopia in a familiar, yet drastically altered, landscape."

:: image via Inhabitat

High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines

In searching for some new landscape-related links to explore, I stumbled across the blog for Design Trust for Public Space (aka I (heart) Public Space) and their 2005 publication High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines.


:: image via Design Trust

This "...detailed handbook describes practices for creating sustainable city streets, sidewalks, utilities, and urban landscaping. Following the acclaimed High Performance Building Guidelines, this sister publication launched a new era in the design and construction of public infrastructure." Looks like another version, High Performance Landscape Guidelines, will be available in 2009.

This definitely has parallels with the Living Site and Infrastructure Challenge (Cascadia GBC), as well as the Sustainable Sites Initiative (ASLA) which is starting to broaden the discussion (and tools) for site-related sustainability.

Another more focused resource is an intriguing NYC-related blog, Sustainable Parks for the 21st Century - which holds promise, as: "...this project will provide the Parks Department with research and instruction in methodologies for the creation of high-performance park design, helping the City bring its 29,000 acres of parkland into the new millennium."


:: image via Sustainable Parks

And a little bit about the broad organization, via their site: "The Design Trust for Public Space is dedicated to improving the design, utility, and understanding of New York City's parks, plazas, streets, and public buildings. As the only New York City organization devoted to bringing private sector expertise to bear on public space issues, we generate powerful working relationships that enrich the urban experience for all New Yorkers by making the city more sustainable, functional, and available to all."

The landscape architecture profession definitely needs to push these boundaries of sustainable sites - and definitely communicate and collaborate with consistency - but also don't place all of our eggs in one basket, such as the ASLA sponsored Sustainable Sites Initiative. I like the idea of regionalism, which is more appropriate for sustainability, versus a one-size-fits-all LEEDesque approach. What does a sustainable park look like in NYC, versus Portland, or Tucson? This is a great question. Are there consistent themes? Absolutely. Do these need to be refined and adapted to local places - including values, climate, and opportunities? Even more so. So I will read these documents for ideas, and look to apply them on this coast... looking forward to it.

Fusionopolis by Ken Yeang

Well, it's not a secret that I am an admirer of Ken Yeang, and his unique brand of Bioclimatic Architecture - mostly because of its reliance on multiple tenets of the Veg.itecture concept: 1) use of vegetation for environmental systems; 2) use of vertical and horizontal surfaces; and the mixing of these concepts for aesthetic means. Inhabitat recently featured an amazing version of this, Fusionopolis (along with a link to a much more extensive article in the Telegraph), slated for downtown Singapore is a "... research and development complex, this structure will adorn Singapore as the island nation’s most eco-friendly skyscraper."


:: image via Inhabitat

As usual, not just eye candy, but some serious green architecture in a literal and figurative sense. Via Inhabitat: "The 15-story building will be 1.4 Km high, and boast of a ‘green infrastructure.’ The building will be home to the longest continuous vertical stretch of vegetation of any building in the world. A vertical spine of planting will rise up through the building, and landscaped garden terraces will be located on each floor of the building. The vegetation will help in passive cooling and insulation. The vegetation will also improve the sense of well being of the residents."


:: image via Inhabitat

Continuing: "Natural daylight will be directed into the building interior by prisms which deflect the sunlight as it hits them. The drainage and irrigation system will also integrated green features. The whole building will function as an ecosystem, and strive to strike a balance between the organic and inorganic elements so as to make the building work like a living system."


:: image via Inhabitat

These images are part of a larger master plan by Zaha Hadid, making Fusionopolis a potential regenerative community with a mix of buildings and uses. This building up is sometimes percieved as resource-intensive, but Yeang definitely believes density is the way to protect valuable land surrounding cities. Via the Telegraph: "Some may question whether a real environmentalist should ever build a skyscraper, but he's unrepentant about this. He very much supports the case for skyscrapers, arguing that these are better than the alternative, namely cities – in countries such as China and Singapore – that expand by growing ever outwards. Their urban sprawl, he says, gobbles up valuable land better served for food production."


:: image via Inhabitat

The cutting edge design of Yeang is world-renowned, and really deserves some implementation on a larger scale, both to test out the viability and provide some compelling examples of Bioclimatic Architecture on a large scale. This project boasts, via the Telegraph: "...the longest continuous vertical stretch of vegetation in any building anywhere in the world."

That's something we all deserve to experience...