This week we are reading from New Geographies issue #2: Landscapes of Energy. See below for the post about the publication's release last week. These readings look at specific projects and will hopefully be inspiring at the current stage of our work. Please post your comments here. There are more pictures than words here so I expect some thoughtful conversation.
See you Friday.
Energy, economy, mobility, and ecology are parts of a whole. This "whole" as the matrix of these networks in turn defines the device, the hybrid infrastructure. Thinking about Gateway National Recreation Area, and the different conduits relating to the site and its context reveals different connections that can be addressed. The future of the site does not exist in its ability to provide simple park amenities but to become something larger than itself. How does our landscape interact? To me it becomes these edges that I feel must communicate and extend a function, or multiple functions perhaps, to the adjacent environment.
ReplyDeleteTo my mind this was the most interesting reading so far! I really liked it even though it looks like it is ahead of the times. The airport-like interchanges are could also be a great meeting point you just like the airports are. I also like the idea of the electric cras used to get to your final destination.
ReplyDeleteThere is a quite similar experiment in Germnay which is called CarSharing and based on the awareness that in average a car is used just 1 hour a day! You pay a yearly amount and then you can just use every car available and via gps + an electronic membership card you pay per hourss and kilometers driven. You save money and co²
The idea of considering energy and transportation in designing interests me. The one diagram showing how something 2D can become 3 dimensional with energy matrix is awesome. I think reading this helps me better understand that circulation within jamaica bay is important but it cannot disrupt he habitat. Taking another look at the bay with this perspective will give me more ideas
ReplyDeleteAll these ideas in this reading can be applied, and imagined for our own "Megaregion". Especially in our location, New York on one side, Philly on the other, and every other city in between.
ReplyDeleteThe paragraph about "...potential to have new typologies that will benefit from proximity to mobility" was refreshing. It is creative to think about creating new typologies in a world dominated by clear distinctions between the suburban and the urban landscape.
"Mobility and power will activate dormant peri-urban landscapes."
The first article in this reading really got me thinking about the project we are doing right now. Everything needs to connect or have a network with with these energy centers where the links of the network meet, or nodes as they call them. As of this moment, Gateway is spread apart, partly due to geographic location (NY vs. NJ) and partly because there isn't adequate circulation from different parts of the park to others. By improving the circulation in the park, revenue and visitorship will increase in all of the park.
ReplyDeleteI found both of these articles interesting and relevant, but I liked the second article better. I agree with the idea to find a new use for structures that have become idle elements of the landscape but I find the idea to have these rigs turn into or host reef habitat hard to believe. In a region that has never hosted such a habitat and does not have the means to create or sustain this habitat on its own I need more scientific evidence before I could stand behind it. Reefs are delicate habitats that are influenced greatly by any little change in environment. In addition the animals that one would find residing in a reef habitat would not be found in deep muddy waters. But again, I like the idea.
ReplyDeleteI liked how this reading related to the Jamaica Bay. The oil platforms being possibly made into artificial reefs helped me understand this “device” idea we have been working on. And it obviously is very similar to Jamaica Bay because its fragile land is surrounded by urban development it needs something similar to help the environment while instead of starting from scratch, using something the environment has and no longer has a need for. I kind of wish we had read this earlier on so I would have had more examples for what a devise could be.
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