In Palm Desert, California, we read in BBC News, “$20,000 (£11,000) of golden barrel cacti have been stolen in six months.”
In an effort to conserve water in drought-stricken southern California (and money in economically anxious times), the city substituted its “lush lawns” with native desert plants. Now their xeriscaped roadside verges and median strips are lined with cactus, agave, red bird of paradise and lantana. Unfortunately, the “slow-growing varieties, such as golden barrels and agaves, have been targeted” by thieves. The large golden barrels, in particular, “can fetch up to $4,000 (£2,200)” while the smaller ones, with a wholesale price of $100, can be resold in the black market for $50 to $60.
So now “hidden security cameras monitor places where large numbers of the plants are located, while officials will start putting microchips in some cacti, so that stolen ones can be identified.”
This crime fighting unit, of course, will inspire a new police procedural drama on network television. CSI: Botany. In each episode, using state of the art gizmos and plain old human insight, dashingly photogenic botanists will hunt down horticultural deviants: orchid thieves; rogue pharmers hired by Iran to breach America's food security; identity theft rings hacking into the wireless networks of major retail stores using outdoor fake shrubbery; guerrilla gardeners; Ken Smith and many others.
POSTSCRIPT #1: The U.S. Department of Agriculture's crop cops doing some forensic aerial photography.
According to The New York Times, scientists at Case Western University have created a material that stiffens from a soft state when stimulated. It can also do the reverse, from pliable to rigid. This material, we read, was inspired by the skin of sea cucumbers.
That skin is a nanocomposite material, consisting of tiny fibers of collagen embedded in a softer matrix. When the animal secretes certain chemicals, the fibers form bonds and the whole matrix stiffens.
In their work, described in Science, Dr. Weder and his colleagues used cellulose nanofibers in a polymer matrix. A major difficulty, Dr. Weder said, was having the nanofibers distributed properly, “like a three-dimensional spider web.”
For the time being, experiments on it mainly involve finding new ways to treat Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders.
Hopefully to no one's surprise, we wonder if they can be used as a building and landscape construction material. An entire city built on sea cucumber-like skins.
Perhaps in next year's City of the Future competition, a brash, up-and-coming design firm will propose encasing San Diego in “stimuli-responsive polymer nanocomposites” so that when the next 10.1 earthquake comes along, the whole city contracts to protect itself.
No, wait — shouldn't that be the other way around? From a hard state to a more elastic state to better ride out the tectonic hurricane? When the tremors end, houses, highways and sewers revert back to their solid state with nary a crack. But if there are any, the sea cucumber polymer matrix will simply patch things up, healing itself, as it were.
Some civil engineers from Purdue University apparently believe that the best way for Istanbul to lessen the humanitarian crisis and economic impact of a catastrophic earthquake striking the ancient city is to build a second Istanbul.
Istanbul v1.0, these engineers point out, won't be able to withstand a major seismic event as “many of the city's buildings were constructed with little regard for modern building standards.”
The city itself is not well designed for earthquakes. Many streets are narrow and winding and would quickly fill with debris after an earthquake, preventing aid from reaching those who are trapped or injured.
And if Istanbul goes, so goes the nation.
Istanbul v2.0, on the other hand, will be “earthquake resistant, with strong buildings and wide streets. The city would be designed to take advantage of building techniques used to minimize earthquake damage and incorporate modern technologies such as electronic locks and security, video communication and environmentally friendly technologies.”
More importantly, this “satellite city” would serve as a refugee camp and guarantee continuity of the nation's economic activity, 80 percent of which occurs in Istanbul.
Of course, the new city will not lay empty, gathering dust and weeds as it waits for the first influx of seismic refugees to arrive. It is “designed to be an economic hub,” with a business, residential and entertainment districts ready to be utilized in the meantime.
Oddly enough, we are reminded of the Japanese tradition of building exact copies of Shinto's holiest shrines at Ise every 20 years and then completely dismantling the current temples save for a central wooden pole. In another 20 years, a new set of replicas will be erected around this pole, thus completing and restarting the cycle over again.
Consequently, we are left to wonder what if a similar phenomenon were to happen to cities?
Let's say a new city is built, a fully functioning metropolis complete with homes, businesses, museums and infrastructure. For twenty years, people would live there, going about their lives, going to work, raising their children, tending to their gardens. Everyday they would hear news of another city under construction at an adjacent site. In fact, they will be reminded of this at every hour of the day, if not from the news, then from the distant but incessant machine noise and dust plumes emanating from the horizon. It becomes a major aspect of daily life, settling in nicely or not so nicely into the background, like radiation or an impending major earthquake or a Hurricane Katrina, oscillating between states of ambience and immediate critical concern.
When the new city is finished, everyone will have to migrate there, as the now older city will torn down, the sewers excavated and upturned. Everything else will be burnt to the ground. But in another 20 years, they will again be exiled, forced to a newer city constructed on the very same site from where they had fled from decades ago.
And so on and so on.
At each new city, then, will people replicate an exact copy of the old? Will their gardens, high rises and even the paintings in the museums be perfect reproductions of the originals, which are themselves copies of reproductions? Will the layout of the streets be an exact mirror image of the one they had walked on and driven through not too long ago?
Or will they gradually come to develop new cultural traditions favoring the values of impermanence, of continual change? Will their society be based on a culture of experimentation and radical innovation? In other words, will they stop designing buildings and landscapes exactly the same way as before, even if it's been proven to work time and time again, when failure can and will be erased in no more than 20 years' time?
For that matter, will there be such a thing as historic preservation when everything is understood to be temporary and concepts such as icons and authenticity are illusory?
What will the built environment look like when everything is conceived as planned waste?
How will you live your life in tenuous circumstances?
In any case, there is a 3D animation of Istanbul v2.0 for you to look at. You'll see, among other things, a cluster of earthquake-resistant buildings arranged in the shape of a star. This shape, we are told, is that of a Selcuk star, a classical Turkish symbol.
More importantly, you will see its overly segregated design and the absence of what some may describe as “charm,” that urban quality accumulated through centuries of successively being a Greek polis, a Roman outpost, the imperial seat of Byzantine emperors and Ottoman sultans, and the uncontested premier city of the modern Turkish state. Some urban planners and romantics will no doubt lambast it.
“Capability Brown” has been one our most prolific tipsters. Always answering our open call for anything remotely related to landscape architecture, he recently directed us to the Wired blog Gadget Lab, specifically to this entry about a DIY “device that will charge your USB-capable devices while you do what you do best. Breathe. Using some parts scavenged from an old CD-ROM drive, a simple electronic circuit, and a few rubber bands you will soon be huffing and puffing your way to fully-charged pseudo-useful electronic gadget nirvana.”
Reviewing the links he's sent us over the past year, we've noticed, to our astonishment, that however unrelated they seem to be, they blend together into a very intriguing landscape idea.
To illustrate, we'll begin by saying that “Capability Brown” likes to send us information on piezoelectricity after seeing how interested we are in the material as an alternative, human-generated energy source. We're slowly investigating the websites on his list.
Possibly anticipating us dreaming about a wearable power charger tailored from flexible piezoelectric membrane, “Capability Brown” alerted us a few of months ago to the launch of H-Bomb, purportedly the world's first power heated wetsuit from Rip Curl. The heat, which you can crank up to 65°C (150°F), is generated by two Polymer Lithium Ion batteries.
“These are the same batteries found in your mobile phone, ipod and laptop computer,” we learn. “There is no danger of exposure to these batteries by radiation, electric shock or explosion – even if it is called the Bomb! The batteries weigh 0.12kg each and are positioned on your lower back where they are cushioned against your body by a layer of neoprene sponge so you can't feel them.”
You will be able to recharge the batteries in the The H-Bomb2.
While the thought of surfing somewhere in the Arctic Circle sounds incredibly adventuresome, we prefer deep-sea diving to splashing about on the beach, and trying out our piezo-wetsuits somewhere with a better selection of flora and fauna. Correctly guessing our wish, “Capability Brown” e-mailed us this BBC Newsarticle on the discovery of nearly 700 hundred new marine species in the vast, dark deep-sea around Antarctica.
As part of the ANDEEP (Antarctic Benthic Deep-Sea Biodiversity) Project, scientists “spotted 674 species of isopod (a diverse order of crustaceans), most of which had never previously been described; more than 200 polychaete species (marine worms), 81 of which were found to be new species; and 76 sponges, 17 of which had previously been unknown.”
Fantasizing a bit further, wouldn't it be better to bring the Southern Ocean closer to us? “Capability Brown” obviously divined our dreams over a year ago when he directed us to velo-city after reading about it on Archinect.
Proposed by architect Chris Hardwicke, “velo-city is a high-speed, all-season, pollution-free, ultra-quiet transit system that makes people healthier. Using an infrastructure of elevated cycle tracks velo-city creates a network across the city. The elevated bikeways are enclosed in tubes to provide protection for all season cycling. The bikeway tubes are separated by direction of travel to create a dynamic air circulation loop that creates a natural tail-wind for cyclists. The reduction of air resistance increases the efficiency of cycling by about 90% allowing for speeds of up to 40 km/hr.”
Why not fill it with water? An aquarium in the sky. A deep oceanic riverine current but on stilts and theters. Watch eels slithering their way through the interlocking tubular loop-de-loop-de-whoop. Or a pack of migrating humpback whales -- the latest leg on their Darwinian odyssey...from sea to land then back to sea again, and finally, to the skies. And if the entire structure collapses, well...back to land again in a sort of Douglas Adams dysfantasia. And why not some bioluminescent hatchetfishes, twinkling in the night sky where stars have long been blotted out by urban light pollution. Surely a very romantic evening can be had under the shimmering Aquarium in the Sky. Until...of course...a 40-ton humpback whale comes plunging down.
Exploring the deep in the skies above Chicago, loop-de-loop-de-whooping in loop-de-loop-de-whoops, knotted to the exact hydrodynamic flow patterns of the Southern Ocean. Or they could even be patterned after the violent hydrothermal whirlpools in the mid-ocean ridges: over Rome are the rivers coursing through the Marianas Trench, and over Cairo the convections of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Watch Japanese “researchers” hunt whales for “science” or schools of tuna rhyming with flocks of starlings. Near where a loop dips to within a few feet off the ground, children play next to Charybdis, the Kraken and the Leviathan.
For some inexplicable reason, when we saw this image of Botswana's Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, we thought that someone had finally appropriated industrially scaled salt evaporation ponds as a garden. Gigantic Suprematist geometries filled with salt-loving algae vacillating through hues of pinks, reds, yellows and oranges as the new tapis vert. Bleached, saltwind-whirled ridges as the new allée. And loyal feng shui advisers with tons of disposable money as the new superpatron for landscape design. Inexplicable, indeed.
In any case, head over to Google Maps to explore, according to Earth Observatory, “one of Africa's major producers of soda ash (sodium carbonate) and salt.” It is also “an easily recognizable visual feature for astronauts aboard the ISS.”
Also check out other salt ponds in the Dead Sea and San Francisco Bay. Better yet, stimulate your visual cortex into catatonic ecstasy with David Maisel's photographic series Terminal Mirage.
Take equal parts Merzbau and your choice of amusement park of the American roadside vernacular variety; add a dash of Gregor Schneider for some kick and a dollop of Teletubbyland; mix all that in a Target® Michael Graves bowl; throw in one or two Richard Serra toruses if you'd like.
Designed by the artist Shusaku Arakawa and poet Madeline Gins and “[o]pened in October 1995, the Site of Reversible Destiny - Yoro Park is an 'experience park' conceived on the theme of encountering the unexpected. By guiding visitors through various unexpected experiences as they walk through its component areas, the Site offers them opportunities to rethink their physical and spiritual orientation to the world.” Can you train astronauts there?
Perhaps Virgin Galactic might require its future space tourists to log in a few hours at Yoro Park as part of their preparation in addition to visits to Baikonur. Or the now cash-strapped NASA substitute time on the centrifuge or on the vomit comet with an afternoon stroll at the Site of Reversible Destiny.
In any case, to get the most out of the park, be sure to follow the instructions, which read more like Zen koans.
Instead of being fearful of losing your balance, look forward to it (as a desirable re-ordering of the landing sites, formerly known as the senses).
Try to draw the sky down into the bowl of the field.
Use each of the five Japans to locate or to compose where you are.
If accidentally thrown completely off-balance, try to note the number, and also the type and the placement, of the landing sites essential to reconstituting a world.
Frequently swing around to look behind you.
If an area or a landing site catches your eye and attracts your interest to the same degree as the area through which you are actually moving, take it up on the spot, pursuing it as best you can as a parallel zone of activity.
Make use of the Exactitude Ridge to register each measured sequence of events that makes up the distance.
Within the Zone of the Clearest Confusion, always try to be more body and less person.
Wander through the ruin known as the Destiny House or the Landing Site Depot as though you were an extra-terrestrial.
In and about the Kinesthetic Pass, repeat every action two or three times, once in slow motion.
Meanwhile, check out more photos of the park by Liao Yusheng here. Jaunty angles, crazy scales, party colors, graphic landscaping.
“Dear Sirs: The War Department finds much satisfaction in the creation of War Gardens at various army camps by the Conservation and Reclamation Division of the Quartermaster General's office. Food production at these camps has been the subject of some concert with the department. The large areas of tillable land within many of the military reservations have been regarded as offering potential food production on a large scale, and I feel that the army is to be congratulated that the utilization of this space has now taken concrete form.” — Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War
