Transition Towns

Caught this guy, Andrew Lucas, talking on Bush telegraph this morning, about changing suburbs away from fossil fuel dependency, growing food locally, etc.

If you go to the end of the article and click on the listen to this link, you'll hear some really inspiring ideas.

http://www.foe.org.au/resources/audio-centre/2009-sustainability-convergence/m_Andrew_Lucas_Transition_Town.mp3/view

turtle creek pump house

This is an image from the fabulous "Turtle Creek Pumphouse" project by D.I.R.T. studio that I'm investigating at the moment.
This image lifted from HATCH blog.
I just love that line of reeds coming down from the building, it's beautiful and funny. And it reminds me of a fellow student from Curtin, Jacqui Koffman, who did the most amazingly delicate work.

A link to acid mine drainage project on Pruned blogspot.

home ec

...the things you find in the corners of your bathroom.
home ecology.

Middleton beach regrade.

image from Leon van Schaik's Idoegoram exhibition catalogue.

This image works for me because it shows what I've been trying to draw, imagining a redesign of the grassy area next to Middleton beach (the Ellen cove end.)


It's a simple idea.
You have to imagine the wall out of the picture:
The idea is to cut the grass back down into a hollow that allows the sea to occasionally wash in,
Oh no, hang on! I can photoshop that out for you. (So don't worry about exercising yr imagination muscle.)

That is a photo of the real Middleton beach under the borrowed grass.

If you go for a walk down there, you'll notice that the edge closest to the water has become quite a hill. This is due, I think, to wind blowing sand off the beach and dropping its load as soon as it hits the grass.


Cutting this open changes the relationship between the grass and the ocean - at the moment the hill running along the wall blocks visibility and access. It is a real barrier between the beach and the play area. Let the high tides to wash in and see what new spaces result. What kind of vegetation will grow?

The design potential offered by these process is really exciting.
How can the site be redesigned to take advantage? The wind is already an active agent in the ongoing redesign of the site, but how can it be used more effectively?

Dendroremediation

Dendroremediation is an emerging phytoremediation technology for cleaning up environment contaminated with organic or inorganic pollutants by using living trees to remove, sequester, or chemically decompose the pollutant.
From the point of view of dendroremediation a tree may be considered as a solar driven pump-and-treat system, which may contain a contaminant plume and prevent the spread of contamination by reducing the movement of contaminated water and the erosional transport of contaminated soil. The efficiency dendroremediation has been proven in cleaning up soils polluted with crude oil, explosives, landfill leachates, metals, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and solvents.

DENDROREMEDIATION: THE USE OF TREES IN CLEANING UP POLLUTED SOILS
TAMAS KOMIVES AND GABOR GULLNER
Plant Protection Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
Herman Otto ut 15, 1022 Budapest, Hungary, FAX +36-1-4877555,
E-mail: tkom@nki.hu

D.I.R.T.

check these guys out, they've got me very excited!

http://www.archinect.com/features/article.php?id=45200_0_23_0_M


Also, Phytoremediation,
and Duisburg-Nord



Looking at DIRT through the question "What can this practice teach me that will help my own practice?"
a) a precedent for working on site at a powerful and proactive community level.
b) phytoremediation as a valid action
c) a new way of thinking about site: as part of the ongoing process of globalized capitalism.
d) whose voices do we hear, when we design this site?
e) This project forced me to look at Robert Smithson in a new light: he is actually really interesting! And what I am reminded to do from this is to question my assumptions!

About a week ago.