flux city project #3

After speaking with professor Niall Kirkwood, a minor adjustment was made to the overall scheme. Instead of agriculture directly feeding off of the canals that cut through the site, a secondary canal peels away from the main ones in which water will undergo a series of constructed wetlands within which water is cleansed. The issue of salinity and pollution in the water is the main hurdle in proposing agriculture for this site, but a hybrid system of water cleansing plus rainwater mixing will help create a solution suitable for crop growth.

Urbanism on the site will primarily be buildings adjacent to or over the canals of the site. Buildings adjacent to the canals will actually help shade the water, helping to prevent overgrowth of algae in the water (algae water is not suitable for agriculture because due to the depletion of oxygen). A building catalog will consist primarily of the types that react/butt against the canal.

One issue that hopefully I can resolve soon is how the highway interfaces with the construction on the site. The highway over the southern shoreline is lower than anticipated.

In general, the overall productive ecological system is figured out, I will now need to dive in and work on the details (plant/crop types, zoning, phasing, seasonal patterns/changes, building distribution). In particular, I would like to have a planting pattern decided since that is very conditional on the quality of the water, the amount of sun it receives, and its growing season.

The issue of food production and urban agriculture is not new in landscape architecture and one that I have been interested in since my days at Wash U.

The End of the World

Amazing feast from a Chinese restaurant in Queens, NY

I had this amazing dream last night, 4-2-2012, which was one of those dreams that felt so real you remember every detail upon waking up.


I will describe this dream now: (post-dream analysis in parentheses)

On the news....... reporters were reporting that the world was going to end soon. Life as we know it would completely be obliterated. Humanity needed to accept this fact.

I was still a student at the Harvard GSD. My classmates and myself have all accepted our fates. We decided to have a group meeting to just talk together.

On the way to the meeting room (which happens to be at the top of a skyscraper for some reason), I run into a nice old lady. She gives me a triangular shaped pill...says it helps clear the headaches. I thank her and ask for her name, she says her name is Nina.

Inside the meeting room, I sit down with my GSD classmates. It's dusk outside. From the windows I can see other skyscrapers and people jumping out to their deaths (I guess to avoid whatever horrors would cause the end of the world).

One of my classmates (won't say his name), tells us we should talk about the important people in our lives, and he suggests talking about how great Gary Hilderbrand is (Landscape architect and professor at GSD). I immediately say "Let's talk about PDT!" (Peter Del Tredici, GSD lecturer and local plant guru).

(this whole part confused me....because why the hell are we talking about how great Gary Hilderbrand is)

Afterwards, we all had this amazing Asian feast which resembled a meal I had when visiting Willets Point in Queens, NY. For some reason, people from my high school life were there as well.

Meeting is over, I walk outside and hang with two girls I am friends with. They want me to take a picture of them in front of a historic cathedral that resembled something in Venice. I comply and aim the camera at them posing.

The image came out bad, and I tell them to move over so that they would get better light. At that point I look up at the sky and see a massive, burning asteroid fly overhead (aha, so that's how the world's gonna end!). I quickly point the camera at the two girls and once again the picture looks crappy. But I realize I had no time left since we were all about to die from the asteroid. So I bluff and tell them the picture looks great.

Those were my last words before the asteroid strikes Earth and I get engulfed by a wall of fire. I feel myself die. It was painless. I feel my consciousness disappear. Everything turns white.

Then something weird happens.

As if my whole was a video game, there appears a copyright logo with the company EA games.

(What?)

Suddenly television static appears, and the opening menu of a video game appears. The camera pulls back to reveal a desolate room. My room. I am lying on my bed.

I realize I have been instantly reincarnated after my death, only several centuries after the world ends. But my consciousness and my memory of the end of world didn't disappear. I wander around to find myself in a completely foreign world much like in the film "Spirited Away".

I attempt to take a nap on a broken chair. The chair breaks. I fall over.

And I awake for real. This is now reality. It is 5:00 AM. I sit in my real bed and think to myself what the fuck just happened. I just experienced the end of the world. I feel slightly psychologically damaged.


But I'm fine now.