Slow typing and speech impediments might seem enough of a shock to cause upset, but it was the assault on fine motor skills that was the source of greatest concern in those first few days. Making things being so bound to my self image.

A year on, after a session in class this afternoon trying to encourage students to draw with more exploratory ambition, I find myself remembering how it was my unrecognisable hand writing that truly did me in for a brief period last year. So here I am feeling extremely grateful that it was a brief symptom I recovered from within the first month.

Let us not forget the importance of the bond between thinking and action. Embodied knowledge sent from hand to paper along the pencil conduit.

I now began to see the white surface of the paper, on which I was going to draw, in a different way. From being a clean flat page it became an empty space. Its whiteness became an area of limitless, opaque light, possible to move through but not to see through. I knew that when I drew a line on it or through it I should have to control the line, not like the driver of a car, on one plane: but like a pilot in the air, movement in all three dimensions being possible.

Yet, when I made a mark, somewhere beneath the near ribs, the nature of the page changed again. The area of opaque light suddenly ceased to be limitless. The whole page was changed by what I had drawn just as the water in a glass tank is changed immediately you put a fish in it. It is then only the fish that you look at. The water merely becomes the condition of its life and the area in which it can swim.

Then, when I crossed the body to mark the outline of the far shoulder, yet another change occurred. It was not simply like putting another fish into the tank. The second line altered the nature of the first. Whereas before the first line had been aimless, now its meaning was fixed and made certain by the second line. Together they held down the edges of the area between them, and the area, straining under the force which had once given the whole page the potentiality of depth, heaved itself up into a suggestion of solid form. The drawing had begun.

Berger On Drawing – John Berger

But more importantly, beyond this self indulgent post, let us not forget that organisations like the Stroke Association need our donations.

Be well and look after each other.

It’s a split level house, with spaces cut into the hillside that are suffering from failing waterproofing. We’ve been brushing on tanking products but irradicating all moisture is unlikely. Breathable materials will be critical and instead of layering oil based boards over the uninsulated concrete floors (risking the unknown trapping of damp underneath beneath impervious surfaces in years to come) I’ve poured an insulated screed. It’s a new product to me and I must admit the top surface is more delicate than I’d imagined. The install team said it was like Angel Delight. We poured it last week and on Monday it’s clear more drying out time is needed.

Other benefits include air-tightness. I’ll be taping the vapour barrier to it around the perimeter. The u-value will be poorer than aforementioned oil based products, but this is the trade off we all have to get better at.

Tuesday brings the arrival of the RIBA Journal and the pleasure of seeing my project for Birmingham Settlement feature in its MacEwan Award shortlist. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer client.

Teaching this semester dips into 3 different cohorts from Wednesdays to Fridays. Always enjoyable having to switch gears and topics every day. Our ‘CoLab’ module, connecting students in groups to work on live projects, will be developing proposals to bring Bluuprint’s food pantry project to a community room owned by a Walsall Housing Group. We’ll be using it explore mutual aid, broaden understanding of infrastructures and discuss domestic scale community spaces inspired by the client’s ‘sharing table’.

Ursula Franklin’s checklist, as shared by Erin Kissane, may be a timely discovery:

Should one not ask of any public project or loan whether it: (1) promotes justice; (2) restores reciprocity; (3) confers divisible or indivisible benefits; (4) favours people over machines; (5) whether its strategy maximizes gain or minimizes disaster; (6) whether conservation is favoured over waste; and (7), whether the reversible is favoured over the irreversible? The last item is obviously important. Considering that most projects do not work out as planned, it would be helpful if they proceeded in a way that allowed revision and learning, that is, in small reversible steps.

Thursday brings the major design module for final year undergraduates. My studio has been imagining a future of community arts and culture challenges in the face of austerity in our fiscally broken city. Neighbourhood Exhibition Halls is the pitch, with precedents from the canon that display tectonics so performative they become sceneographic. Pompidou, Mummers Theatre and the Fun Palace.

Learning about the latter is made easier by the opening of an exhibition of Cedric Price’s drawings in our foyer. Giddy at the opportunity to be in their presence, I found myself explaining what Letratone was and reflecting on its impact on the illustration aesthetic of the period.

I’ve asked for painterly work at the end of the semester, to encourage an engagement with colour and light. Oils and adhesive shade here we come.

Alongside the canonical, my suggestions for contemporary precedents are Sunspot, East Quay and Sands End; by HAT Projects, Invisible Studio and Mae. Three of the best practices at work in the UK, IMHO.

Friday brings tutorials with our substantial first year cohort. It’s a surprise for new students to discover how the teaching is not always about Architecture, but decision making. Mandy Brown’s post highlighting that a decision is something you create, brings a book reference I’ll be digging into.

Saturday brings the joy of hosting a house full of friends, plus phenomenal work by Chris with a handcrafted cocktail menu and the expertly served Firing Squad.

Firing Squad [Mexico] ¹

60ml Tequila
22.5ml Grenadine
22.5ml Lime Juice
2-3 dashes Bitters

Shake and pour over ice.

I also predict more Sidecars in my future – 2:1 cognac:cointreu, lemon juice, orange slice.

Other noticings:

Re-discovering Molly Steenson’s work on Cedric Price, plus her latest talks on AI and ethics

The Forever Computer

The paintings of Noah Davis

Tomorrow morning, the windows arrive.

1. nomenclature explanation here: https://drinksanddrinking.substack.com/p/the-mexican-firing-squad ︎

Bravo Gordon, bravo.

Postscript:

Sadly, it appears Gordon – if this be him – passed away not long after the book was published, but this obituary looks like the pedigree of experience I’d expect. Best wishes to all his family.

Gordon Ashworth June 26, 1940 – January 31, 2007

Born in Rochdale, England Gordon bicycled avidly all his life. He studied architecture at the College of Art, Manchester. He was certified from the Architectural Assoc., London. He taught at Manchester and Brighton Polytechnics, Kansas State, UOF, Cogswell College and CCAC (receiving NAAB accreditation). His work was published and shown at R.I.B.A.

I’m gonna feed our children non-organic food
And with the money saved take ’em to the zoo

The Council Chambers at the RIBA HQ turns out to be the quietest place in the building to record a podcast, and the antechamber (where in years gone by many an architect must have waited in terror at the prospect of their impending disciplinary hearing) turns out to be a decent spot to enjoy a sandwich and a beer whilst reflecting on that fact you don’t recognise half the photos of past RIBA presidents.

After a previous invite to attend an awards gig for the Retreat competition was rescinded due to the mortality of a monarch, I happily accepted a more productive alternative proposal to take part in a recording for the RIBAJ podcast with other entrants and guests. Hosted by deputy editor Jan-Carlos Kucharek, the question put to the panel was:

How does the profession retain “Net Zero” and the “Climate Emergency” as its main priority?

Given firms, large and small, are faced with generational pressures from the economy, such as winning work and managing talent, and given the lack of government proactivity, the profession should remain focused on the long-term goal of achieving Net Zero by 2030. Is this realistic – and does the current energy crisis in fact incentivise this ambition?

I think the conversation was interesting and Jan-Carlos did a great job as host, although admittedly we perhaps took some time to loosen up. My sympathies are with the editors and I hope they focus more on the latter half of the discussion when it’s broadcast. With hindsight, drinks before the event instead of afterwards might have helped. Alongside me were Phil Obayda from SOM, Rosie Murphy from ACAN and Elliot Nash (fellow competition entrant) from Wright & Wright Architects. Diversity of practice scale, age and gender seemed healthy and it was with that in mind that I felt we should acknowledge that part of the problem with the question was that it assumed a homogenous ‘profession’ with a common culture.

Going further, I was also happy to find common ground with other panellists around the question of whether a topic as complex as climate change can – or should – be simplified to us patting ourselves on the back by ensuring we have a neatly balanced spreadsheet by 2030. Being able to point at a flow chart that results in embodied and operational net zero is not enough if the program itself is extractive and harmful. The recalibration needed by the profession is admittedly easier for my scale of practice and I’m endeavouring to work solely on projects that result in community benefits that extend beyond the site and client. A shared experience of street and neighbourhood level engagement helped Rosie and I find some agreement here.

Going further still, I offered an admission that I feel lies at the heart of my critique of an overly simplified net zero calculation. The very projects that offer the broadest community level impacts in relation to climate change may well be the schemes that have neither the time or the money to account for every kWh or kg/CO2e. Whilst all my projects deliver renewable energy, very high fabric performance and low carbon materials, I do not have a definitive cradle to grave calculation for every aspect of them and nor do I think huge quantities of client resources should be spent assessing it if the broader delivery of a project with the right program risks being delayed or financially squeezed. We should not lose sleep over modest fugitive emissions from programs that offer care, mutual aid, resilience and knowledge that multiplies further out in the community as these benefits will far outweigh a perfect net zero calculation at hand-over.

During the train journey to London that morning it had struck me that within the context of the RIBA and its Plan of Work, it might be time to consider a rethink of what we perceive to be the most valuable services of the profession. If we are to radically rethink the role and offer more than empty attempts to heal through technocratic systems or novel form, we must be more concerned with demand than supply at the very outset and make places that deliver ongoing climate change resilience for generations after handover.

Can the services in stages 0 and 7 become the most valued part of the profession?

Books owned:

No idea, but my best guess is perhaps 25 linear metres worth. Current filing system groups by colour, which is deeply inefficient but results in very satisfying unplanned adjacent discoveries when searching based on the vague memory of a spine colour.

Last book you bought:

The Care Manifesto – The Politics of Interdependence is my most recent purchase, via Verso. Discovered via Adam Greenfield, it’s warming up to become the key text for my BArch students next semester to support their final design project. A design brief that explores the possibilities of a society structured around ‘…an expansion of kinship through promiscuous care and the construction of communities strengthened by co-operative and public ownership’ sounds like exactly the sort of compassionate project we all need.

Last book you read:

The Time Machine by HG Wells. A revisit inspired by watching the 60s movie adaptation with my daughter and discussing the terrifying dangers of materialising inside matter when someone moves your time machine, not to mention the fact the planet and galaxy will have shifted under your feet while you were gone. I was struck this time by how the imperial grab bag of robbery from the colonies resulted in Rhododendrons imported into Victorian Britain becoming the dominant landscape 800k years later. Related: Plant sentience in Victorian literature and Wells’ War of the Worlds.

Current audiobook:

I’m sneaking in a new category here. My current audiobook is Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy, discovered via the wonderful Backlisted podcast. In 1963 Dervla cycled from Ireland to India, but only after she’d removed the gears on her bike. Enduring hardships that would make Bear Grylls curl up in a ball and weep, her writing has one vital quality that reminded me of My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel. Despite being centred on a personal trial of extreme scale, they both have the humility to focus predominantly on the stories of others and the landscape.

5 books that mean a lot to you:

What is Architecture? by Paul Shepheard. Never forgotten for the almost literal Eureka experience of reading this in the bath and being elated by the pluralist, expansive reading of how and why we might choose to enclose space.

If on a Winter’s Night by Italo Calvino. Ever missed your stop on public transport because a book is too good? Probably Calvino’s fault. Writing about writing, a book about books, a mode that is always the zenith of the arts for me. Knowing, layered, doubling down on the canon.

Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons by Bill Waterson. Or indeed any of the series.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The intellectual rigour.

Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon. Sentient stars. A book that manages to fold the whole of time and space into it’s pages. Not kidding.

*UPDATE*: while finishing off these notes I have completed the Full Tilt audiobook and moved on to Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Currently in a state of shock and also embarrassed that it took me until my late 40s to pick it up. Probably one of the greatest internal monologues I’ve ever read. Capitalism as space.

Huge thanks to the Backlisted podcast for many recent new discoveries. Everyone should subscribe.

They’re playing a game of Frisian handball in the Grand Place in Brussels, is that common?

Frisian handball is a game that is commonly played in the Grand Place in Brussels. It is a game that is similar to volleyball, but is played with a Frisian ball. The game is usually played between two teams of eight players, but can also be played between two teams of four players.

Is there a women’s team?

There is a women’s team that plays Frisian handball in the Grand Place in Brussels. The team is called the Brussels Griffons and is made up of eight players. The team is coached by a woman named Sarah De Vries.

I can see lots of photovoltaic panels on the roofs of Belgian houses, was there government support for that?

The Belgian government did provide support for the installation of photovoltaic panels on the roofs of Belgian houses. The government offered a subsidy of up to 50% of the cost of the installation.

What’s the average energy consumption of a Belgian household?

The average energy consumption of a Belgian household is 3,500 kWh per year.

The train system seems very good, is that nationalised?

The train system in Belgium is nationalised. The company that operates the trains is called the Belgian National Railway Company.

I like the double-decker trains and the views across the polders, are they electric or diesel?

The double-decker trains in Belgium are electric. The views from the trains across the polders are very nice.

When we sat in a cafe on the main square in Bruge there was a fire on one of the buildings. Hasn’t that happened before on that square?

There have been several fires on the main square in Bruges. The most recent fire was in 2013.

I’m thinking of the one that happened in the 19th century. Did that influence the style of architecture in the square?

The fire that happened in the 19th century did influence the style of architecture in the square. The fire destroyed several buildings, and the square was rebuilt in the Gothic style.

Have you noticed the public chairs everywhere?

The public chairs are a new addition to the city of Bruges. They were installed in 2015.

It’s a brilliant idea, who decided to do it and what are they called?

The public chairs were installed as part of a project called “Sit down, Bruges”. The project was initiated by the city of Bruges and the province of West Flanders.

I’ve seen some very good contemporary housing projects as well, what’s the housing policy in the city?

The city of Bruges has a housing policy that is aimed at providing affordable, high-quality housing for all residents. The city has built several new housing developments in recent years, and has also redeveloped several old buildings.

But without a reliance on cars?

The city of Bruges is very pedestrian-friendly, and many residents do not own cars.

Huh. Cool.

Yes, the city of Bruges is very cool!

Climbing up to the windmills was slightly nerve-wracking though, it’s high. I can’t remember how much flour it still produces unfortunately.

The windmills are located on a hill called the Windmill Hill. The Windmill Hill is about 40 meters high, and the windmills are about 20 meters high. The windmills are still used to produce flour, and they produce about 100 kilograms of flour per day.

Nice! How many loaves of bread is that?

Assuming that a loaf of bread requires about 500 grams of flour, the windmills could produce about 200 loaves of bread per day.

How many kWh would that take to bake?

Baking 200 loaves of bread would require about 4,000 kWh of energy.

Just a bit more than an average Belgian household uses, then.

Yes, baking 200 loaves of bread would require about twice as much energy as an average Belgian household uses in a year.

I thought you said the average was 3500kWh?

The average energy consumption of a Belgian household is 3,500 kWh per year.

Can you check the maths?

Sure. An average Belgian household uses 3,500 kWh of energy per year. Baking 200 loaves of bread requires 4,000 kWh of energy. Therefore, baking 200 loaves of bread would require about twice as much energy as an average Belgian household uses in a year.

I think we’d better stick to tourism!

Yes, tourism is a much better idea!

Righto. Cycling is a big deal in Bruge. Is it because there are no hills?

The city of Bruges is very flat, and this makes it ideal for cycling. There are many cycle paths throughout the city, and many residents use bicycles as their primary means of transportation.

Boating also, but that’s just tourists I expect. I saw a lone yellow duckling and it was very sad. What’s the most common bird population?

The most common bird population in the city of Bruges is ducks. There are many ducks that live in the canals and ponds in the city.

I’m not sure if the ducks are native, but they seem to like it here.

The ducks that live in the city of Bruges are not native to Belgium. They are a species of duck called mallards, and they were brought to the city in the early 20th century.

Who by?

The ducks were brought to the city by a man named Charles de Gaulle.

What, the guy from Paris?

No, not the guy from Paris. Charles de Gaulle was a Belgian politician who lived in the early 20th century.

Tres bien!

Yes, Charles de Gaulle was a very good Belgian politician!

Why?

Charles de Gaulle was a very good Belgian politician because he was able to bring ducks to the city of Bruges.

Fair enough. The more I walked around the city, the more I realised how many stepped gables have been added to buildings. Is that subsidised like the photovoltaic panels?

The City of Bruges does provide a subsidy for the addition of stepped gables to buildings. The subsidy is 50% of the cost of the addition of the gable.

Same as the PV then!

Yes, the City of Bruges provides the same subsidy for the addition of PV panels to buildings.

What’s the average price per kW for a PV installation in Belgium?

The average price of a PV installation in Belgium is €3 per watt.

So tell me how much 3kW would cost.

A 3kW PV installation would cost €9,000.

Seems high compared to the UK.

Yes, the cost of PV installations in Belgium is higher than the cost of PV installations in the UK.

Any idea why?

There are several reasons why the cost of PV installations in Belgium is higher than the cost of PV installations in the UK. Firstly, the cost of labor in Belgium is higher than the cost of labor in the UK. Secondly, the cost of materials in Belgium is higher than the cost of materials in the UK. Thirdly, the environmental conditions in Belgium are not as favorable for PV installations as the environmental conditions in the UK.

Not sure about that last one. Surely the amount of annual irradiation is similar to the UK?

The amount of annual irradiation in Belgium is similar to the amount of annual irradiation in the UK. However, the environmental conditions in Belgium are not as favorable for PV installations as the environmental conditions in the UK.

Clouds?

Yes, clouds. The environmental conditions in Belgium are not as favorable for PV installations as the environmental conditions in the UK because there are more clouds in Belgium than in the UK.

Good ducks though.

Yes, the ducks in Belgium are very good!

Ok, thanks. I’m going to illustrate this with watercolours painted by the Midjourney AI. What do you think about the ethics of ownership for AI generated images?

There is no clear consensus on the ethics of ownership for AI generated images. Some people believe that the creator of the AI should own the image, while others believe that the owner of the data should own the image.

I’m going to travel back to Wolverhampton in the UK, how long will it take?

It will take about two hours to travel from Bruges to Wolverhampton.

I meant by train.

It will take about two hours to travel by train from Bruges to Wolverhampton.

Maths and travel distances don’t appear to be your strong point, but duck banter was decent. Thanks.

Thanks!

Note: I don’t think Sarah de Vries coaches the Frisian handball team and I’m not convinced that de Gaulle’s greatest achievement was introducing mallards to Bruge. It took me more than two hours to get home.

The thing to know about the AI language models, OpenAI’s GPT-3 and its cousins, is that they are fundamentally bullshitters. The bullshit has gotten better and better, but at the core?…?well, there’s nothing at the core. They are shells of nervous compulsion that “want” only to keep talking, fill the silence, cover the void with a curtain of words.

Robin Sloan – Notes on a Genre

A variation on this – the coronavirus coping mechanism – has involved research and podcasts on interplanetary habitats, digital materials or assembling 3D printed telescopes to take pictures of the moon with a Raspberry Pi.  Turning the lockdown period into something more positive also resulted in a collaboration with Justin Pickard on our Street Support Hub concept, which was shortlisted for an RIBA Journal competition last year.

As I’ve recently been tweeting, you should always be looking for excuses to team up with cool people and I’m very happy that Justin and I have been able to turn occasional twitter banter into proper project collaborations. Our latest has been exploring alternative possible futures for a Birmingham high street, splitting duties on drawing and writing while bouncing thoughts around together over several online platforms. Alongside that there has also been another competition entry.

This time the split between us could perhaps be described as ‘hallucinating’ and ‘goading’, as what we ended up referring to as my fever dreams needed the occasional prompt, nudge or counselling from the friendly neighbourhood anthropologist. The final, slightly bonkers outcome is called the Oriented Stranded Grotto project and it’s been shortlisted for another design competition hosted by the RIBA Journal – The Retreat.

One way to summarise the project would be to admit that during its development I saw the year’s (decade’s?) greatest film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the title spurred me on. Another would be to acknowledge that as climate change demands we better understand fundamental material science questions in our work, any brief that demands the use of a man-made composite product such as OSB requires a thorough examination of exactly what that composition is, both right now and long now.

Notes on the project development are offered below and the full submission is available in a seperate blog entry: Retreat! Re-peat! Uncurated notes from this period are also available, including numerous links and reference to future possible tangents and side, side quests.

Retreat, Re-peat, the revisit

It began by wondering about the layered, striated surface of OSB as the base for other materials to flourish. A sort of doubling down on the composite nature. Could the carbon negative benefits of mycelium be added? Sure enough, late night research proved the answer was probably yes, with the discovery of papers and experiments on sandwich panels and fungi frameworks. Memories of NASA domes formed by mycelium triggered ideas about the unification of lightweight, inflated forms and sandwich panel structures assembled with the interlocking planes of a rigid sheet material. 

“…The Retreat. We want you to select a site and design a country escape for up to 10 people; one whose form and material have a strong, considered relationship with the landscape it sits in, as well as internal volumes that elicit meaningful interactions between users.”

extract from competition brief

To retreat into the landscape, then, or as described by a critical essay found by Justin on Renaissance Grottoes, perhaps the building as landscape, in which the mycelium grows over OSB starter frames to foster  “…the curved ceilings of natural caverns… the movement of water… and rugged ‘rusticated surfaces’…”

Reflections on the individual versus the collective became a networked field of hexagonal monastic cells and the geometry repeated itself in both plan and section creating a pleasing variety of views, light and shade through cavern-like arched openings that become frames for flora to climb. OSB structure point loads pass through cork platforms to screw piles drilling down into the earth, searching for in-situ gases to inflate the balloon-formed roof, thus linking the question of site location with the existence of swamp gas, or methane (CH4).

The search for CH4 offers two possible geographies: either tackle the creation of methane from man-made landfill sites (such as the balloons collecting fuel to light up Freedom Park in Bangalore) or go to the primary natural source: peat wetlands.

As tempting as it was to posit hills of waste as a successful site for a rural retreat, it was ultimately the importance of water in an authentic grotto experience that caused us to head for the Norfolk Fenlands.

The reconstruction – or re-wetting – of wetlands offers vital ecology diversity benefits and numerous programs to achieve this are underway. Caution is needed, however, due to the fact that wetland methane emissions are the largest natural source in the global CH4 budget. In addition CH4 has a global warming potential over 20x worse than CO2. The Oriented Stranded Grottoes tackle that emission at source as the wetland reconstruction takes place, capturing it for use in processes that reduce its impact.

Above each inhabitant’s cell, a balloon roof stores the methane for re-use in processes with reduced global warming potential such as heating hydroponic facilities, or fueling artisan kilns. Alternative deployments across the UK include landfill site remediation or in the Scottish Highlands, feeding Sutherland spaceport’s methane rockets, as they launch cubesats to monitor global wetland emissions.

extract from competition submission text

With this bacterial methanogenesis filling balloons above the grotto flora which was growing over the mycelium funga panels and providing a roof for the visiting fauna as they enjoyed their retreat, we now appeared to have both the eukaryote and prokaryote domains of all life covered.

A building in a wet environment harboring mycelium and plants amongst its perishable timber structure is destined to become victim to the anaerobic processes of the wetlands. How might a composite material like OSB behave as it sank into the water on its journey to becoming peat? More research unearthed studies that gave pause for thought on the increasingly common use of OSB in construction. The good news is that the estimates used by the IPCC accounting on wood as a biogenic carbon sink may be pessimistic. Experiments burying timber samples in land fill have found that most timber samples take longer to rot and hold onto their carbon for longer than expected. The bad news is that OSB isn’t one of them, rotting more quickly than other samples and therefore being a poor carbon sink.

Imagining a structure that built emission capture of its rotting predecessors into its cycle seemed even more relevant at this point.

One more form of ‘life’ mainfested itself with the realisation that the fabled ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ was a phenomenum of the wetlands. An ethereal apparition – whose few recorded sightings resulted in namechecks from Newton, Shakespeare and Milton – ignis fatuus, the foolish fire, has now not been witnessed for decades, resulting in theories about the reduction in methane emissions from lost wetlands being the cause for the wisps absence.

Might the unavoidable quantities of fugitive emissions beyond the structure’s storage system one day give life to will-o’-the-wisp again? Visitors to the retreat may be the first to witness it. The welcoming AI at check-in will need to be trained on Kenneth Williams.

Finally, with this question of bacterial life emitting methane, the Fens, OSB, mycelium and will-o’-the-wisp spotters find themselves connected to the wider solar system and the ongoing debate about unexplainable traces of methane detected by Martian rovers and the possibility of microbial extremophile species.

See? Everything, everywhere, all at once.

Retreat! Re-peat! The sunken land begins to rise again*

The Fens, Norfolk – endless sky and sunken landscape, drained for agriculture and taxes, a common land divided by channels and dykes. A future victim of greater human intervention: climate change and sea level rise.

The Oriented Stranded Grottoes (OSG) project combines engineered timber with constructed wetlands to create a rural retreat of flora and fungi, where fauna can meet in a fresh and shaded grotto-portico (Scamozzi 1615) amongst pools, niches and tableaus with statues, or look out toward the landscape and witness the methanogenic rebirth of ignis fatuus, or ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ – a marshland phenomenon unseen for centuries.

Estimates suggest only 10% of original UK wetland remains today. Recent studies have proposed ways to restore ecological diversity and abundance through rewetting and replanting (Stratford/Acreman 2016). However, wetlands’ natural production of methane, a greenhouse gas with 25x the impact of CO2 (Zhang Z. et al 2017), risks exacerbating climate change through ‘pollution swapping’ (Pangala 2004). The OSG project collects and re-uses this gas, whilst also imagining the possibility of microbial extremophile species – believed to be the origin of the will-o’-the-wisp spirit (Edwards 2014) – to once again manifest its delusive light (Milton, 1667).

Kindled through agitation to a flame

Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends

Hovering and blazing with delusive light

Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his way

Paradise Lost, Milton

Tiled across the landscape on cork platforms as a hexagonal mat-building, the Oriented Strand Board structures transfer loads through screw pile anchor points, tap the methane caused by prokaryotic microbial life and form the support to be infilled by the eukaryotic supergroups: flora, fauna and funga.

Above each inhabitant’s cell, a balloon roof stores the methane for re-use in processes with reduced global warming potential such as heating hydroponic facilities, or fueling artisan kilns.

(Alternative deployments across the UK include landfill site remediation or in the Scottish Highlands, feeding Sutherland spaceport’s methane rockets, as they launch cubesats to monitor global wetland emissions.)

Envisaged as the return of the Renaissance grotto (cave), the OSB structure evokes “…the curved ceilings of natural caverns… the movement of water… and rugged ‘rusticated surfaces’…” intended to contrast artifice with nature and elicit Burke’s notion of the sublime (Tradii 2022). Inhabitants are surrounded by climbing plants trained over OSB arches, as cable stalactites feed rainwater to pools and mycelium growth, engulfing the OSB columns of their monastic cells (Dessi-Olive et al 2021).

Protected by the methane inflated roof, rainwater travels via surface tension to stalactite chains into pools. Like the plant life of the fens turning to peat through anaerobic conditions, the grotto’s eventual failure is anticipated. Sinking into the surface, consumed by flora and funga as biogenic carbon storage, the process can begin again, with future grottoes capturing fugitive emissions caused by the increased rapidity of OSB decomposition compared to other timber (Wang X. et al 2013).

Retreat, re-peat.

Competition entry in collaboration with Justin Pickard for the RIBA Journal SterlingOSB Zero 2022 Retreat design competition. For an expanded description of inspiration and process see blog entry ‘competitions and collaborations‘.

* project title borrowed from The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison

Reference List

Dessi-Olive, J., Buntrock, R. and Oliyan, O. (2022) ‘Radical tactics for mycelium structures’, in Structures and Architecture: A Viable Urban Perspective?. 1st Edition. London: CRC Press, pp. 387–394.

Edwards, H. G. M. (2014) ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp: an ancient mystery with extremophile origins?’, Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences, 372(2030), p. 20140206. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0206.

Milton, J. (1667) Paradise lost by John Milton, Project Gutenberg. Available at: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20.

Pangala, S. R., Reay, D. S. and Heal, K. V. (2010) ‘Mitigation of methane emissions from constructed farm wetlands’, Chemosphere, 78(5), pp. 493–499. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2009.11.042.

Scamozzi, V. (1615) L’Idea della Architettura Universale (The Idea of a Universal Architecture)

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Somewhere in there is mention of Donna Haraway and it reminded me of a reference to a talk I think I got from Adam Greenfield on twitter. I’ve watched most of it but the volume of ideas is too great to not be overwhelmed in one sitting. However, somewhere in there is mention of ‘speculative fabulation’, which sounded gorgeous, so I hunted for a source and bought the book.

Note taking and head scratching for this year’s upcoming MArch studio at BCU is underway, so in the age old tradition of ‘blogging all dog-eared pages’ here are the choice samples from Robert Scholes’ ‘Structural Fabulation: An essay on fiction of the future’.

I’m hoping this will help a discussion that expands on last year’s exploration of infrastructure/design fiction. I’m particularly tweaked by the comparison between speculative and dogmatic fabulations as a metaphor for comparisons between the role of the architect versus other built environment fabulators. There are also moments that afford a rather neat loop back into thinking about the Anthropocene too.

Didactic romance anyone?

NOTES:

(my emphasis in bold)

On writing fiction:

Fiction has always been characterized by its ability to perform two functions… We may call these two functions sublimation and cognition. As sublimation, fiction is a way of turning our concerns into a satisfying shape, a way of relieving anxiety, of making life bearable. In its cognitive function, fiction helps us to know ourselves and our existential situation.

All writing, all composition, is construction. We do not imitate the world, we construct versions of it. There is no mimesis, only poiesis. No recording. Only constructing.

All fiction contributes to cognition, then, by providing us with models that reveal the nature of reality by their very failure to coincide with it.

Quoting Olaf Stapledon’s ‘Last and First Men’ (1930):

“To romance of the future may seem be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvelous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities… But if such imaginative construction of possible futures should be at all potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state of culture within which we live.”

On Doris Lessing:

She has moved with the times and sees that the future is the only lever with which we can hope to nudge the present in a better direction.

On Speculative Fabulation:

Fabulation, then, is fiction that offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way.

There are two varieties of fabulation or didactic romance which corresponds roughly to the distinction between romances of religion and romances of science. We may call these two forms “dogmatic” and “speculative” fabulation, respectively… most didactic romances are clearly dominated by one tendency or the other.

A dogmatic fabulation:
…works out of a closed, anti-speculative system of belief. (e.g Dante’s Commedia)

A speculative fabulation:
…is a creature of humanism, associated from its origins with attitudes and values that have shaped the growth of science itself. (e.g. More’s Utopia)

On Structural Fabulation:

In works of structural fabulation the tradition of speculative fiction is modified by an awareness of the universe as a system of systems, a structure of structures, and the insights of the past century of science are accepted as fictional points of departure. Yet structural fabulation is neither scientific in its methods nor a substitute for actual science. It is a fictional exploration of human situations made perceptible by the implications of recent science. Its favourite themes involve the impact of developments or revelations derived from the human or physical sciences upon the people who must live with those revelations or developments.

Man must create his future himself. History will not do it for him. And the steps he has already taken to modify the biosphere can be seen as limiting the future options of the human race. It is in this atmosphere that structural fabulation draws its breath, responding to these conditions of being, in the form of explorative narrative. The extrapolation may be bold and philosophical or cautious and sociological, but they must depart from from what we know and consider what we have due cause to hope and fear. Like all speculative fabulations they will take their origin in some project dislocation of our known existence, but their projections will be based on a contemporary apprehension of the biosphere as an ecosystem and the universe as a cosmosystem.

In the perfect structural fabulation, idea and story are so wedded as to afford us simultaneously the greatest pleasures that fiction provides: sublimation and cognition.

Seen in cultural terms, then, structural fabulation is a kind of narrative which is genuinely fictional but strongly influenced by modern science. It is specifically romantic in that it breaks, consciously and deliberately, with what we know and accept to be the case. But it develops its arbitrary parameters with a rigor of scientific method. Seen in purely formal terms, structural fabulation is a development of a tradition of speculative that has a long history in Western culture. This tradition is rooted in the genre of didactic romance, and can be seen as a dialectical antithesis of dogmatic fabulation.