Algae and CO2 precedent

UCLA's cityLAB Working Public Architecture (WPA2) design competition has been won by organized PORT: Architecture Urbanism's “Carbon T.A.P.// Tunnel Algae Park” in the above video. Well worth watching, especially for those targeting CO2 or using algae. The other shortlisted entries along with the winner of the student competition can be found on the following links.

WPA design competition and symposium site with the other entrants work
PORT Architects website
UCLA's cityLAB website

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Jorge Otero-Pailos is an architect / artist / conservationist mentioned in the Ugly Beauty programme on an earlier post. The above video discusses his work The Ethics of Dust: Doges Palace, Venice 2009 where he removed and therefore revealed pollution on a wall of the Doges Palace in Venice.

"Pollution is our most important product of modern civilisation...but we don't have a history of pollution." Jorge Otero-Pailos

Seeing Beauty in Venice's Pollution article

Michael Landy's Weed Etchings

"Landy has been botanising in little urban margins, looking for their earliest colonising flora as well as the longerstanding floral residents. Collecting weeds from urban brownfields, from cracks in pavements and the corners and verges of car parks, he has kept them fed and watered and has spent hours drawing each one, first on paper then on copper plates. The result is a series of etchings .... these images play out a contemporary vernacular aesthetic that is Landy's own distinctive contrivance....

Much of Landy's work broaches a dialectic of history and the present, of politics and art. ... Landy's work asks questions about consumerism, entitlement and capitalism, as well as about the role of artists and their productions." Tate

Landy
Tate on Landy

Anish Kapoor

Excellent programme about Anish Kapoor's work.

BBC iplayer Imagine: Anish Kapoor

Beauty and Aging

'Old things have a beauty that new things can never have. It is a beauty that has been earned.'
Ugly Beauty programme, now on BBC iplayer is well worth seeing. There are two particular parts of specific relevance the beauty of texture (33.45 in) talking about the beauty in aging, and then about life being change from 52.50 on.

'My fear is permanence, no change anymore, as .... permanence is death.' Tatsuo Miyajima
'Permanent change is what life is about.'

iplayer from 33.45 to 43.20 and 52.50 onwards

Adam Fuss

Adam Fuss is a photographer who works without a camera. Using some of the earliest photographic techniques he captures fleeting moments in highly evocative images.
explanation of process

Countdown to Copenhagen

Current and past articles concerning the issues to be discussed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December.
Countdown to Copenhagen

Robert Smithson - decay, renewal, chaos and order

Robert Smithson was one of the founders of the discipline of Land Art.
"Embodied in all of Smithson's endeavors was his interest in entropy, mapping, paradox, language, landscape, popular culture, anthropology, and natural history... Entropy, was a theme that consistently ran throughout Smithson's art and writings. He explored his ideas involving decay and renewal, chaos and order with what came to be known as his Nonsites and Earthworks. Smithson spoke at great length in interviews and essays on entropy and his notion of time. .... Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970, Kent State University, Kent State, was a piece Smithson created on site during an invitational arts festival. He located an abandoned woodshed and poured earth on to the structure until it cracked. This work is a prime example of Smithson's visualization of entropy and time, leaving it to be "subject to weathering, which should be considered part of the piece."
web site

Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt is an environmental artist, Francis found these images about one of her most famous pieces, Sun Tunnels in Utah. These simple pipes have been placed so that they have specific solar alignments and are also pierced to align with stars.

Nancy Holt sun tunnels
images
more images
See this link for further land art

algae, artificial trees and geoengineering

"Artificial trees and tubes of algae on the sides of buildings could absorb most of the UK's annual carbon dioxide emissions"
Some really interesting articles about geo-engineering strategies to absorb CO2 emissions. The Institute of Mechanical Engineers are advocating growing algae in tubes on the sides of buildings and the use of artificial 'trees'.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers' 'battle plan' for climate change includes geo-engineering
Fake trees, algae tubes and white roofs
Ambitious plan to breed microalgae in greenhouse with the potential to absorb carbon emissions

The Beauty of Detail lecture Thursday 12th at Brookes

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is giving a lecture on The Beauty of Detail Thursday 12th November at 12.15 till 1pm in Willow 10, Headington Hill Campus
'She exposes the relationships between human and naturally occurring
landscapes. She develops works which resonate with a particular place, interior or exterior, often using unusual materials linked to the specific environment (butter, fish skins, chicken skins, rice, trees, fir cones, watercress). Research plays an important part in the development of her projects and she creates new methods and procedures for each work.' web site