«Our international contingent had an array of interests, including glaciers, geothermal energy, landscapes and the literary imagination, and “extreme” landscapes.
FOP’s particular focus was on what we have come to call “streaming” landscapes of Iceland, and how the Icelandic landscape can be seen as a concatenation of events occurring along various speeds, intensities, and temporal trajectories.
[…] We learned that glacial outburst floods can arrive within hours, days, or even months after an eruption. After a series of strong earthquakes in 2000, bridge designs were upgraded to meet the force of 8.0 earthquakes. “Weak points” are designed into Icelandic roads that allow them to be washed away in small sections. This relieves the pressure on the remaining road and bridges, often saving the bridges from being torn away by the massive floods. And, our representative told us, the Road Administration keeps a cache of 100-300 meters of “stock” bridge material on hand at all times, just in case.»

— Ellsworth, E. & Kruse, J. Eventscapes: Iceland (2012)
— Ellsworth, E. & Kruse, J. Streaming landscapes (2012)

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jökulhlaup [ˈjœːkʏl̥ˌl̥øip] n. a subglacial outburst flood, a run-off from a subglacial eruption. 

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Satellite image of Skeiðarársandur, lS.

«Manifesto for self-assembled material.
1 \ Self-assembled material embraces bottom-up and horizontal strategies providing a spontaneous material infrastructure. The organizational system of building industry does not need to use only hierarchical structure anymore.
2 \ Self-assembled material allows to change our relationship between space and habitant as those spaces would no longer be inert and static. It can be living spaces or self living spaces embedded with augmented technology.
3 \ The role of architect could be changed to activist or enabler rather than building professions.
4 \ Self-assembled material would involve a completely different conception of time in building projects since metabolic time is needed to grow like nature system; short-termism could be reconsisdered in architectural industry.
5 \ Self-assembled material could suggest unexpected territory embracing new ways of thinking and new ways of acting in Late capitalism. We can build something without implementing locally obtainable variations of the materials, skills and components without the requirements of importing massive amounts of external infrastructure and capital.»

— Anon. (2012) ”The Rise of Bacteria” in The Design Process Behind a Project, Royal College of Art - Design Products programme

Algaerium
A Radical Means
LumenBios
Xylinum

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self-assembly [sɛlf əˈsɛmblɪ] n. a type of process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction

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Bioluminescent fungi [Panellus stipticus].

«Resuscitated Fresh Kills is an urbanism, which is to say it is a technique for the extension of morality.
Urbanisms are the methods that have developed historically as effective strategies for the development and sustenance of moral empires — they are massive and intricate devices of morality-extension, deploying entire ways of life across space, containing all relationships known and unknowable. They are the concerted and calculated, planned, expansion of morality.
Morality contains the totality of a given type of life; the preservation and nurturing of that type is the underlying motivation for all collective action, and action in accordance with these motives is perceived as truthful and good. Like most contemporary urbanisms, the Fresh Kills project is technological at root.
[…] Like the greater technological project itself, the technical resuscitation of Fresh Kills is neither physics nor metaphysics, but rather pataphysics — a science of imaginary solutions.
Urbanism may have begun as a primary technology, only once removed from nature. It then became, during the revolutions of industrialization and transportation, a secondary technology, twice removed from nature and once removed from itself (sanitation and HVAC systems; devices that save us from nature by multiplying themselves). Now, it appears to be passing over to a tertiary technology, three times removed from nature, twice from itself, and once removed from its own failure.
Fresh Kills belongs to the family of technologies that recognizes inevitable malfunction as a function of origin — like the parachute, the airbag, or the biosuits that wander its surface.»

— May, J. (2008) “Bringing Back a Fresh Kill: Notes on a Dream of Territorial Resuscitation” in Verb: Crisis, ACTAR, pp. 78-95
— May, J. (2008) “On Technology, Ecology, and Urbanism” in Verb: Crisis, ACTAR, pp. 102-115

http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/freshkills-park/
http://freshkillspark.wordpress.com/

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leachate [ˈliːtʃeɪt] n. a solution resulting from leaching, as of soluble constituents from soil, landfill, etc., by downward percolating ground water.
meth·ane [ˈmiːθeɪn] n. a colorless, odorless, flammable gas (CH 4) the main constituent of marsh gas and the firedamp of coal mines, obtained commercially from natural gas: the first member of the methane, or alkane, series of hydrocarbons.

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Landfill leachate.