Sunday December 20, 2009 at 16:55

Final Presentation Part 3 of 3

The project proposes that BP better enables the consumer’s increase in fuel consumption by utilizing three strategies:

·                     “Greening” their core product by remarkably increasing the bio-fuel content of petroleum-based fuel,

·                     Giving the consumer the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets for their personal fuel consumption and

·                     Providing a less expensive, more accessible fuel and power source in exurban terrains.

These strategies encourage the consumer to increase consumption, thereby facilitating expansion of BP’s current operations and profits. They are manifested architecturally through BP’s posturing of new algae production and carbon sequestration infrastructures which are:

·         An offshore platform facility for carbon capture & storage, petroleum production, algae farming and carbon research labs which is open to recreational public visitation.

·         Localized exurban re-fueling stations for BP’s new bio-petrol-fuel which contain:

·         Mini-refinery processing modules for algae oil and petroleum.

·         Algae production modules which sequester carbon from the refinery programs and produce the bio-mass for the fuel. 

·         Civic and community building programs which reinforce relocation into exurban terrains.

·         Interactive pumps offering the consumer the opportunity to purchase and learn about carbon offsets.

Sunday December 20, 2009 at 16:52

Final Presentation Part 2 of 3

Sunday December 20, 2009 at 16:50

Final Presentation Part 1 of 3

Tuesday December 08, 2009 at 15:26

Dark Side of a Natural Gas Boom

“Here in Dimock, about 30 miles north of Scranton, Pa., 13 water wells… were contaminated by natural gas. One of the wells blew up.”

Tuesday December 08, 2009 at 2:03

driven to distraction

on the general tangent of evil - this article is about the promotion of the car phone despite awareness of its potential dangers.  Given the state of distraction we live in these days and the questioning of evil (does responsibility lie with profit driven corporations or the consumer) I find this article interesting.

Wednesday December 02, 2009 at 23:26

Wolpertinger : A Bavarian curiosity

Wolpertinger : A Bavarian curiosity

Monday November 30, 2009 at 3:56

Tree Harvester Offers to Save Indonesian Forest

Oh the sick and twisted world of carbon credits

Monday November 30, 2009 at 3:46

Audio: 'Family': Fundamentalism, Friends In High Places

This is an NPR Fresh Air interview about “The Family”, an extremely political & religious secret society with a strong belief in capitalism and a belief that Jesus’ example is one of Power…

and while this may or may not be related to any particular project in the studio, except perhaps Addi’s since it is about a secret society, the methods and thoughts of this organization are so evil that I can not help but post it…

anyhow - an excerpt on how they rationalize that supporting evil dictators is what god wants…

“They said that’s a man God has chosen, and this is an issue that they always deal with. They know that the dictators they’re dealing with are often, you know, pretty scary guys, but they’ll say, look, God chooses who he wants to work with. So God wants to fight communism.

Suharto is a man who’s fighting communism, and he’s killing a million people, and, well, just look at the Bible, they’ll say. The Bible is filled with, you know, blood and killing and so on. God works in mysterious ways.

At the same time they are reaching out to Suharto. They are bringing delegations of congressmen over there. They’re bringing delegations of the oil executives who are financing their work over there. One oilman named Harold McClure wrote in a memo that was then circulated among core congressional members that he’d had an hour-long meeting with Suharto and some of the oil people around Suharto. Suharto, of course, controlled the eighth-largest oil company in the world at that time. And they had an hour of prayer, after which they’d moved on to business. And he said it had just been one of the most spiritual encounters of his life and also one of the most lucrative, which sounds deeply cynical, but when you understand the Family’s perspective, it’s not.

They see the wealth and influence and power in this kind of dumbed-down Calvinism way as a sign of their selection, or literally their election by God, that they’ve been chosen for this wealth, for this influence.”

Thursday November 19, 2009 at 12:45

From: Exurban Growth Greater Than Central Growth: Census Bureau EXURBIA=TheAmericanDream “The reality is that modern suburbia is merely the latest iteration of the American dream. Far from being dull, artificial and spiritually vacuous, today’s suburbs are the products of the same religious longings and the same deep tensions that produced the American identity from the start. The complex faith of Jonathan Edwards, the propelling ambition of Benjamin Franklin, the dark, meritocratic fatalism of Lincoln — all these inheritances have shaped the outer suburbs.” (David Brooks, Our Sprawling, Supersize Nation) High Automobile fuel costs and demands for fuel conservation are two of the few things which can prevent exurban growth. An Algae based biogas will give the US energy security, price stabilization and more fuel. This will allow people to increase their automotive fuel consumption thus enabling exurban growth Which will further the growth of BP and their profits. New exurban communities lack civic and public gathering locations where they can unite on their common grounds. BP can provide what these new settlements need: plentiful inexpensive fuel and a “public” forum. To constantly encourage further growth BP must be on the exurban frontier, constantly moving outwards. To do so, this system must be “mobile” and “temporary” operating on test sites at the extreme periphery. It must settle for a while and move on if an area is not settled soon enough or it gains enough population to justify the implementation of more permanent facilities.

From: Exurban Growth Greater Than Central Growth: Census Bureau

EXURBIA=TheAmericanDream

“The reality is that modern suburbia is merely the latest iteration of the American dream. Far from being dull, artificial and spiritually vacuous, today’s suburbs are the products of the same religious longings and the same deep tensions that produced the American identity from the start. The complex faith of Jonathan Edwards, the propelling ambition of Benjamin Franklin, the dark, meritocratic fatalism of Lincoln — all these inheritances have shaped the outer suburbs.” (David Brooks, Our Sprawling, Supersize Nation)

High Automobile fuel costs and demands for fuel conservation are two of the few things which can prevent exurban growth.

An Algae based biogas will give the US energy security, price stabilization and more fuel.

This will allow people to increase their automotive fuel consumption thus enabling exurban growth

Which will further the growth of BP and their profits.

New exurban communities lack civic and public gathering locations where they can unite on their common grounds.

BP can provide what these new settlements need: plentiful inexpensive fuel and a “public” forum.

To constantly encourage further growth BP must be on the exurban frontier, constantly moving outwards.

To do so, this system must be “mobile” and “temporary” operating on test sites at the extreme periphery.

It must settle for a while and move on if an area is not settled soon enough or it gains enough population to justify the implementation of more permanent facilities.

Wednesday November 18, 2009 at 15:05

Stockholm Syndrome…

Given that none of us actually have clients telling us what they want, the studio has asked for us to be our clients. It has asked that we be the evil, not that we be the hired gun of evil. To play both sides is a mind trick that I am finding increasingly frustrating and angering. In light of this fact, and Kelsey’s recent post of architecture as a cult - I am increasingly convinced that it is not just our clients whose evil we must contend with, but it is also the evil of the studio itself. The reality is that it is the studio which has held us hostage - not our clients.  For me the saturation of cynicism and study of my client’s evil has increasingly framed the world as so saturated in evil, that to exist is to be evil. This is a larger task then I know how to sum up tidily with a “building” at the end of the semester. While I have more thoughts on this, maybe it is best just to leave it at that.

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