2019_Thesis Book: Maria Diavolova
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atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
URBAN narratives in the face of surging seas<br />
an honors thesis in architecture<br />
by maria v diavolova<br />
university of pennsylvania<br />
college of arts and science
atlas of erosive potentialities:<br />
urban narratives in the face of surging seas<br />
an honors thesis in architecture<br />
by maria v diavolova<br />
advising, daniel a. barber, sophie hochhäusl<br />
university of pennsylvania<br />
college of arts and science
contents<br />
abstract...010<br />
preface...011<br />
a game of pick up sticks...013<br />
capital of capital...014<br />
liquidity...018<br />
erosive potentialities...022<br />
appendix a: atlas of erosive potentialities...026<br />
bibliography...033
20 13<br />
anthropogenic<br />
greenhouse gases<br />
65%<br />
13 of the world’s 20 largest cities are port cities<br />
Dawson, 2017, Introduction<br />
Between 60 to 70% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions emanate from cities<br />
Dawson, 2017, 36<br />
005 006
15% London<br />
40%<br />
UK carbon<br />
emissions<br />
15% of London is within a recognized flood risk zone from either tidal or fluvial flooding<br />
https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/planning/london-plan/current-london-plan/london-plan-chapter-five-londons-response/pol-11<br />
The construction / building industry is responsible for 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions<br />
https://www.ukgbc.org/climate-change/<br />
007 008
abstract<br />
“History is humankind trying to get a grip, but it could go better if you<br />
would pay a little more attention to certain details, like for instance your<br />
planet.”<br />
— Kim Stanley Robinson, NY2140<br />
London is inherently vulnerable to flooding as a result of high tides and storm<br />
surges on the Thames, which are exacerbated, at an increasing frequency, by storms<br />
in the North Sea. Since 1984, Great Britain’s capital has been on the defense, primarily<br />
in protection of the City of London, when the government erected the Thames Barrier.<br />
The 1,800-foot retractable floodgate stretches between Silvertown and New Charlton,<br />
cutting off high tide ahead of the meanders that define London’s cityscape. Designed<br />
for a one in a one-thousand-year event, the two-billion-pound investment has already<br />
been used 182 times, and 50 times in the year 2013 alone.<br />
London is a sprawling example of a cosmopolitan urban hub whose architecture<br />
visually defines the city’s temporal boundaries; rigid, brick and masonry buildings,<br />
on the one hand, and tall-glass curtain skyscrapers on the other. At both extremes,<br />
these structures lack resilience. This thesis scrutinizes the resiliency of London’s<br />
built environment both from an urban and a typological perspective; it engages with<br />
texts in urban ecology, science fiction and critical preservation in an attempt to forge<br />
interdependencies in the shape of a fictional story through time. How will sea level rise<br />
affect the spatial configuration of London?<br />
At an architectural level, resilient design solutions oscillate between utopian<br />
paper architecture and novel solutions for new construction. Neither the private nor<br />
the public sector can afford to retroactively introduce architectural resiliency to every<br />
corner of London. Hence, the field relies on infrastructural defenses like the Thames<br />
Barrier. This infests the city with a false sense of security and permanence, promoting<br />
a static way of life, and thereby habitation. We live as subjects of rapid and forthcoming<br />
change. Preservation is a means to derive security. When all else changes, there is<br />
comfort in knowing the physical objects of memory are here to stay. Yet, how will<br />
London adapt its existing architectural typologies?<br />
At an urban level, waterfront schemes – popular solutions in the face of rising<br />
sea levels – run the risk of reinforcing economic and social inequality via environmental<br />
gentrification. An analogous social infrastructure in New York City, the High Line<br />
increased contiguous property values by over one-hundred percent. Luxury building<br />
types, like Zaha’s 520 West 28th Str., further inflate property values. If we are to avoid<br />
similar precedents, how can the architectural type, as the proposed resolution in the<br />
face of rising waters, further equality, as opposed to inequality?<br />
To address these questions, this thesis speculates on the value of erosion as<br />
a vehicle to critically engage the challenges of rising tides. Can the resurgence of the<br />
non-human be thought of as the erosion of the man-made on an urban and typological<br />
scale?<br />
009 010
preface<br />
“Creative agents advance their interests in architecture through<br />
designed interventions in existing buildings, which challenge architectural<br />
conventions, and weaken its disciplinary boundaries.”<br />
WATER is the first means to traverse the world; to exchange resources<br />
between faraway lands; to extract and redistribute. Water is inherently endowed with<br />
the quality of a fuel—energy, which can be transformed into power; but as found, it<br />
is a potentiality, a “not yet rigidified [form] of power. 3 Within a reservoir, it becomes<br />
an echo of socio-political conditions for the production of capital, 4 a mirror image of a<br />
place in time.<br />
Once rigidified, it can become a tool for human use and abuse, losing its<br />
identity as anything but a ‘means to.’ 5 The most notable periods in the history of<br />
the United Kingdom are defined as those of greatest geographic reach, not in terms<br />
of landmass but in terms of claim to offshores. The hard divisions between land and<br />
water stem from cartography, of mapping as a tool for the “exploration” of offshore<br />
territories. Globally, waterways became dominant sites of economic activity. Shoreline<br />
factories, warehouses and ports enabled the centralization of economic production,<br />
distribution and exchange. The contemporary domestication of water emanates<br />
from the transformation of these labor practices, from predominately industrial in<br />
nature to primarily service-oriented. Waterfronts have become the sites of the spatial<br />
transformation of capital. 6 Specifically, London’s riverfront is now the site of the global<br />
economy, of vertical forests, which offer far-reaching views that dissolve locality and<br />
instill globality.<br />
The Anthropocene—the era during which human activity has been the ruling<br />
influence on the environment—is increasingly destabilizing the perception of water<br />
as a controllable presence in the environment; insofar as the River Thames is a tool,<br />
“it is quite invisible…[it] disappears in favor of some purpose that it serves.” 7 With<br />
anthropogenic global warming, land subsidence and sea level rise, hard, infrastructural<br />
solutions are deployed to contain it in an effort to preserve its identity. These solutions,<br />
like the Thames Barrier, are predicated on the idea that the effects of global warming<br />
can be localized and resolved as such. Hence, the River Thames remains ‘invisible,’ a<br />
background animation, because it continues to operate within its prescribed boundary.<br />
Rephrasing Heidegger, Graham Harman says, “We generally notice equipment<br />
only when it somehow fails.” 8 If London continues on a trajectory of infrastructural<br />
defense, it will notice the River Thames only when it fails to be contained. This thesis<br />
proposes that water can assume a new identity within London’s built environment,<br />
one that reflect its inherent physical property of a liquid.<br />
What effects would this bear on London’s existing architectural typologies?<br />
London’s waterfront, specifically along South London’s Bermondsey, is populated by<br />
former warehouses. The buildings are Grade II listed, which prevents any significant<br />
modifications to their exterior; they have, however, been transformed into luxury<br />
housing, boutique storefronts and riverside restaurants. As a result, their functions<br />
are supported by extensive HVAC systems, which populate their rooftops and thus<br />
ensure the preservation of the industrial aesthetic of their façades. These systems<br />
expend an enormous amount of energy for the preservation of a borough’s aesthetic<br />
identity. This thesis claims that this identity is no longer viable in the context of sea<br />
level rise.<br />
Architects such as Keller Easterling and Rem Koolhaas have spoken on the<br />
value of subtraction 9 or abstinence 10 in architecture; both of these terms, however,<br />
operate on the same timescale of quick or momentary exchanges. This thesis<br />
speculates on the value of erosion, a term, which implies a longer, geological, time scale<br />
— Jorge Otero-Pailos 2 (3) “Fuels, as I hope to distinguish them from<br />
systems of energy, are potentialities—a<br />
vexing terms that I will revisit at various<br />
points—perhaps flowing or trapped in a<br />
rock, perhaps gaseous and invisible, slippery<br />
and noxious, not yet rigidified forms of<br />
power” (Pinkus 2016, 1)<br />
(4) “…the changing states of the river play<br />
out in terms of history, class struggles,<br />
nationalism and modernization” (Goh<br />
<strong>2019</strong>, 254); referencing the research of<br />
Anne Redemacher on the Kathmandu<br />
river ecologies, Goh is arguing for an<br />
understanding of river ecologies as both<br />
biophysical and sociopolitical in nature.<br />
Similarly, the domestication of the Thames<br />
as a backdrop to London’s skyline should be<br />
understood as the product of a long history of<br />
imperialism; on the one hand, in terms of the<br />
management and redistribution of imported<br />
goods on its south-eastern shorelines; and<br />
on the other, in terms of embankments, such<br />
as Victoria Embankment, which activate the<br />
river as a background animation to London’s<br />
cultural landmarks.<br />
(5) …insofar as the tool is a tool it is quite<br />
invisible. And what makes it invisible is the<br />
way that this disappears in favor of some<br />
purpose that it serves…we generally notice<br />
equipment only when it somehow fails.”<br />
(Harman quoted in Gage, <strong>2019</strong>)<br />
(6) …David Harvey, Professor of<br />
Anthropology and Geography at CUNY, calls<br />
the city “the land of the spatio-temporal<br />
fix for the contradictions of capitalism”<br />
(Harvey quoted in Dawson, 2017). Namely,<br />
as production declines, the city shifts toward<br />
real-estate speculation as a means to grow<br />
via the high returns on investment in real<br />
estate. London’s waterfronts are prime<br />
territories for this “fix.”<br />
(7) Keller Easterling proposes “an economy<br />
where subtraction is the other half<br />
of building,” such that subtraction is<br />
transformed from a term, which connotes<br />
failure or loss to a term, which signifies<br />
exchange (Easterling, 2014, 2)<br />
in the transformation of London’s built environment. Erosion is commonly defined as<br />
a natural process whereby an entity is being eroded by wind, water or other natural<br />
agents. In the context of the Anthropocene, however, erosion is hardly a “natural”<br />
phenomenon; instead, it is the product of anthropogenic activities. This thesis defines<br />
erosion as the gradual removal of the man-made, permitting the resurgence of the<br />
non-human within the built environment; it argues that the built environment is full<br />
of erosive potentialities—objects, systems, and moments, which bear a capacity for<br />
erosion as a means to transform place in the face of surging seas.<br />
Subsequent chapters tell the psychogeography of a person living in a<br />
particular time, as a way to illuminate the layers of historical processes, which have<br />
led to the climate crisis as experienced today. This thesis explores the relationship<br />
between narrative and design; and then, between mapping and narrative. Beginning in<br />
2052, the reader is briefly transported to Post-Carbon London, where carbon-neutral<br />
technological solutions are failing to resolve the crisis. Then, it focuses on three time<br />
periods – 1870, 2020 and 2150, presented chronologically; the objective is to imply a<br />
longer time scale for the contemporary and future realities. 1870 suggests the onset<br />
of the carbon emission curve, which we continue to accelerate; 2020 is the moment of<br />
potentiality, where indecision and inaction will (and do) prove detrimental; and 2150,<br />
as the projected scenario of managed retreat. This thesis proposes a reality where<br />
the resiliency of London’s built environment is not predicated on defense. Instead, the<br />
built environment becomes a moment of exchange between man and the non-human;<br />
in this process, architecture and urbanity may be eroded, but their value multiplies as<br />
they become hosts to new habitats, human and non-human, both.<br />
(9)<br />
camilo vergara, “green ghettos”<br />
vacancy permitting the resurgence of the non-human<br />
(10) “…I come closer-to one of my most<br />
intimate utopian dreams, which is to find an<br />
architecture that does nothing. I’ve always<br />
been appalled that abstinence is the one part<br />
of the architectural repertoire that is never<br />
considered…there ought to be an equally<br />
important arm of it that is concerned with<br />
not doing anything” (Koolhaas and Otero-<br />
Pailos)<br />
011 012
a game of pick up sticks 2052<br />
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will<br />
be able to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”<br />
001<br />
– T.S. Eliot 11 (12)<br />
YOU LAND at the intersection of Jacob Street and George Row, just off of<br />
Bermondsey 12 Wall. 13<br />
The street is lined with compacted plastic in discolored blotches<br />
of pothole fill. You hop along the street, turning the post-carbon blemishes into a game<br />
of hotchpotch. Turning left onto Mill Street, 14 the compacted plastic grows vertical<br />
in the shape of street posts barring parking, street signs barring entry or formerly<br />
corroded wrought iron fencing. You turn right onto Jamaica Road; 15 glancing up at the<br />
fifty-foot building to your right, you see a swarm of industrial climbers, scaling the<br />
building, lowering what seem to be hundreds of treasure chests. Your eyes focus. Ah!<br />
They are HVAC units, sluggishly lowered from the building’s rooftop. You pause at the<br />
foot of St. Savior’s Dock 16 where the water is scraping the underside of the makeshift<br />
wooden pathway lining the building’s edge. The pathway is full of aluminum HVAC units<br />
sitting in purgatory; they are waiting for the next barge pick-up, which will relocate<br />
them from post-carbon London to carbon-filled Eastern Europe. 17<br />
You turn right onto<br />
Shad Thames. 18 The narrow alleyway is buzzing with men and women in utility clothes,<br />
mixing, scrubbing, painting; it’s post-carbon spring cleaning! The alleyway grows visibly<br />
brighter, smoother somehow. Each cavity is surgically cleaned, reducing the multitude<br />
of depths that otherwise sharpen the contrast of the environment. You turn left onto<br />
the stretch of Shad Thames that runs parallel to the River Thames. A gust of wind is<br />
quick to fill your eyes with dust from the mound of toxic paint chips and century-old<br />
dust. Quickly, you turn onto Curlew Street 19 and find refuge at Butler’s Wharf Pier. 20<br />
Bermondsey<br />
from Beormund, Anglo-Saxon lord of the<br />
district; ea or eye, an island; Beorm: Saxon<br />
for prince; mund security or peace<br />
“the prince’s security by the water’s side”<br />
or<br />
“a piece of firm land in a marsh” (Lambert)<br />
(13) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W<br />
(14) 51°30’04.4”N 0°04’16.5”W<br />
(15) 51°30’00.8”N 0°04’22.4”W<br />
(16) 51°30’01.6”N 0°04’25.1”W<br />
(17) “Last year, Bulgaria imported more<br />
than 100,000 second hand cars from EU<br />
countries, more than a third of which were<br />
grossly polluting diesels, according to clean<br />
mobility group Transport and Environment.”<br />
(Nasr 2018)<br />
(18) 51°30’02.5”N 0°04’25.5”W<br />
1870<br />
oil empire industry cholera toxicity<br />
002<br />
(19) 51°30’12.0”N 0°04’22.9”W<br />
USING the hydraulic elevator, you reach the wharf’s top story, overlooking<br />
the Thames. Your Apple Watch shoots up a vibration through the length of your<br />
arm. “IPCC Reports Proved Accurate.” You sit in the ghosted wharf, turned luxury<br />
apartment, flipping through heaps of IPCC reports on your Generation Post-Carbon<br />
(PC) smartphone; it is absolutely positively true -- temperatures have risen by 1.5<br />
degrees Celsius since pre-industrial levels, 0.2 degrees per decade as predicted.<br />
The use of “likely” has been redacted to “has in fact.” The cryosphere has in fact all<br />
but melted. The Earth has in fact become a heat island, in spite of every effort for<br />
economies to transition from carbon-intensive fuel sources.<br />
London has surrendered its attempt at installing living roofs, instead opting for<br />
cool roofs aimed at reflecting 90% of sunlight and alleviating the sweltering interiors of<br />
London’s ill adapted Victorian homes. HVAC systems hang over brick silhouettes like<br />
the scandent weeds of a post-carbon reality.<br />
The United Lagoon Kingdom has constructed levees, dams, barriers in an<br />
island-wide network of defense. The Game is played, over and over again. One would<br />
lower, another would lift in a Game of Pick Up Sticks whose objective is to add or<br />
subtract boundaries without disturbing the operations of the Capital. The Second<br />
Thames barrier lowers, initiating a chain reaction, whereby levees along the Thames<br />
Embankment rise to contain the incoming surge from the North Sea. Concrete bathtubs<br />
emerge from the riverbed, rising forty feet in a sea of high-rise storage tanks. The<br />
water still spills. Only elsewhere—along the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa<br />
to New Orleans, Louisiana; along the Java Sea in Jakarta, Indonesia; along the Ganges<br />
Delta in Bangladesh.<br />
(20) 51°30’12.8”N 0°04’21.7”W<br />
(21) “IPPCC’s mitigation targets assume<br />
that profits from fossil capitalism will be<br />
recycled into green technology rather than<br />
penthouse suites in soaring skyscrapers.”<br />
(119, Mike Davis)<br />
(22) Positivism Auguste Comte See Oreskes,<br />
Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2014. The<br />
Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from<br />
the Future. Columbia University Press.<br />
(23) See IPCC. 2018. Global Warming of 1.5°<br />
C. The IPCC was established in 1988<br />
(24) Glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice and<br />
permafrost<br />
(24) Design for London. 2008. “Living Roofs<br />
and Walls Technical Report: Supporting<br />
London Plan Policy.” London.<br />
(24) “Deadly flooding from heavy rains and<br />
snow melt continued to plague areas from<br />
Michigan to the South on Saturday. The<br />
Mississippi River ticked above levels reached<br />
in the historic 1993 flood in Davenport,<br />
Iowa, making it the highest level there in<br />
157 years.”<br />
013 014
capital of capital<br />
blackfriers railway bridge<br />
london bridge<br />
walworth<br />
london bridge<br />
st. saviours estate<br />
bermondsey<br />
tower bridge<br />
river thames<br />
“A stranger, standing on one of the wooden bridges thrown across this<br />
ditch in Mill Street, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side<br />
lowering, from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, and domestic<br />
utensils in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from<br />
these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment<br />
will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common<br />
to the backs of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from whence to look on<br />
the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out<br />
on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy,<br />
so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and<br />
squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out<br />
above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some of them have done;<br />
dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations—all these ornament the<br />
banks of Folly Ditch.”<br />
— Charles Dickens 25<br />
001<br />
OLIVER LANDS at the intersection of Jacob Street and Georges Row, just<br />
off of Bermondsey Wall. 26 He crosses the footbridge over Georges Row onto Jacob<br />
Street; midway through, he glances upon the still water beneath his feet, which looks<br />
like a rare marble stone of algae and surface run off. Jacob Street is lined in cobble<br />
stone, barely visible beneath a hefty layer of dirt. Oliver lowers himself to the ground,<br />
crouching over the dirt in an attempt to decipher the street’s horizon. The subsurface<br />
water is causing the street to settle unevenly, turning the street into an ever- shifting<br />
seabed. Oliver hops along the street, turning the cobble stone islands into a game<br />
of hotchpotch. He turns left onto Mill Street, 27 crossing over a centaur—half bridge,<br />
half street. The canal running parallel to Mill Street is being buried, in part by the<br />
demolition of the adjacent wooden galleries, whose rotten wood dissolves nearly<br />
instantaneously in the viscous substance, adding onto London’s clays. He turns right<br />
onto Thornton Street; 28<br />
glancing up at the fifty-foot wharves to his right, he sees<br />
windowless silhouettes, animated by the indiscriminate voices of hundreds of men.<br />
He pauses at the foot of St. Saviour’s Dock, 29 where the low skies spill into the city<br />
following the mud-lined path of the tributary. He turns right onto Shad Thames. 30<br />
The narrow alleyway is filled with wooden crates, which spill over from the adjacent<br />
wharves. Laborers toss burlap sacks of goods across the alley. Oliver runs beneath<br />
their arched throws and turns onto the stretch of Shad Thames that runs parallel to<br />
the River Thames. A carriage of goods nearly runs over his tiny body, barely visible in<br />
the cloud of black dust that fills the air. Quickly, he turns onto Curlew Street 31 and finds<br />
refuge at Butler’s Wharf Pier. 32<br />
(26) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W<br />
(27) 51°30’04.4”N 0°04’16.5”W<br />
(28) 51°30’00.8”N 0°04’22.4”W<br />
(29) 51°30’01.6”N 0°04’25.1”W<br />
(30) 51°30’02.5”N 0°04’25.5”W<br />
(31) 51°30’12.0”N 0°04’22.9”W<br />
(32) 51°30’12.8”N 0°04’21.7”W<br />
london’s geology, mylne, r.w. 1858<br />
https://www.crouchrarebooks.com/maps/view/mylnegeological-map-of-london<br />
Legends, Symbols<br />
Locations where water from the Thames<br />
becomes a valuable resource, as a transporter<br />
of goods, as a component in production, as a<br />
vessel for the treatment of goods.<br />
wharf<br />
factory<br />
tannery<br />
002<br />
OLIVER SITS in the corner, observing like an invisible presence on the shores<br />
of Bermondsey. A map sits atop a beat-up stool, anchored by a pair of charred logs,<br />
its edges fluttering in the wind. Hands reach over hands, drawing, smearing, marking,<br />
hatching. Heavy charcoal lines populate the would-be-white space in a seemingly<br />
illegible network. A bell rings once, then twice, signaling the 13:00 o’clock arrival time<br />
of the next ship. Water, the connective tissue of planet Earth, is organized via the<br />
logic of capital as an artery of a global network of exchange. Time is money; so, the<br />
015 016
hands pause momentarily, long enough to listen for a third bell, before they continue<br />
to demarcate ship routes along the earth’s waterways. The gestures are sprightly,<br />
visibly foreign to the shores of Bermondsey, which are filled with stillness in spite of<br />
its bustling warehouses. The air is motionless, thick with an amalgam of foul smells<br />
pressing down upon the streetscape. Warehouses have long outgrown the marshland,<br />
creating tall and narrow corridors, indistinguishable from the airless interiors of their<br />
surroundings. Each stands tall, like a brick silo lining the industrial waterfront; a building<br />
for the organization of imperialism.<br />
The men sit one on top of the other, their voices hardly distinct from one<br />
another, as they continue to debate distribution schedules. Schedule after schedule,<br />
wharf laborers rush to fulfill quixotic demands. Their bodies are pulled backwards,<br />
forwards, upward over footbridges through a dense substance they can hardly call air.<br />
Little distinguishes a wharf laborer from a Sherpa scaling the Himalayas.<br />
Fleets glide, first colonizing, then extracting before they retreat from offshore<br />
territories, circle the earth and land upon the Thames. The great schism meanders<br />
inland from the North Sea, bifurcating the metropolis into north and south. Every inch<br />
of its shores is lined with bollards onto which ships will imminently moor; in the brief<br />
moment they stand empty, wharf laborers sit atop their heads. Yet, the river ebbs and<br />
flows, ceaselessly ushering in vessels.<br />
the penang from west ferry road, national<br />
maritime museum london<br />
https://www.crouchrarebooks.com/maps/view/mylnehttp://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/<br />
ConMediaFile.4696/The-Penang-in-the-Britannia-Dry-<br />
Dock-Millwall.html<br />
003<br />
SPRINKLED with fragments of Roman Londinium, the northwestern<br />
topographical highland is the crowning jewel of the city, the land of the metropolis as<br />
imagined by thousands of countrymen, women and children migrating en masse from<br />
the English countryside. Every corner of the city beyond is a function of this highland,<br />
built to manage the northern reality. South London is the waste land of this horizon;<br />
the land for the production and redistribution of goods; the land of toxicity that is<br />
unwelcome within the visual field of the northwest.<br />
The universal solvent 33 swells, its molecules pulled upward by the strings of<br />
a cosmic gravitational force. The new moon rests silently above the stratocumulus<br />
clouds of South London, its force field withdrawing London’s water reservoirs from<br />
their internal world. Water inches along the gravel deposits lining the Thames Basin,<br />
fleetingly lifting the sediments before continuing its upward surge. Cautiously, in<br />
search of entry, it begins to meet edges between timber pilings and makeshift quays,<br />
land and water. The men rush in, climbing upward with as many crates of goods<br />
they can carry. Gradually, then all at once, its body spills over the haphazard web of<br />
dirt roads, cobblestone lined streets and patches of remnant fields, indiscriminately<br />
sweeping along the filth. The landscape of loose paper and dust sweeps inward in a<br />
pulpous mixture, turning encrusted streetscapes into mud. Knee-high, untraversable,<br />
disease ridden mud. Loose objects, some having lined the riverside wharves, others<br />
having drifted ashore, rush inward to create islands of stray wood, tea and spice.<br />
Laborers hang over warehouse apertures, hypnotized by the viscous substance,<br />
which stirs up the filth to reveal a new geological stratum. Oliver hangs alongside them<br />
watching as the firm land he landed upon is set in motion. The scars of industrialization<br />
meander inward, impersonating River Neckinger, once branching off of the Thames at<br />
St. Saviour’s Dock.<br />
the thames and tower bridge, albert kahn,<br />
1924<br />
https://vakin.livejournal.com/834469.html<br />
st. saviour’s dock, a.g. linney, 1930<br />
https://www.museumoflondonprints.com/<br />
image/374725/a-g-linney-st-saviours-dock-1930<br />
2020<br />
capital fuel defense impermeability preservation<br />
st. saviour’s dock, dockhead, 1983<br />
http://petermarshallphotos.co.uk/pics/34f35.jpg<br />
017 018
liquidity<br />
80,000<br />
75,000<br />
70,000<br />
65,000<br />
60,000<br />
55,000<br />
50,000<br />
45,000<br />
40,000<br />
35,000<br />
30,000<br />
25,000<br />
The city…does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand,<br />
written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the<br />
banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the<br />
flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”<br />
001<br />
— Italo Calvino 34 (34)<br />
SKYE LANDS at the intersection of Jacob Street and Georges Row, just off<br />
of Bermondsey Wall. 35 The street is lined in asphalt. Modified, but standing, the brick<br />
silhouettes of formerly industrial buildings fill the street with clay off tones. Black,<br />
damp-proofing paint lines the first thirty courses of brick, a vertical extension of the<br />
bitumen that covers the streets. Every ten feet, the brick course is interrupted by<br />
a corrugated plastic weep hole or vent. Turning left onto Mill Street, Sky glances up<br />
at the 180-foot Vogans Mill Wharf, a former silo, turned luxury apartments, which<br />
towers over its surroundings; its white, lace stucco finish is starkly contrasted against<br />
the earthy tones of its neighbors. The stucco’s ridges have already turned off-white as<br />
footprints of pollutive activity. Skye turns right onto Jamaica Road. The wind picks up,<br />
the only indication of the river’s proximity. She walks along toward the Shard, the only<br />
glass skyscraper along the southern shoreline. She leans over the wall at the foot of<br />
St. Saviour’s Dock 36<br />
mesmerized by the glistening mud beneath. A fluorescent traffic<br />
cone sits lightly atop an island of clay. There is no traffic. Wood piles line the shores of<br />
each building, their color progressing in a patchy gradient from heavily soaked brown<br />
to algae green, inching upward in independent streaks, which follow along the wood’s<br />
grain. Skye turns right onto Shad Thames. 37 The alleyway is quiet. The footbridges<br />
stand still. Skye walks with neck outstretched toward the sun; it’s a futile gesture<br />
considering the sun reaches halfway through the fifty-foot building before being<br />
replaced by its heavy shadow. Skye turns left onto the stretch of Shad Thames that<br />
runs parallel to River Thames. The entrance to Butler’s Wharf is on right.<br />
002<br />
The “divorce between appearance<br />
and performance…keeps the illusion of<br />
architecture intact, while surrendering<br />
wholeheartedly to the needs of the<br />
metropolis” (Koolhaas and Mau, 1998, 937)<br />
The building typology of Bermondsey is<br />
sufficient to tell of the borough’s history, as<br />
well as hint at the socio-economic status of<br />
its current residents. The warehouse building<br />
type, comprising of tall, brick structures<br />
with arched openings; the iron ornaments<br />
on the façades; the iron hooks; the signage<br />
in latex, reading “Butler’s Wharf,” etc. are all<br />
recognizable symbols of an industrial past.<br />
The restoration of these emblems is a<br />
form of restorative nostalgia—which<br />
stresses “nostos and proposes to rebuild<br />
the lost home and patch up the memory<br />
gaps” (Boym, 2010, 41).; in restoring the<br />
architectural emblems of colonial activity,<br />
they become an aesthetic tool for the sale<br />
of luxury apartments. Thus, the borough<br />
relegates its past as an actor within the<br />
imperial network.<br />
This expression of restorative nostalgia<br />
bears a significant energy cost. Specifically,<br />
aerial views reveal the extensive HVAC<br />
systems, which adorn the rooftops of these<br />
grade II listed buildings. Jorge Otero-Pailos<br />
says, “while it’s important to continue to<br />
care for built heritage and art, we also have<br />
to recognize that what we’ve been caring<br />
for is pollution…pollution is our cultural<br />
heritage” (Otero-Pailos quoted in Raskin).<br />
Analogously, what we’ve been caring for<br />
along the shore of Bermondsey is carbon.<br />
75,000<br />
70,000<br />
65,000<br />
60,000<br />
55,000<br />
50,000<br />
45,000<br />
40,000<br />
35,000<br />
30,000<br />
25,000<br />
Atlas of Erosive Potentialities 1’ = 20,000’ N<br />
atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
2020<br />
20,000<br />
15,000<br />
10,000<br />
5,000<br />
0<br />
20,000<br />
15,000<br />
10,000<br />
5,000<br />
0<br />
THE GATE RISES in a seamless rotation from the underbelly of the riverbed<br />
to a cross-section in the water. On a clear day, when the barrier rises for its monthly<br />
maintenance, the water remains visibly undisturbed, though Skye is well-aware its<br />
natural ebb and flow come to an engineered stop.<br />
Looking out from the balcony atop Butler’s Wharf shortly after four o’clock,<br />
Skye watched the ever-murky water of the Thames oscillate against the embankment<br />
in conflicting sinusoidal motion. The water crawled up the masonry, inching toward<br />
its smooth edge. This was day seventeen in the barrier’s battle against the relentless<br />
offense of England’s increasingly volatile climate. Water came from all directions as<br />
rainwater battered stone, brick, shingle indiscriminately. Sewage gargled through<br />
gridded manholes, always on the brink of spilling over. London was enshrouded by<br />
thick mist, denying the city its horizon.<br />
The international face mist market had taken a hit in recent months as the<br />
dry, chill winters of the European northwest were replaced by a perpetual wetness.<br />
Londoners had gone on to schedule daily rituals—vigilantly observing the river for<br />
signs of the barrier’s performance, while simultaneously offering their melanindeprived<br />
faces to the bottomless sky. Even if imperceptible to the eye, sunlight was<br />
out there, they thought. And they were calling it forth.<br />
Skye exhaled a full lung capacity’s worth of cigarette smoke as the water<br />
aerial view of butler’s wharf showing systems<br />
google earth<br />
(35) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W<br />
(36) 51°30’01.6”N 0°04’25.1”W<br />
(37) 51°30’02.5”N 0°04’25.5”W<br />
019 020
leveled. Her break was over. She paced her day around the tide times, updated hourly<br />
via her Apple Watch’s tidal forecast; the watch overlays data from the Environment<br />
Agency to notify its users of imminent barrier closures. The great river had become<br />
the metronome to Skye’s anxiety. She now scheduled daily breaks to coincide with the<br />
water’s volatility, ensuring that she had taken up post at the balcony in observance of<br />
the barrier’s liftoff. Hypnotized by the water’s score against the embankment, Skye<br />
watched the building’s reflection in the water as the rain battered its body. Her focus<br />
broke as dusk hit London. The nautical ship lights came alight, illuminating the iron<br />
footbridges that stretch between Butler’s Wharf and Cardamom Building, a spice<br />
warehouse turned luxury housing. A recent addition to the “maritime industrial”<br />
theme of Bermondsey, the lights signaled the sun’s fall beneath the ghostly horizon.<br />
Skye collected a handful of soaked cigarette buds, a daily measure of her anxiety, and<br />
headed for the sixth-floor footbridge to Cardamom.<br />
003<br />
BUTLER’S WHARF, an eleven-acre site, thrones the southeast edge of the<br />
Thames. Skye manages the cleaning services of a number of waterfront properties in<br />
St. Saviour’s Estate as a way to maintain watchful eye of the river. She spends the day<br />
traversing the borough, shifting perspectives from the footbridge of at St. Saviour’s<br />
Dock to the balcony of a half-a-million-pound property overlooking the Thames.<br />
The river’s periodic withdrawal fills Skye with dread, a cue for the not too distant<br />
memory of her childhood on Canvey Island—a town that suffered the loss of more<br />
than fifty in the 1953 North Sea Storm. Skye’s grandfather told the story year<br />
after year as a cautionary tale. Other children learned to play along the twenty-two<br />
kilometer stretch of concrete built in defense of the island. Skye took on the role of<br />
coast guard and hasn’t left it since.<br />
st. saviour’s dock <strong>2019</strong>, personal photograph<br />
st. saviour’s dock <strong>2019</strong>, personal photograph<br />
2150<br />
erosion resurgence retreat<br />
021 022
erosive potentialities<br />
“I am not proposing a return to the Stone Age. My intent is not reactionary,<br />
nor even conservative, but simply subversive. It seems that the utopian<br />
imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human<br />
population. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.”<br />
001<br />
atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
2150<br />
RAVEN lands at the intersection of Jacob Street and Georges Row, just off of<br />
Bermondsey Wall. 39 The street is lined with dense clumps of moss, enfolding every<br />
harsh edge. Compacted plastic protrusions are disguised beneath the soft, lush<br />
flowerless plant. Raven dips to the ground, running her hands along the tips of the<br />
urban carpet. Barefoot, she walks along Jacob Street with arms extended to the touch<br />
of soft bulbs along buildings’ façades. 40 The weep holes ooze with moisture. Turning left<br />
onto Mill Street, Raven hears a burble, the murmur of a nearby stream; it’s otherwise<br />
deadly quiet. Looking up at Vogans Mill Wharf, she pauses beneath its green-veined<br />
silhouette. The stucco’s ridges have been reabsorbed, filled with seedlings, in an<br />
equitable exchange of value. 41<br />
Raven turns right onto Jamaica Road. The road’s<br />
sidewalks have been transformed into suspended pathways, whose undersides scrape<br />
the surface of River Neckinger, a tributary of River Thames long buried as a sewer<br />
line. The river has been undergoing daylighting for a hundred years, its ecosystem<br />
now nearly restored. Bioswales line the tributary bed, cleansing the water from urban<br />
runoff. Children dangle their feet over the water, while others frolic in the water’s<br />
shallow ends. Raven walks along the pathway, hopping onto the bouldered “sidewalk”<br />
when passersby are one too many. The shard continues to glisten in the distance, still<br />
the only glass skyscraper on the southern shoreline; an orienteer among the lagoons<br />
that render former axes inaccessible. Raven leans over the railing at St. Saviour’s Dock<br />
where the flow is still sluggish, but grasses have overgrown the clay and weathered<br />
rubble. The woodpiles are all but rotten, compost for the clay strata that lies beneath.<br />
The Dock is now a green artery, which terminates at the river. Raven is eager to follow<br />
it, so she turns right onto Shad Thames. The alleyway is paved in the green carpet,<br />
only thicker. Her feet disappear among patches of spongy moss. On the right, the<br />
former garage doors have been stripped away by corrosion, creating an aperture onto<br />
the green artery. A light breeze circulates through and onto the alley. The alleyway is<br />
quiet, only home to a couple dozen. Raven turns left onto the stretch of Shad Thames<br />
that runs parallel to River Thames. The footbridges are swarming with residents,<br />
enjoying the coolness of the stream that runs just below. Raven meets the edge of the<br />
stream, so turns to enter Butler’s Wharf through the ghosted apertures of its ground<br />
story.<br />
002<br />
THE GROUND is moist; silt meanders spill from the pier into the interior<br />
through an aperture where a floor-to-ceiling storefront window once hung. Twisting<br />
and turning, the silt deposits demarcate a one-to-one circulation plan of the ground<br />
floor; like tactile paving, they gather where the ground meets the edges of stairwells<br />
and apertures. Raven walks along the ridges until she meets the split-level stairwell.<br />
Looking down, the water fills the basement; it reaches halfway through the industrial<br />
staircase before the steps are overgrown by Nostoc commune. 42<br />
Raven walks up<br />
instead, leaving the habitat undisturbed.<br />
The steps are dense with ivy, the walls are textured. Plantings have latched onto<br />
the crevices at different times, turning the walls into temporal strata. On the second<br />
story, live music filters through the corridor, whose end is open to the elements, letting<br />
– Ursula K. Le Guin 38 (38) Le Guin quoted in Tsing, 2016<br />
(39) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W<br />
(40) David Gissen says, “Nothing is inherently<br />
subnatural in architecture; rather, these<br />
forms arise from a particular set of social<br />
and architectural practices” (Gissen,<br />
2009, 22). London is already host to an<br />
abundance of subnatures—the conditions<br />
that architecture tries to eradicate: dust,<br />
dankness, mud, debris. Gissen continues on<br />
to point out that the restoration of nature<br />
in the shape of green building is a means<br />
to “re-establish a specific class-based idea<br />
of the city” where the comforting forms of<br />
nature—controlled, manicured, maintained<br />
by anyone but the user of a space—go onto<br />
reinforce existing social power dynamics<br />
(Gissen, 24).<br />
I argue that the acceptance of subnatures<br />
in contemporary lived experience can be a<br />
means to undermine the power dynamics<br />
along the shores of Bermondsey. Further,<br />
by relinquishing a degree of control over<br />
the environment, we can begin to see the<br />
externalities of our way of life in visible,<br />
concrete terms through the kinds of<br />
subnatural growths and conditions that<br />
human activity produces.<br />
(41) “…a kind of “collaborative survival”<br />
(Tsing 2015)<br />
(42) Nostoc commune is a cyanobacteria.<br />
“A special thick-walled cell has the ability<br />
to withstand desiccation for long periods of<br />
time…[it] germinates into a filament when<br />
moistened.” (Encyclopedia Britannica).<br />
023 024
the current of the midsummer breeze circulate through. Suddenly, a cacophony of<br />
laughter and applause fills the space, a sign of habitation that Raven has eagerly been<br />
keeping an ear out for. A flock of artists fills the floor of Block 2B. 43<br />
Raven glances into<br />
each room, a stage for each artist. The artist in 2B-3 let the moss completely overgrow<br />
into a variable backdrop to her performative art. The moss dries out when storms<br />
subside, only to be reawakened as soon as they intensify. Yet, 2B-4 is hermetically<br />
sealed by a pneumatic structure, a light, translucent membrane of compressed air,<br />
which isolates the artist’s studio from the elements. Spilling out through the windows,<br />
the assembly registers on the façade like two bulbous heads. 2B-5 has begun the<br />
process of retreat, leaving behind only that, which can be reabsorbed into nature.<br />
Sketches flutter along the walls, a gallery to a process of discovery and growth,<br />
ushering its viewers to embark on it too. To let go.<br />
Raven continues on her journey upward; along the corridors, which feel like<br />
miniature streets, capturing a publicness 44 that she so rarely feels in the streets of<br />
north London. The air is filled with acceptance of nature’s resurgence, as inhabitants<br />
move out and onto London’s Green Belt. Nature is the landlord, and it’s time to obey<br />
her.<br />
(43) Heilgemeir 2013<br />
artists at butler’s wharf, 1980s, fran cottell<br />
https://archivesoftheartistled.org/projects/butlers-wharf<br />
003<br />
LOOKING OUT from atop the rooftop of Butler’s Wharf shortly after four<br />
o’clock, Raven looked down onto meanders of dust and debris, silt and moss. Piles<br />
of rubble line River Neckinger waiting to be scooped up by the next barge and<br />
relocated to the banks of resurgent tributaries. Eroded land reveals non-operational<br />
subsurface piping, absorbed into the Neckinger riparian zone. 45 The ruin of capitalism<br />
is enshrouded in vegetation, transformed into a favorable riverside habitat; at the<br />
next turn, the network of pipes mutates into a playground, connecting the otherwise<br />
disjointed lagoons of Bermondsey.<br />
Atop the rooftop, Raven sits on an old HVAC unit. Someone laid a wooden plank on<br />
top of it, turning it into a haphazard rooftop bench. The roof is a field of HVAC units,<br />
which sit quietly for once. Most are enveloped by moss or topped by sprouts like grass<br />
heads. Artefacts of the Carbon Age—chimneys, exhausts, HVACs—have been stripped<br />
of their toxicity and left standing as monuments to the age of untethered growth.<br />
The remnants of the Anthropocene are monuments, absorbed into their locality, as<br />
opposed to termed obsolete and transposed to a faraway island of toxicity. Compacted<br />
plastic tetrapods line buildings’ foundations, as pacemakers of the erosive process;<br />
waste is no longer disposable, but an authority which determines the durability of a<br />
said reality. These crude habitats 46 are part of the collective memory; externalities,<br />
which have been internalized into the lived experience.<br />
artist’s studio butler’s wharf, 1980s, fran cottell<br />
https://archivesoftheartistled.org/projects/butlers-wharf<br />
(44) “…the public space is a place in which<br />
there is a momentary condition of equality.<br />
At some point in the future, many overused<br />
cities will have to be reconstructed” (Sassen<br />
quoted in Lim 2017, 77)<br />
(45) interface between land and river<br />
(46) https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/<br />
crude-habitat/<br />
appendix a: atlas of erosive potentialities, 2150<br />
025 026
30,000<br />
25,000<br />
20,000<br />
30,000<br />
25,000<br />
20,000<br />
15,000<br />
15,000<br />
10,000<br />
10,000<br />
5,000<br />
0<br />
ft<br />
ft<br />
30,000 25,000<br />
20,000<br />
15,000<br />
10,000<br />
5,000<br />
0 ft<br />
5,000<br />
0<br />
green space<br />
water<br />
ft<br />
ft<br />
30,000 25,000<br />
20,000<br />
15,000<br />
10,000<br />
5,000<br />
0 ft<br />
flooded building footprints<br />
atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
2150<br />
atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
2150<br />
027 028
pleistocene<br />
10,000<br />
anthropocene<br />
8,750<br />
anthropocene<br />
holocene<br />
7,500<br />
holocene<br />
5,000<br />
3,750<br />
2,500<br />
1,250<br />
0<br />
pleistocene<br />
10,000<br />
8,750<br />
7,500<br />
5,000<br />
3,750<br />
2,500<br />
1,250 0<br />
ft<br />
2150<br />
029 030
031 032
ibliography<br />
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jstor.org/stable/41765719.<br />
(2) Ballard, J.G. 1981. The Drowned World. Dragon’s Dream.<br />
(3) Barton, Nicholas, and Stephen Myers. 2016. The Lost Rivers of London. Historical Publications.<br />
(4) Baxter, Alan. 2011. “Lower Thames Floodplain,” no. January: 86–89.<br />
(5) Dawson, Ashley. 2017. Extreme Cities. Verso.<br />
(6) Design for London. 2008. “Living Roofs and Walls Technical Report: Supporting London Plan Policy.” London.<br />
(7) Dickens, Charles. 1839. “The Pursuit and Escape.” In Oliver Twist, 238–40. Oxford University.<br />
(8) Easterling, Keller. 2014. Substraction. Edited by Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen. Sternberg Press.<br />
(9) Eliot, T.S. 1968. Four Quartets. Mariner <strong>Book</strong>s.<br />
(10) Gage, Mark Foster. <strong>2019</strong>. “Killing Simplicity : Object-Oriented Philosophy In Architecture.” Log Winter 201 (33):<br />
95–106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43630853.<br />
(11) Ghosin, Rania, and El Hadi Jazairy. n.d. Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment. Actar Publishers.<br />
(12) Gibson, William. 2014. The Peripheral. Penguin UK.<br />
(13) Gissen, David. 2009. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments. Princeton Architecttural Press.<br />
(14) Goh, Kian. <strong>2019</strong>. “URBAN WATERSCAPES : The Hydro-Politics of Flooding in a Sinking City,” 250–72. https://doi.<br />
org/10.1111/1468-2427.12756.<br />
(15) Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso <strong>Book</strong>s.<br />
(16) Heilgemeir, Michael. 2013. “Archives of the Artist-Led: Butler’s Wharf.” The Nomadic Studio - Art, Life and the Colo<br />
-nisation of Meanwhile Space. 2013. https://archivesoftheartistled.org/projects/butlers-wharf.<br />
(17) IPCC. 2018. Global Warming of 1.5° C.<br />
(18) Koolhaas, Rem, and Jorge Otero-Pailos. 2014. Preservation Is Overtaking Us. Edited by Jordan Carver. GSAPP<br />
BOOKS. https://www.arch.columbia.edu/books/reader/6-preservation-is-overtaking-us.<br />
(19) Lim, CJ. 2017. Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science Fiction or Urban Future? Routledge.<br />
(20) Lim, CJ, and Ed Liu. 2011. Short Stories: London in Two-and-a-Half Dimensions. Routledge.<br />
(21) London, Mayor of. 2015. “London’s Response to Climate Change.” London.<br />
(22) Lynch, Kevin. 1972. What Time Is This Place? MIT Press.<br />
(23) McHarg, Ian L. 1971. Design with Nature. American Museum of Natural History.<br />
(24) Moore, Rowan. 2014. “London Is Being Transformed with 230 Towers. Why the Lack of Consultation?” The Guard<br />
-ian. 2014.<br />
(25) Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. 1993. On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. MIT Press.<br />
(26) Nasr, Joseph. 2018. “Don’t Export Old Diesels to Eastern Europe, EU Warns German Carmakers.” Reuters, 2018.<br />
(27) Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Columbia<br />
University Press.<br />
(28) Osman, Michael. <strong>2019</strong>. “Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments, <strong>Book</strong> Review.”<br />
(29) Otero-Pailos, Jorge. 2006. “Creative Agents.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory and<br />
Criticism 3 (1): ii–vii.<br />
(30) Parikka, Jussi. 2016. A Geology of Media. University of Minnesota Press.<br />
(31) Pinkus, Karen. 2016. Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary. University of Minnesota Press.<br />
(32) Pupp, Martin, Alex Bystram, Kim Bondi, Peter Emerson, and Sherri Rufh. 2018.<br />
(33) Sinking Cities. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/films/sinking-cities/.<br />
(34) Raskin, Laura. 2011. “Jorge Otero-Pailos and the Ethics of Preservation.” Places Journal. https://placesjournal.org/<br />
article/jorge-otero-pailos-and-the-ethics-of-preservation/?cn-reloaded=1.<br />
(35) Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2017. New York 2140. Hachette UK.<br />
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-ence/Nostoc.<br />
(37) Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. “Enabling Entanglements.” In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possi<br />
-bility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.<br />
(38) Walford, Edward. 1878. “Bermondsey: Tooley Street.” In Old and New London: Volume 6, 100–117. London: Cassell,<br />
Petter & Galpin.<br />
033
atlas of erosive potentialities<br />
URBAN narratives in the face of surging seas<br />
an honors thesis in architecture<br />
by maria v diavolova<br />
university of pennsylvania<br />
college of arts and science