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On architecture and urbanism, curated by Sasha Cisar.

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A Rogue State Along Two Rivers: ISIS

The New York Times have published two great satellite images of the Tigris and Euphrates to illustrate the "Rogue State Along Two Rivers" of ISIS:

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Russia’s buildup on the Ukraine border

via Washington Post, related article.

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Natural Ressources and the Crimea Conflict III

After the previous two posts exploring the geopolitical reasoning and ramifications behind the Crimea annexation by Russia, the Washington Post has no produced an own map illustrating the resource rich region.

via: Washington Post.

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Natural Resources and the Crimea Conflict II

Follow up on the previous post on 'Natural Resources and the Crimea Conflict' regarding the potential role of fossil fuels and recent exploration of the coast of the Crimea in the Ukraine crisis.

A Forbes article discusses the national security implications regarding recent shale (gas/oil) production that lead to an unexpected fossil fuel wealth of availability in the US and decreased dependence of imports from the middle east and other areas of conflict. The article quotes a "report from the Center for a New American Security (“CNAS”), entitled Energy Rush: Shale Production and U.S. National Security, which argues that America should deploy its new oil and natural gas resources to give the country more political clout."

Why is this relevant? Because of the potential proximity of the report's author to the Obama Administration:

This is a remarkably prescient stance in light of Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Then again, the report, published February 6, is not the work of some lunatic fringe group that deserves an eye roll and consignment in the special circular file. The author of the report is Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Obama Administration official. Rosenberg served as senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes, then the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Further, the arm of CNAS that published the report is co-chaired by Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, Governor Bill Richardson, and Senator John Warner.

Furthermore:

Rosenberg argues that the rallying cry of energy independence is over-simplistic and even self-defeating in terms of America’s national security and economic interests. She says we will fumble America’s new energy supply abundance into a national security and economic missed opportunity if we squirrel away our oil and gas and become energy isolationists. The best way of shoring up America’s energy security is by using our newfound abundance to widen global access to our friends of sufficient, affordable energy supplies in order to fuel world economic growth and secure policy outcomes to America’s advantage.

The article continues to put these 'petrochemical diplomacy' into the context of recent developments:

Domestic production of light crude has allowed America to slash its imports from the Middle East and Africa. Consequently, Middle Eastern oil is finding new customers in the East. At the same time, increased production of non-associated natural gas has raised the prospect of a genuinely global market, which has led to a weakening of the relationship between oil and gas prices, or “oil indexation.” This has the potential to bring about a “sea change” for import-dependent gas consumers like Japan and Western Europe by lowering their energy costs and unshackling them from gas monopolies—like the Russian behemoth Gazprom, which has never been shy of using its natural resource as a geopolitical weapon to advance Russia’s interests.

The article's author now hyperbally asks what "(...) should America do?" Only to excerpt from the report that the USA should "(...)celebrate its energy  abundance and secure advantage with it, particularly in regards to national security." The report reads:

To achieve strategic and political aims with regard to adversarial petro-state actors, the United States can highlight poor fiscal management in these states and adopt punitive, coercive measures, such as energy sanctions, to exacerbate their economic problems and popular dissent. Additions to the oil market supply, including the U.S. boom, help to moderate prices, which makes such strategies relatively easy to pursue for the United States and other affected parties. In these market conditions, petro-states gain less revenue and face increased challenges in fiscal management and political stability. Coercive influence is the strategy of choice with regard to Iran and can be used in other contexts to compel reform or political reorientation in adversarial petro-states.

Now what would be the consequences of thisnational security strategy? Washington could "strategically use its energy resources to support its allies—and bring its enemies to heel—in conflict situations." If needed the USA could "(...) release strategic petroleum reserves (...)", "(...) a mighty arsenal, where petroleum can be released or withheld at will, would reassure our allies and deter our adversaries."

Now what about Russia and the Ukraine? Senator Lisa Murkowski sounded the call at her recent opening keynote address last week at CERAWeek in Houston, suggesting that Washington had underexploited the potential for energy exports within its foreign policy. If we stopped dithering over LNG export approvals and brought our gas to market, Kiev may worry less about the Kremlin turning off the taps, she argued. The EU has also been pushing for closer energy ties with the U.S. as part of the transatlantic trade and investment partnership that Brussels hopes to sign with Washington this year. Events in Crimea are a powerful incentive for President Obama’s Administration to meet these demands.

Senior U.S. diplomat Richard Haass echoed Murkowski. He told the audience at CERAWeek that an acceleration of U.S. LNG and crude oil exports could represent one of Washington’s most valuable deterrents to the Russian bear. He said that the government was looking to expand its ability to export crude and to increase the number of countries that receive our gas exports.

The initial discussion of climate change, the potential turn away from fossil fuels to renewable energy was faced with a real shale boom in the USA in the recent years. Obviously the decreasing dependence from conflict zones and their fossil fuel exports is a positive aspect in terms of national security. One of the major problematics regarding a position by Germany and the EU of condemning Russia's incursion into the Crimea has also to be seen in the relationship of gas imports from Russia. At the same time is Russia depended on oil and gas sales to sustain it's military and also a specific price, to maintain a balanced budged. If the oil and gas prices plumet, Russia is bound to make significant losses in face of an already weak economy. Considering above, the article finally closes:

Think about it: America could have enhanced influence and greater power without building a single new ship or training more armed forces. What an idea— fracture a well and bring a soldier home. Perhaps Bismarck was wrong, after all.

[“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions … but by iron and blood,”  stated Otto von Bismarck in 1862.]

Further reference:

Fig 1.: See also my recent attempt at mapping some of the geopolitical factors in regard to the crisis in the Ukraine:

Fig 2.-7.: Diagrams excerpted from the above mentioned report Energy Rush: Shale Production and U.S. National Security (PDF):

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Natural Resources and the Crimea Conflict

As it seems behind the veil and after some consideration that there might be additional reasons for Russia occupying the Crimea beyond securing their only warm-sea ports, hence the existence of their entire Blacksea-fleet and Russian speaking population of alleged encroachment.

The Black Sea and its surroundings are full of natural resources and just last year the Ukrainian government was tendering explorations for fossil fuels (gas and oil) some 80km off of the Crimean coast. Plans that would have slightly rectified Ukraine's dependence from Russian oil and gas imports. If you recall said imports caused an international stir after Russia claimed the Ukraine had not paid their 'gas bill' and turned off access to it. Eventually a deal was signed by Timochenko to secure further flow and resolve said issue. The very same deal eventually led to the arrest and charge of Timochenko after she did not carry any political office. Her imprisonment was only recently lifted after the recent (revolutionary) events at the Maidan in Kiev.

Availability of maps is crucial but also difficult on this issue. The first (fig. 1 via) map shows a rough overview of oil and gas fields in the Ukraine as well as pipelines running through the country (mainly originating from Russia). The main gas fields in the Ukraine are to be found in the eastern Ukraine and around the Crimea (also see fig. 2). The second map (fig. 2 via) shows the gas and oil fields outside Crimea's coast. 

Fig 1.

Fig 2.

An article in Business Week now describes exactly the current situation: 

Without Crimea, Ukraine looks set to lose an important piece of its economic and energy future: valuable undersea oil and gas fields that lie just offshore the Crimean peninsula. Exploiting those Black Sea fields could help reduce Ukraine’s dependence on Russian gas imports.

And Big Oil had been interested: Before the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine was on the verge of signing a deal with a group, including Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B), that was prepared to spend $735 million to drill two wells off Crimea’s southwest coast. “Exxon and Shell are now in a legal limbo,” Chris Weafer of Moscow investment group Macro Advisory told Bloomberg News. If Crimea votes in a March 16 referendum to secede from Ukraine, the government in Kiev “may soon no longer have jurisdiction over the region.”

The so-called Skifska area that Exxon and Shell want to develop is part of an undersea field that extends westward along the Black Sea coastline to Romania. Within the area now under Ukrainian jurisdiction, however, “the most interesting exploration areas are all effectively [under] Crimean waters,” says Julian Lee, an analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London. Losing control of those areas “would be a significant loss for Ukraine.”

Meanwhile ENI, the italian petroleum giant is also affected by the current situation, argues the following:

Italian energy group Eni (ENI:IM), which last year reached an agreement to explore off Crimea’s eastern coastline, says it doesn’t know how the crisis might affect its plans. “We wait to see if the situation gets normal, and then I would certainly get back in touch with the new authority there,” Eni Chief Executive Officer Paolo Scaroni told CNN in an interview last week. “We have been living through changing of governments in many countries in our life.”

See here ENI's press note on the production agreement with the Ukrainian government of last year: Link.

Another article in Bloomberg describes the connections and ramifications also for American petroleum companies involved. Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell planned on investing some "$735 million drilling two wells about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the region’s southwest coast."

Exxon sought the rights to drill the Skifska license off Ukraine after discovering the Domino field in 2012 in neighboring Romania, a find large enough to offer that country the prospect of becoming a gas exporter. Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Andrew Swiger said in an investor presentation last week it still remains interested in getting permission to explore off Ukraine.

Aslo Bloomberg notes the effect of the crisis on the potential of the Ukraine becoming more independent of Russia's exports. 

For the government in Kiev, offshore exploration is part of a strategy to wean itself off gas imports from Russia, which supplies more than 50 percent of Ukraine’s fuel. It also signed shale-gas exploration deals with Shell and Chevron Corp. and has worked to reduce consumption.

The referendum’s other option, to increase Crimea’s autonomy while remaining a part of Ukraine, could also inject uncertainty into Black Sea oil and gas rights, according to Richard Mallinson, a London-based geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects.

Bloomberg further complied a list comparing the recent efforts of the Black Sea to the North Sea, where countries like Norway, the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Germany have extracted oil and gas for decades:

The push to drill the waters off Crimea was part of a wider campaign to explore for oil and gas in the Black Sea, where fewer than 100 wells have been drilled, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with more than 7,000 in the North Sea.

Compared to Business Week's estimation of the potential significance of the Crimea offshore endeavours:

Ukraine has estimated that oil and gas production from Skifska, along with another Crimean offshore area known as Foros, could reach the energy equivalent of up to 7 million tons of oil annually. That’s less than 10 percent of the oil and gas Norway extracts annually from beneath the North Sea. Still, it totals about 20 percent of Ukraine’s current annual gas imports, which come mainly from Russia and have been a longstanding source of friction between the two countries.

Further references: 

http://www.energy-pedia.com/country.aspx?country=221

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GIFs Show Cities Passing From Day to Night

Mesmerizing GIFs Show Cities Passing From Day to Night

Each vertex and frame in the images represents a single moment in time at the same location, taken between a four-hour period around sunset.

via: Fong Qi Wei | WIRED.com

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Submarine Cable Map

This map shows the world's submarine cable network.

via: http://submarine-cable-map-2014.telegeography.com/

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The curator of  Pavilion of Switzerland at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia – Hans Ulrich Obrist and the swiss arts council Pro Helvetia have announced their programming of the swiss pavillion:

Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price  – A stroll through a fun palace

In collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron, Atelier Bow-Wow, Lorenza Baroncelli, Stefano Boeri, Eleanor Bron, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Dan Graham, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Samantha Hardingham, Koo Jeong-a, Philippe Parreno, Asad Raza, Tino Sehgal, Mirko Zardini, and others 

Obrist revists recent retrospectives of Lucious Burckhardt and Cedric Price reflecting its future of the 21st century. An archive of drawings should represent the two protagonists' and visionaries' work. 

On the two protagonists:

Lucius Burckhardt was a Swiss political economist, sociologist, art historian and planning theorist, known as founding father of ‘strollology’ – his science of the walk. He pioneered an interdisciplinary analysis of man-made environments, discussing both the visible and invisible aspects of our cities, landscapes, political processes and social relations, as well as the long-term effects of design and planning decisions. 

Cedric Price was guided by a fundamental belief that architecture must ‘enable people to think the unthinkable’. His project Fun Palace (1960–61), conceived as a ‘laboratory of fun’ and ‘university of the streets’, though never realised, established him as one of the UK’s most innovative and thought-provoking architects. 

On the exhibition content:

Following their revolutionary teaching methods, Obrist's Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price – A stroll through a fun palace radically re-approaches the idea of the national pavilion, reconceiving it as a site for cross-disciplinary, interactive, international engagement. Acknowledging that it is not possible to present the complex practices of Burckhardt and Price through a static display of drawings, Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price – A stroll through a fun palace aims for visitors to encounter the architects’ archives performatively. The display on Lucius Burckhardt is co-curated by architects Herzog & de Meuron, in collaboration with the Lucius & Annemarie Burckhardt Foundation and Martin Schmitz Verlag, whilst the temporary archive of Cedric Price is co-curated by Mirko Zardini, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). To present the temporary archives, Herzog & de Meuron have devised a site-specific system located in the graphic room of the Swiss Pavilion, aiming to create a new system of knowledge and ideas. Visible through the glass walls but not accessible to the public, it is to be conceived as an object on display. 

"Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price – A stroll through a fun palace" should serve as an architectural school under the leadership of Italian architect Stefano Boeri with Lorenza Baroncelli and  Pierpaolo Tamburelli. 

Atelier Bow-Wow will turn the courtyard of the Swiss Pavilion into a contemporary learning space inspired by the flexibility and innovation of Price’s airy structures, in which mobile furniture units will enable students and visitors to turn the space into an auditorium, library or studio as directed by their needs. Students are encouraged to consider the future of architecture through an engagement with Burckhardt's and Price's works and to question the current infrastructures for the production of knowledge within architectural institutions.

Following the last Biennale's example, the Salon Suisse a parallel programme of events and discussions is continued:

‘Salon Suisse’: a platform for lively international exchange This year’s talks and events programme ‘Salon Suisse’, entitled The next 100 years – Scenarios for an Alpine City State, taking place at the Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi for the third time, will be curated by Zurich-based architects and urbanists Hiromi Hosoya and Markus Schaefer. 

via:

http://www.biennials.ch/home/Press.aspx

http://www.biennials.ch/download/PagePartFiles/fp_1463_140305_e_mm_pavilion_of_switzerland_at_the_14th_international_architecture_exhibition_-_la_biennale_di_venezia.pdf

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(via http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=wQwUOaecR6U&u=/watch?v=_P9HqHVPeik&feature=share)

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© Jenny Odell

http://www.jennyodell.com/satellite-landscapes.html

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expansion of NATO vs. shrinking of Post-Soviet Russia, pre 1989/1990 and post 1990, spheres of influence and according territory.

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An attempt at a geopolitical map regarding current issues and Russia. Oil-/Gas connections to the west, main trading partners of Russia (Import/Export), expansion of NATO vs. shrinking of Post-Soviet Russia, naval bases in relation to cold/warm waters.

Attention: Map is 'beta', minor errors included.

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Fabricate2014

Some images of the recent exhibition during the Fabricate2014 conference of student work throughout the years at the dFab (Digitale Fabrikation / digital fabrication) laboratory of Gramazio Kohler at the Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA), Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich.

http://www.fabricate2014.org/

Images © by Sasha Cisar, first published on http://instagram.com/scisar

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Urban Canopy © by Sasha Cisar 

http://cisar.ch/

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A Platform for Research

This Blog is intended to be as a research platform for a small project upon the subject of informal urbanism. This increasingly important and vastly growing field within architecture and urbanism has seen many different voices in recent years describing strategies, interventions and sometimes purely phenomenological accounts of what nowadays - the umbrella term - the informal is or could be about. While maintaing the persepctive of an architect and urbanist, informal urbanism's scope are the urban poor, the cities' slums and an urbanism that is sometimes illegal and was not planned in any way, but happened gradually, driven by locals - bottom up.

This description should not be judged in terms of true and correct, but is rather a first attempt at grasping a definition of informal urbanism. Examples there are plenty, as there are people researching them, but what should not be forgotten is, that often informal urbanism discusses what at it's basic core are people in dire conditions, thus research and results not only should aspire the inclusion of spatial factors, but also social and political.

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