Southern Italy is dotted with hulking aqueducts that went out of service years ago. In an attempt to find a new use for the structures in lieu of tearing it down, the government held a competition. One of the winning designs will blow your mind.
Rocks mined from the seafloor have been confirmed as a viable source for rare earth metals, and thus a tiny piece of the ocean might soon find its way into a cell phone or computer chipboard near you. The finding, published in the April 2014 issue of Applied Geochemistry, all but guarantees a new round of focus on overcoming the challenges—both industrial and environmental—of extracting mineral riches from the ocean depths.
The always interesting urban exploration crew at Trackrunners have assembled all of their various trips down beneath the streets of Barcelona into one long super-post, an epic catalog of all things lost and subterranean in that Spanish coastal city.
More people have committed suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge than on any other structure in the world—someone jumps from the bridge to their death about every two weeks. But those figures could be dramatically reduced if a proposed suicide-prevention barrier is installed later this year, as advocates hope.
Urine trouble, Portland. Thirty-eight million gallons of treated, ready-to-drink water will be flushed into the Columbia River after a teenager peed in a city reservoir.
The electricity that powers San Francisco’s streetlights, schools, and international airport begins as a torrent of water inside—of all places—the supposed natural sanctuary that is Yosemite National Park. A century ago, a pristine valley was sacrificed so that San Francisco could continue to exist.
This building vaguely shaped like a jack is actually a proposed transportation hub and residential complex for the New York borough of Queens. Perched above the 7 subway line, the spiky structure would combine a spiraling internal concourse with conveniently shaded yet sunlit apartments. [designboom]
We’ve all heard of the lengths to which NYC’s homeless have gone to find shelter, from living in abandoned factories to building whole encampments inside subway tunnels. But a report from the New York Post goes one step further, describing how people are now making homes out of small nooks and crannies between the Manhattan Bridge’s steel platforms.
What an awesome way to end a book: literally in the last paragraph, Michael Lewis’s excellent Flash Boys drops a weird infrastructural mystery—and this gives away no spoilers—right when you were ready to turn out the light and go to sleep. But there, in the final six sentences, Lewis lights a fire.
For a global society highly dependent on complex technical, economic, and political systems, we manage to carry on our daily routines largely unaware of the hard and soft infrastructure—from pipes to policies—on which these systems rest. That is, until unexpected events, so-called black swans, illuminate the previously hidden pieces and surprise or unsettle us by their presence and function.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
