Model: Making con't. part deux

Hallo. I have new photos of the 'model for washing contaminated soil and excavating hidden artifacts'.

What's new?

I have installed the plexiglass container on a table in studio. It is hooked up to the water circulation system: Water comes into the model over two slate tiles, and it exits at the other end through valves. Both the output and input water is served from glass fish tank next to the container.



I have glued the foundation pieces inside the plexiglass container, and covered them with a wet clay.





I have suspended a camera and two lights above the table. The camera is fixed into a cradle that is held up by a plank of wood spanning between two beams in the ceiling grid. The plank platform is a central space for hooking-up all my electrical devices from a power source in the grid, and away from the water! I can also use the plank later on to install a projector, or any other devices that may come into play with the model's development.



About photographing the model.

I have begun to take timed lapsed pictures of the model in plan view. The camera I installed in the cradle is hooked up to my computer and by way of a a software program, I can continuously record the model, adjust the camera's settings, image quality, etc... With the photographic data, I may create a video of the models progress, and, later on, project onto the model a video of what it once was.

Model: Making con't.

Please see below recent photos of the model making process.

Model template -
The files were drawn up on the 'puter
then sent to the milling machine for
cutting.




Framing the Plexiglass Box - 1/3

Framing the Plexiglass Box - 2/3

Framing the Plexiglass Box - 3/3

Interior View of Plexiglass Box.
I have also sealed the interior joints
with a bead of silicone to make the
frame watertight. I have nightmares
that it might explode when it is full of
water.




Sanding the clay model:

Sanding Detail



Coating the clay pieces with shlack:
this will make them waterproof.

Model: Re-excavating A Section Of The Site: Testing The Soil Remediation Process

Can the soil remediation process be a way to make sense of the cultural artifacts hidden within the toxic soil? I believe it can. Soil washing can be an alternative form for removing the earth around the hidden artifacts. By running water continuously over the ground, solid earth turns into sludge, the landscape begins to move, and artifacts formerly underground become distinct materials punctuating the fluid wetland around it. As the next stages of the soil remediation process come into play - screening the soil for large objects and then introducing bacteria to "bio-remediate" the carcinogens contaminating the sludge - the foundations of former factories are used for situating the mechanics used to proceed with the remediation process.

I have begun to make a model of this process, by taking the area where the Glenora Mill foundation have been excavated on the Pointe-des-Seigneurs. This documented excavation site is the only ones I have found, and it clearly show the scale and details of the artifacts. In my model they are still undergroud, awaiting to be releaved by soil washing.

Soil Remediation by Soil Washing. And Site Topography

I propose to design a building to remediate the Pointe-des-Seigneurs’ toxic landscape, by literally washing away the contaminants. A new industrial building is situated at the canal’s edge by the St. Gabriel locks and diverts water onto the site, enabling new forms of interaction between the canal, the landscape including the previously buried artifacts, and the participants of the park space. The environmental impact of the program enables new residents and visitors to regain a technological experience of landscape and building.

Soil washing and soil flushing are two techniques for soil remediation using water moved by gravity to pull out contaminants. As water infiltrates the landscape, the ground becomes more liquid, and distinguishes itself from the material artifacts that it previously encased. Newfound building foundations become point of contact between the central building and the site for incorporating the additional program required to complete the remediation process. This alternative form of excavation reactivates the material artifacts of the site. The hydro powered central building, like the canal, will reach across the landscape, and reposition the boundaries between the canal and the landscape as it processes the layers of history through its clean up. This program creates an environmental economy for the city that re-uses the technology of the site.

What would happen if the site were flooded with water from the canal? By drawing out the site's topography I can start to form an answer. Although it is hard to perceive the site's various level changes, when I have visited the site, the drawing gives an more in depth account of the highs, and lows of the terrain. I have superimposed the topographic map on top of the political map to blur the distinction between the federal and municipal plans for site development.



1




2 & 3


4

Images:
1. Map describing known contaminated sites on the Pointe-des-Seigneurs and around the St. Gabriel Locks. The yellow area is federal land, and the red blue area is municipal land.
2. Drawing out the site's topography.
3. Detail of the drawing above.
4. Topographic map of the site. Between the canal and adjacent landscape, the characteristics of the canal level changes are extreme and rigid compared to the more subtle, and winding changes in elevation of the landscape around it.

Gregory - Term 1 Portfolio

Port Doc 34X11

Publish at Scribd or explore others: General Technology soft architecture interactivity

Recalling: Politcs of site, politics of water

LEGEND:

blue fill: canal Lachine, managed by Parks Canada, Federal Government
green fill: land managed by Parks Canada, Federal Government
red fill: Pont-des-Seigneurs, what we see
red outline: Pont-des-Seigneurs historic site, managed by the City of Montreal
red outline dash: proposed and enlarged boundaries of the Pont-des-Seigneurs historic site, to include the waterways.

Sketching, Making and Re-thinking the model

I HAVE THE IDEA that the model should 'be there' throughout the making of the project, the thesis. So I am projecting. I imagine the model in its final stages, as if I know already what it is I am going to make. The model is not only a big piece of something, it is also performing, doing things. It is testing out experiments, playing with the parts of itself in its context, testing limits. The model is an interactive tool for determining the form, the program, the questions, the next set of problems I face by making something on the Pont-des-Seigneurs. Jumping ahead: sketches of the model have me thinking about all of its the components. Which are the ones I could make, need to make, can't make...just yet. I have begun to make the big parts of the model: the silicone canal systems, three in total (1825 is submerged into 1848 because nothing is added or taken away), but next to that are questions about what else needs to figured out. It's not possible to embed (nor does it make sense) the wiring in the silicone. And then the question of how to suspend or lift this water tank off the ground? And then, there are the questions I hadn't thought of yet, such as, how to charge the water with an electric current?





Above: Sketches
Below: Photos of the clay models of the canal systems at three stages of development: the present (top) 1909 (middle) and 1848 (bottom). Below these are photos of the clay "under wraps", keeping 'em moist.









Working in the sensor lab with Elio has helped to explain some questions I had about making the model. But it has also triggered new questions, and problems. And it turns out, these problems are more interesting than the ones I had set out to solve.

Below: Sketches of how to detail water and power connections into the silicone mold. There is a photo of the female connection for power supply. Below that I photograph testing the resistant of water charged with an electric current. The resistance of the water is at about 25%, and the number doesn't change if I run a current through small or large quantities of water. That's good news.

Modeling the Canal System: Test Un

TODAY, I made a test model of the canal system in 3D using clay and silicon. There are two parts to the model: a positive mold and a negative mold. I want to make a negative mold that can carry water (like the canal!): it should be elastic, somewhat clear, and able to withstand heat (steam?). The positive mold is made out of clay. I use clay because it enables me to cast a positive which is water soluble. This is necessary for removing the positive mold after the negative is cast all around it (like taking out a 'crunchy candy bar' from out of its delicious chocolate shell without damaging the shell, except at its ends). The negative mold is made from silicone. I am testing this to find out. Other materials I thought of using but nixed included balloon rubber, a latex material. It has greater elastic properties than silicon, which could prove advantageous. But it wears down very easily.







Top: Making the clay positive. A section from the 1:1000 scale drawing of the canal. Behind it stands one of the two jugs of silicon mixes; the two part mixture is easy to handle, and sets in about one half hour.

Middle: Covering the positive with the silicon. I use a spatula to spread the silicon over the clay. Several layers can be added through the curing process. I can even embed 'stuff' into the silicon, or draw on it too, with magic marker. I have spread the silicon in uneven layers, a way to test different thickness properties.

Bottom: The clay and the silicone have now been separated. Also, a photo of a spritzer, one of my favorite modeling tools.

Drawing and Sounding Out

Above: Axonometric drawing of the canal system eminating from the Lachine Canal and coursing through the site. There are four drawings in total, scale 1:250; one for each of the four different phases of canal construction at the Pont-des-Seigneur & Ecluses Saint-Gabriel. Next I layer the drawings one ontop of the other to make a fifth drawing of the canal system, one which collapses all of the canal systems into one system. The drawing, like the landscape, becomes a palimpsest. The drawings demonstrate the volume of the canal, and gives a offers glimpses of the shape of the landscape above it. The drawing also becomes the basis for making a model of the canal system. This, I plan to make in such a way that I can recreated the flow of water through the site.

Below: Making a contact mic: sound as another way to disclose the buried canal system.

Pont-des-Seigneurs: the Canal System: le site GBR

THE SITE IS THE CANAL LACHINE at the Pont-des-Seigneurs & l'Ecluse Saint Gabriel. A bit of background: The Canal Lachine, after it opened in 1825, transformed the St. Lawrence River from a natural waterway into a hybrid technical and natural infrastructure. Before 1821 the site of this hybridization was the Lachine Rapids. It stretched fourteen kilometers, dropped over fourteen meters and for over two hundred years blocked the continuous transit of ships traveling from the Atlantic Ocean up the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and back. Prior to the transformation of the rapids into a canal, all cargo had to be transferred from the vessels to ground transportation at one end of the rapids, brought over the land before being reloaded onto new ships on the smoother surface above or below the rapids. The city of Montreal, the former industrial and economic centre of the nation, owes its history to this transit obstacle. After 1825, the four years of construction to transform the rapids into a neat plumbing system enabled the city to expand and extend outwards into the young Dominion and further across the Atlantic Oceans in ways previously not possible without the control over the waterways.