Underground Storage of Thesis Projects

Hacking big ice boxes is tougher than expected.  Two maneuvers are of worth consideration for this thesis.  

First, despite the explicit rules imposed by a storage facility for tight efficiencies of space, every site and architecture must have unexpected consequences or byproducts as a result of these rules.  After all, no generated spreadsheet for the planning of a new storage facility can possibly account for every cost or benefit. At best, these logistical regimes default to coping mechanisms of categorically placing these very unknown variables in insurance terms of "contingencies" or "acts of god".  The small details that are left out of this planning equation is where architect as hacker needs to be looking at closely.

As of now, byproducts that are worth considering at the architectural level:

• Emissions from the mechanical systems that support the temperature controlled rooms
• Accumulations that are brought to the site via trucking and rail.
• Impervious surfaces and drainage of phosphorus.

Second, the code for formatting the spatial development of storage facilities resides in the faulty language of bureaucratic planning documents.  Again, its rule making explicitness is prescribed in quantitative measures of x-feet above, below, or back from the street.  This logic is buried in the bureaucratic pages of planning documents but inevitably physically manifests in the forms of setbacks and property lines  staked into the ground.  The legal loopholes of the language needs to be hacked, then a demonstration of the set of hacking tactics needs to be demonstrated (Alex Lehnerer's Grand Urban Rules or Sub Plan).

Underground Storage

Meanwhile, the default mode of hacking projects resort to program.  The legacy of Dutch architects have taught us that its the program stupid!  Tongue-in-cheek as these projects maybe, these projects have been successful in repurposing, infilling, and retrofitting of depleted or used up post-industrial sites seems to be in vogue.  Pertaining to the thesis at hand are underground storage facilities cropping up in old limestone mines.  The melting waters of ice age past and the coursing water of the Missouri set the stage for productive industrial sites of extraction.  The activity continues, but not of the same intensity nor of the same locale.  Its productive work resides in the network of gravel pits that pave way for the expanding suburban streets.  The old sites of extraction becomes a relic of Fordist economies.  In this case, the functional repurposing of a site of extraction into one of conveyance and accumulation of goods 

Docking Area

Springfield Underground

If the thesis project was to employ the same kind of program centric tactic, it would look like the following equation:  

Intermodal Distribution Center in Cold Commodities + ___(x-plus)                         

                                                                                              education                     

                                                                                          __tourism                         

                                                                                              shopping/dinning         

                                                                                          _  recreation                     

                                                                                          __hotel   _____________

All of the above mentioned x-plus that the supposed architect as agent brings to the table are tinged with a consumer culture of fetishizing the box.  NeoMarxist critiques are powerful and hard to escape, something I don't think you can totally escape from, but if this thesis really is going to consider combining the topic of health, it needs to be worry about health becoming a derivative for a fast-serving IKEA of Health and Personal Health products and services on full spectacle.  

Offices

This thesis project acknowledge program as a method, but aspires to hack without having to solely resort to such means. 

Working Project Titles:

Cold Empires
The Cold Chain Complex

Cold Chain Complex
ProtoPharmopia
Pharmopia
Pharmoplis

Pharmacopic Follies

Pharmacopic Post

Mall Medica
Medi-log
Meditopia
Mecha-Medilistics
Mega Medical Stop

Mega Medical Exchange

Medi-Mart

Mega-Mini Mart

Medical Mechanica

MechaPharm
MechaPharm Logistics
Mecha-Medi-Mart

The Medi-market exchange

Medica's
Medilistic's

Guns-Meds-Foods
The Cold Zone

Health Zone
The Ice Stop

The Health Stop
The Health Exchange