Territories of Flux
GSD_DECUNHA
Scale: Global
1. The Inhabitable Volume
The Earth is a finite sphere defined by the amount of particles it can hold to its center, each layer compressing the one beneath it. The surface we inhabit transforms into a volume as we build up, out, and sometimes, down, over land and one day, sea. How we build increases in ecological impact in proportion to our population, as we slowly fill up this inhabitable volume.
Take the world and divide it into tenths, taking 3 of the slices to form an arc that signifies the sum of land on earth. Then divide that 30% into tenths again, to show the 95% of the population that aggregate on just 1/10 of the land surface available, in comparison to the 4/10ths dedicated to agriculture, or the 43% of land that is populated in total. This curved surface is placed in vertical context; the centerline that bisects the arc is drawn to scale. The distance from the center of the earth to the bottom of the arc signifies the surface of the Earth, shown at the depth of the Mariana Trench. The mirrored arc above begins atop Mt. Everest, and the vertical line continues to travel through the stratosphere all the way out to the exosphere. That tiny sliver between two arcs shows the spatial volume that humans can naturally inhabit, to scale. As that volume is expanded towards the sides, we see all that is contained within that sliver, and that it is volumetric rather than merely surficial area.
2. Transforming Density and Materiality
To show human impact, building materials are mapped by density over time, graded concentrically from the core of the Earth, and travel temporally counterclockwise. Natural materials are gridded and isolated, drawn out by humans, altered and brought to the surface to build our civilizations. As we build, we change our materials; we make them denser and lay them on the surface of the Earth in opposition to the natural layering of densities, thus altering the permeability of the crust and disrupting the flow of water.
The density of the Earth decreases as we move concentrically outward, until reaching one at sea level. The years begin on the left and travel counter clockwise, changing from BC to AD at the base, and reaching present day at the top. As humans learn to build with various materials, those material densities are connected to the correlating core density location, making it clear where the material could have settled naturally. As we proceed with building our civilizations, we learn to use increasing amounts of dense material, settling them on top of the Earth’s crust. This reconfiguration of density is a way to consider the weight of humanity on the Earth. This diagram is also keyed to my partners’ projects through materials found in Mexico City, and Toledo, Ohio.
Dení López, Mexico City Through Time
In the plots of Mexico City and Toledo, Ohio, both the city and region are the result of the vivid and insistent cultural imaginations of its conquerors and inhabitants as they separated water from the land. Our project questions the predominance of land over water in telling the story of a place, tracing the process and ultimate crisis by which settlement has drawn boundaries, distinguished, channelized, and extracted water apart from the idea of ‘wetness’ in the landscape as a resource.
Ruth Chang, Toledo (Ohio) Through Time