96
interfacing/enveloping
Landslide Event Morphologies
Slope Morphologies
Settlement at base of unstable slope
Dwellings along endangered coastal edge
Multiple settlements weakening fragile slope
Loads from new fill and housing atop steep slope reactivates an ancient landslide feature
Landslide hazards interacting with statically conceived buildings reveal both a crisis and potential for future development.
“Landslides and other ‘ground failures’ cost more lives and money each year than all other natural disasters combined, and their incidence appears to be rising. Nevertheless, the government devotes few resources to their study—and the foolhardy continue to build and live in places likely to be consumed one day by avalanches of mud.” —Brenda Bell, The Atlantic Monthly (Jan. 1999)
Precarious relationships between human occupation and geophysical metamorphism are a common occurrence along coastal areas of Los Angeles County. The architecture of this region is a perpetual game of chance between tranquil domesticity and the risk of its tragic upheaval. A network of soil stabilizing housing units is proposed within the fragile sub-strata of the Rancho de Palos Verde community. The area is the site of an ancient landslide condition that was reactivated by the development of poorly conceived housing communities in the 1950s. A new network of housing serves to mitigate future catastrophic events, salvage a currently unbuildable landscape, and evolve an architectural vernacular of dwelling within tight topographic conditions. Grounding is a prototypical dwelling type that employs existing technologies to stabilize steep slopes, such as soil nails and helical piles, but adapts these into a “stitched” foundation system that allows a home to be tethered to its site rather than rigidly fixed to a ground condition. The new homes do not function as stand alone objects, but as above ground indicators and monitoring points for a continuous geo-textile grafted within the slope. Rather than the typical hard approach to a retaining structure in which the designed system either remains stable or fails catastrophically, this new system allows for a gradual transformation within the landscape while simultaneously slowing down and counteracting the sudden hazardous effects of soil movement. Like lighthouses perched along the edge of a shoreline as an orientation and warning device, these new grounding devices are positioned along threatened slope contours to act as safeguards for the community. Further, they become indicative instrument that behaviorally convey information on the geological and hydrological processes occurring below grade. Since soil movement Winchester
Grounding