The nature of mass transportation develops patterns and geometries unlike anything else in urban, suburban and rural environments. Today’s blog post takes a look at the patterns of large scale transportation via our “scape” series. These aren’t just photos of highway spaghetti, but rather the register of mass transportation -in some situations concrete isn’t even involved.

Los Angeles, CA 33°52’33.63″N, 118°11’28.75″W

Border between US and Mexico 32°32’31.14″N, 117° 1’43.42″W

Seattle, WA 47°35’37.76″N, 122°19’10.70″W

Manhatten, NY 40°45’25.64″N, 73°59’40.12″W

Houston, TX 29°45’59.00″N, 95°20’35.97″W

Libya, Appears to be mining operations 27°37’57.41″N, 21°16’11.26″E

Libya, Appears to be mining operations 28° 8’30.61″N, 21°13’51.63″E

Tokyo, 35°38’14.88″N, 139°45’27.78″E

Los Angeles, CA 33°55’41.61″N, 118°16’42.40″W

Berlin, 52°30’5.17″N, 13°16’49.51″E

Algeria, 27° 8’58.86″N, 2°31’45.15″E

Baltimore, Maryland 39°16’13.83″N, 76°37’38.86″W

Paris, 48°52’25.80″N, 2°17’44.14″E

San Antonio, TX 29°23’44.77″N, 98°30’39.01″W

Algeria, 28° 5’54.55″N, 2° 4’15.31″E

Minneapolis, 44°58’3.45″N, 93°15’4.56″W

Bejing, 39°59’23.44″N, 116°31’54.21″E

Bergen, Norway 60°23’2.83″N, 5°20’9.07″E

Iowa, 42° 3’48.62″N, 93°18’31.71″W

Los Angeles, CA 34° 9’12.64″N, 118°22’29.70″W

Peru, 7°25’22.20″S, 78° 7’12.37″W

In our ongoing Google Earth series the Borderscapes theme covers some fascinating interfaces between built-form and nature.  The plan view images of earth, captured from space, are becoming increasing indicative of how human-made landscapes are integrating (or not integrating) with natural contexts.  The images, while only a snapshot of each occurrence, also begin to convey whether the development strategies are mindful or viral.

Farms in the United Arab Emerites at 10.5 miles

Battleship Graveyard in Benicia, CA at 6,000 ft

Jetties in San Lucido, Italy at 3,500 ft

Crater in San Salvador, Paraguay at 2,000 ft

Central Park in Manhattan at 1,500 ft

Florida Keys at 1,500 ft

Suburb in Muscoy, CA at 1,500 ft

Suburb in Palm Springs, CA at 1,500 ft

Suburbs in Salt Lake City, UT at 1,500 ft

Suburb in San Jose, CA at 1,500 ft

Umm-Durrman, Sudan at 1,500 ft

Windfarm in Copenhagen, Denmark at 1,500 ft

Swimming pool in Colares, Portugal at 400 ft

Leca swimming pools by Alvaro Siza in Portugal at 250 ft

Google Earth is now available for the iPhone – check it out here or app it on your iPhone.

Although not technically architecture, these images have some architectural qualities and make a strong visual statement about agriculture, economics and how societies function.  In gathering information for a recent post on the density of cities we stumbled on a handful of fascinating agricultural landscapes and we couldn’t help but make correlations between the two.  It brought to mind some of the literature from the late author Jane Jacobs, who made significant observations about the relationship of cities and their agricultural counterparts.  As always, we’ve attempted to crop the images at common elevations for comparison sake – it was a bit more difficult with these landscapes, they are subsequently separated into three elevation groups.  That the agricultural patterns are visualized at such different elevations says something about the nature of these farms and the economies the exist within.  The intimacy and close relationship with the land is clear in the 7,000 ft series, while the volume and industrialized methods are apparent in the 50,000 ft series.  Let us know about your faves…

Nahalal, Isreal 7,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

250 miles north of Shanghai, China 7,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.

Mexico City, Mexico, Fields contained within a crater 7,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

150 miles North of New Delhi, India, Terraced Farms 7,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania 15,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

The Netherlands 15,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

40 miles North of London 15,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

Bangkok, Thailand 15,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

The Nile River, 300 miles South of Cairo 15,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

Quincy, Washington State 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

The Palouse near Pullman, Washington State 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

250 miles south of Buenos Aires Argentina 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

90 miles west of Wichita, Kansas 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

150 miles east of Denver, Colorado 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

The Netherlands 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

180 miles west of Winnipeg, Canada 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface

Same farm-scape at 7,000 ft. It appears as if the farmers have farmed around the thousands of tiny lakes throughout the landscape.

All images gathered via Google Earth, for the free download click here.

Doing research for our previous Google-Earth themed posts (Dwelling-Scapes and Building-Scapes) we began noticing some interesting deviations in the urban fabric of cities. Where there is density and grid, inevitably, there is also the divergence from both. We’ve tracked down a number of examples that document the anomaly of the dense, urban grid. These pattern changes become the open spaces, the parks, plazas and public realms. The images have all been taken at 3,000 feet above the Earth’s surface and have been cropped to show a square of 1,700 feet horizontally and vertically for comparison purposes. Let us know about your favs out there…

Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain

Dam Square, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Soccer Field, Maputo, Mozamique

Kongens Nytorv (King’s Square), Copenhagen, Denmark

Parking Lot, Tetouan, Morocco

Cuzco Plaza, Cuzco, Peru

Broadway, New York City, USA

Townhall Center, Hamburg, Germany

Park, Seoul, South Korea

Open space, Nairobi, Kenya

Piazza Dante, Naples, Italy

Neighborhood, Mexico City, Mexico (Not really and opening but it appears to be a previous lake re-appropriated as housing and subsequently establishing it’s own exception to the gird around it.)

Allee Paul Riquet, Beziers, France

City Center, Viacha, Bolivia

Duomo di Milano, Milan, Italy

Cathedral Basilica de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Parque de la Pera, Lima, Peru

The post we did using Google Earth last week was a lot of fun so we thought we’d do another one with a different angle. This week’s theme focuses on buildings so enormous that the roof structures create landscapes in and of themselves. Once again, Google-Earth is so overwhelming that we needed some rules:

1. The buildings must be conditioned space (heated/cooled) thereby excluded many structures like bridges and open air stadiums.
2. Completed photos of the buildings must be available, which made it interesting because some amazing structures like the Dubai Tower are almost complete at 159 floors and must look amazing from space but Google’s images of the area are more than three years old and only show the first several floors of the tower.
3. Each image is taken at an elevation of 7,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.
4. Each image is cropped to show a 2 mile x 2 mile swatch; the images are all at the same scale for comparison.

Kicking it off is the largest usable space in the world; right here in our own backyard is the Boeing Plant in Everett, Washington, USA: 398,000 m² (4.3 million sq ft) 13.3 million m³ (470 million cu ft). Take the Boeing Plant Tour next time you’re in the neighborhood.

Aerium Brandenburg in Germany: 70,000 m² (753,000 sq ft) 5.2 million m³ (184 million cu ft). Originally constructed as the assembly area for a giant airship which was never built.

Aalsmeer Flower Auction in Aalsmeer, The Netherlands: 990,000 m² (10.6 million sq ft). Is it odd to anyone else that the 2nd largest building in the world is just a really big flower shop?

The Pentagon in Arlington County, USA: 610,000 m² (6.6 million sq ft)

Hong Kong International Airport in China: 564,000 m² (6.1 million sq ft)

Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania: 330,000 m² (3.6 million sq ft)

Bannister Federal Complex in Kansas City, USA: 290,000 m² (3.1 million sq ft)

The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire is the largest church in the world: 30,000 m² (323,000 sq ft)

The Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, India is the largest presidential residence in the world: 19,000 m² (200,000 sq ft)

Kansai International Airport Terminal in Osaka, Japan is the longest building in the world: 1,700 m (5,580 ft)

The Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria is the longest residential building in the world: 1,100 m (3,610 ft)

King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: 225,000 m² (738,188 sq ft)

For more check out Wikipedia’s list…

There are only 3 things in the world cooler than modern architecture: Legos, Steak Frites and Google Earth. We try and work Legos in wherever we can and this isn’t a food blog so that leaves us with Google Earth for today’s entry. We’ve rounded up a series of images on Google Earth displaying patterns of human habitation from around the globe – or Dwelling-Scapes if you’ll allow us to fabricate an architecty term. “But are the images all at the same scale so that we can compare and contrast?” – you ask. You bet they are, we didn’t buy Photoshop just to dinker around with finished photos of hot modern homes. Collecting images from Google-Earth can be overwhelming so we gave ourselves a few stipulations:

1. The images focus on practical, utilitarian forms of habitation (beat-it St. Peter’s Piazza)
2. The forms of habitation are in use today (86 Pompeii).
3. Each image is taken at an elevation of 2,500 feet above the Earth’s surface.
4. Each image is cropped to show a ½ mile x ½ mile swatch or 2,640 feet square (a 6.46 inch square crop in photo shop for the mathematically inclined).

Here’s what we came up with:

Broendby, Copenhagen

Levittown, New York, U.S.A.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Celebration, Florida, U.S.A.

Sea Ranch, California, U.S.A.

Venice, Italy

New Delhi, India

Palm Springs, California, U.S.A.

Nairobi (Kibera slum), Kenya

Antigua, Guatemala

Mexico City, Mexico

Naples, Italy

Reykjavik, Iceland

Caracas, Venezuela

Casablanca, Morocco

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Nuuk, Greenland

New York City (West Village), New York, U.S.A.

Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.