Alaskan Culture- Ididarod 2010!

Hoopla ends, and race to Nome begins

By RINDI WHITE
rwhite@adn.com

Published: March 7th, 2010 11:36 PM
Last Modified: March 8th, 2010 08:33 AM

WILLOW -- The race has started for real.

On a gorgeous, sunny day in front of a big fur-clad crowd, Iditarod mushers headed off down the trail Sunday on their 1,000-mile journey to Nome.

They will battle weather, trail conditions and competitors. With enough stamina, smarts, preparation and luck, they'll make it to the finish line in good time.

Veteran musher Linwood Fiedler of Willow was the first out at 2 p.m., heading across frozen Willow Lake to the cheers of supporters and neighbors celebrating the hometown contender.

For the next 2 1/2 hours, teams left every two minutes, the order determined by a random drawing last week. Last out: Judy Currier of Fairbanks, running in her fifth Iditarod.

The 71 mushers are competing this year for a $561,000 purse, down roughly $52,000 from last year. It includes $50,000 to first-place.

A few inches of fresh snow overnight softened the packed trail for the first stretch but racers have a long journey ahead.

Trail crews reported windy sections, and Iron Dog riders who rode the route two weeks ago said some sections, including the Farewell Burn, on the other side of the Alaska Range about 200 miles from Willow, were devoid of snow.

Zack Steer, owner of Sheep Mountain Lodge, is racing his sixth Iditarod after having a very competitive fourth-place finish in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest this year. He said he's not concerned about the Burn or trail conditions in general.

"Snow is a luxury for dog mushing," Steer said.

Steer, a self-proclaimed competitive recreational musher whose best Iditarod finish was third place in 2008, said he's racing with the most experienced dog team he's ever had. Half were on the Quest trail with him last month. The other half are Iditarod veterans.

They're experienced, but Steer said he's not sure they're the fastest team he's ever raced.

"It's not always the fastest team that wins the race," he said, adding that the team that makes the fewest mistakes and has the most luck often comes out on top.

'WE'LL DEAL WITH IT'

Trail conditions got a collective shrug from several other top-10 finishers.

"I have seen it pretty awful-looking before. We'll deal with it," said Sebastian Schnuelle, last year's second-place finisher.

"I don't want it to be easy. It (the difficult parts of the trail) separates people," he said.

Schnuelle said he hopes to wrap up his Iditarod career with a win. The German racer who now hails from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, has sold most of the dogs in his lot and says he plans to get back into sailing after finishing this year's race.

In the half hour before the race, Schnuelle squatted beside his sled and poured powdered vitamin additive into bottles of water to keep him hydrated on the trail. Asked if the vitamins were his secret weapon, Schnuelle said they aren't -- caffeine is.

His sled bag loaded and dogs getting a few last minutes of rest in their boxes, four-time Iditarod champion Martin Buser reclined on the padded seat of his sled and joked with friends and well-wishers.

Buser said he hopes to make a new race record this year. The Big Lake resident holds the record for fastest Iditarod finish, in eight days, 22 hours and 46 minutes. He said he's going into this race with a "renewed attitude." He's gone back to old training habits, he said, abandoning training tips he had adapted from other mushers.

Just down from Buser's corner of the musher preparation area, fans outside the musher pit were shouting "We love you Lance!" and clamoring to get their photo taken with the Iditarod's biggest star these days. Lance Mackey entertained an Asian media crew, signed arm bands, jackets and backpacks for fans and posed for dozens of photos.

It's a big shift from four years ago, when many Iditarod fans didn't even know his name, he said.

Mackey said his fans identify with his story, overcoming throat cancer and coming back stronger than ever to win the brutal race, not once but three times in a row, and in the process becoming the first musher ever to win both the Yukon Quest and Iditarod in the same year.

"I have a fan club like no other, and that makes it real easy for me to go around and sign things and take pictures with people," he said.

"MIND OVER MATTER"

Mackey might have a rival for the most heart-stirring story on the trail this year. Musher Pat Moon, 33, of Chicago, Ill., is taking a break from chemotherapy treatments to live out his longtime dream of racing in the Iditarod.

Moon has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer, and also ulcerative colitis, which causes inflammation of the colon. His wife, Melanie Moon, said she struggled with her husband's decision to run the race.

"I want him to get better. But he's very much a mind-over-matter guy, and this has helped him stay strong," she said.

After riding in Steve Madsen's sled as an Iditarider in 2006, Moon said his dog addiction was cemented. He trained with Iditarod veteran Ed Stielstra, who runs Nature's Kennel in McMillan, Mich., with his wife, Tasha. Moon trained with the Stielstras two years, staying at a cabin there between October and April while his wife taught in an elementary school outside Chicago.

Moon said he's trained hard this winter despite his diagnosis and believes he'll get more sleep on the Iditarod trail than he did the last few months. He hopes to finish well but he envisions this as a 12-day vacation, not a blazing race to the finish line.

Finishing the Iditarod is a precursor to the larger battle he's facing.

"I'm a little upset about getting to Nome, because it'll be over," he said. "The important thing is, we're going to do this, and then we're going to beat cancer."

Notes from the restart

Mushing troopers: Alaska State Troopers Thomas Akelkok and Terrance Shanigan patrolled trails around Willow on a snowmachine and dogsled for about three hours Sunday morning. Shanigan and Akelkok are part of an effort by Troopers to improve relations between Troopers and rural Alaska communities. Akelkok, whose family has built dog sleds for decades, built two wooden sleds with his sons for display and patrol use and Shanigan logged more than 250 hours training with dogs from Lance Best's Barking Lot Kennel in Willow.

Shanigan said more than 2,500 Iditarod fans stopped by their truck to ask questions about the team and praise their efforts. Out on the trail that morning, he spoke to snowmachiners and race watchers and asked them not to crowd the trail, and with tailgaters to remind them to douse their bonfires and not to drink and use a snowmachine.

Kibble contributions: Michigan residents Lee and Claudia Nowak were up from Traverse City, Mich., to watch their seventh Iditarod. They are avid mushing supporters. Lee Nowak said they're members of two mushing organizations, although they don't have any sled dogs.

Claudia Nowak in 2009 started a new option for race fans to support mushers. The program, called BARK, or "Buy a Round of Kibble" allows supporters to buy kibble for participating mushers. It's organized through www.sleddogcentral.com. Participating mushers make note of the brand of kibble they use, their supplier, and the per-bag cost, and put a link on their Web site. Supporters can click the BARK button and pay for as many bags as they like, usually at a cost of about $40 a bag.

Nowak said about 65 mushers from North America and two foreign countries are currently participating in the program.

Takin' a look at coastal development

Abu Dhabi and Dubai are both investing heavily in marine/coastal development ventures in a renewed hope to attract [luxury] yachts and increased sailing.

READ MORE!

Alaska + Architecture = Pretty deece

The new Fairbanks Airport is featured in this month's Architectural Record along side three other flashy transit projects (no ports, though) including a Calatrava train station. I've included the online version below, but I suggest you check out the print version instead.

Fairbanks International Airport

Fairbanks, Alaska

Bettisworth North

Bettisworth North channels Alaska’s frontier spirit with an elegantly rustic terminal building

By Weld Royal

In the 1950s, officials in Fairbanks, Alaska, erected a small terminal by a landing strip in a magnificent location — to its southeast rose the great Alaska Range capped by Mount McKinley, and to its northwest, the Tanana River plateau and a boreal forest of birch and spruce.

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The airport started off serving bush pilots flying to remote communities. It was remodeled and expanded on separate occasions in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s into a sprawling, 143,000-square-foot facility that failed to keep pace with the needs of its travelers. Locals said it looked like a bunker. By 2003, the lines of summer travelers waiting to clear security at the airport were almost as legendary as the display of its collection of dead trophy animals. Approximately 800,000 travelers used the airport annually. It handled national and international airlines, hosted rental-car companies, and had a customs and border control area. Over the next two decades, forecasts predicted passenger traffic increasing to 920,000.

Airport officials realized they would have to make changes to handle that growth. There were new federal requirements for security screening and equipment, and the airport needed upgrades to meet seismic standards. (A major fault line runs through Fairbanks.)

Program

The State of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities commissioned Bettisworth North of Fairbanks to draw up a comprehensive terminal-area development plan.

The plan’s $71 million construction budget would result in an 84,000-square-foot addition, a 59,000-square-foot renovation of the existing terminal, and demolition of the remaining structure. It would include an entry hall, an arrival-and-departure concourse and lounges, separate spaces for baggage screening and customs and border control, as well as a boarding area for passengers using small planes.

Charles Bettisworth, founder of Bettisworth North, grew up in Fairbanks, and calls it a “rustic frontier.” Prospectors first discovered gold in its creeks more than a century ago, and abandoned mining equipment is rusting away in its hills. The town thrived during World War II and housed construction workers for the Alaska Highway, and much later for the Trans Alaska Pipeline. Today, it is home to durable, boxy, low-rise structures built to accommodate the region’s short construction season and huge temperature swings — from minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit during winter to highs in the 90s on long summer days.

Solution

Bettisworth’s architectural solution provides a refreshing contrast to the local built environment. The design of the addition and renovation employs common local construction materials — concrete, metal, wood, and stone — and interprets them in a contemporary but suitable form. “People come to Fairbanks for frontier,” Bettisworth says, “not De Stijl.”

The airport’s face to those arriving by road is a glass-paneled curtain wall marked by four vestibules in orange glass. Their permanent lighting gives off a firelike glow against the darkness, which by December descends on Fairbanks for all but a few hours.

Mechanical relics of abandoned mines provide inspiration for the entry hall. A series of nonstructural steel columns set up a nice vertical rhythm against the long horizontal structure. Their rusty patina is repeated inside the entry lobby. Metal sheets sprayed with an acid solution take on the color of worn leather and clad prominent interior wall spaces.

Visitors move through the lobby on an axial circulation path that extends like a spine along the front of the building and passes ticketing areas, rental-car booths, and baggage claim. “In the original terminal, people had no space to walk, but whether or not to build the spine was one of the biggest design decisions,” says Bettisworth.

The simple parti is bordered by exposed steel pillars wrapped in concrete planks. The planks were formed using a mold based on local spruce, giving the space a woody feeling. The path’s ceiling is heavy timber construction and glulam beams. The use of wood is repeated in paneling and ceilings throughout the terminal — conveying warmth and connecting travelers to Alaska’s great forests and a prevalent local construction material.

The transition of finishes and materials from the first-floor entry hall to the second-floor concourse is meant to convey to departing travelers the idea that they are leaving a pioneer town for a more refined destination, and just the opposite for those arriving. The materials on the concourse are the same as the entry hall, but more polished. Its floor is covered in rich cherry wood; its wall panels are stainless steel. The volume of the concession area, with 22-foot-high ceilings, is double that of the concourse’s lounges. A glass-paneled expanse looks out to the Alaska Range. “When the sun shines, it’s magnetic,” says Bettisworth.

Commentary

Alaska is feeling the impact of global warming, including loss of sea ice, increased flooding, and softening permafrost. Most forms of energy are more expensive in the state than in other parts of the country. Despite this, the LEED-certified buildings in Alaska number fewer than a dozen. Bettisworth says that though the terminal is cooled using ground-source heat pumps during warm months, and much of the stainless steel for the project came from a local fabricator, when the project was first developed there wasn’t interest in pursuing the certification.

A LEED certification for the airport, an iconic and heavily used structure, would have sent a message to other builders about the promise and possibility of sustainable design in Alaska.

Gross square footage:
143,000 (Renovation of 59,000 Addition of 84,000)

Owner: State of Alaska:
Project Management: Rise Alaska, Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska

Cost: $71.8 million

Completion date: December 2009

Architect:
BETTISWORTH NORTH
212 Front Street
Fairbanks, Alaska 99701
phone 907 456 5780
fax 907 451 8522

Weld Royal is a freelance writer based in Alaska.

Glacier / Island / Storm: Three Tangents

Submitted by Greg J. Smith on Wed, 2010-02-24 15:39

This post has been written to respond to the "Glacier / Island / Storm" studio BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh is currently running at Columbia GSAPP. To compliment this studio, Manaugh has organized a distributed conversation that is presently occurring across several architecture and design blogs.

The above video tracks monthly mean temperature readings as measured by a (gradually expanding) network of weather stations over the course of three centuries. This visualization was produced with data released by the United Kingdom's Met Office a few months ago as part of the #climatedata "data activism" initiative proposed by information designers Manuel Lima and Jer Thorp. It is a handy point of entry into a discussion about proposals of glacier building, land fabrication and storm engineering as the animation speaks to the manner in which we've instrumentalized our perception of weather, environmental and geographic systems. To engage in an ambitious venture such as co-opting a network of storm tracks that spans thousands of square kilometres, or deduce how a land mass was formed (in geological time) and rejig and fast-track parts of this process to engineer an island will undoubtedly require complex modelling. Design at this scale is inevitably difficult to represent as these kind of proposals—the hurricane on demand, the glacier freshwater delivery service, etc.—simply dwarf everything save massive infrastructural projects. In crafting these larger than life scenarios, the designer is charged not only with figuring out how to appropriate and amplify naturally occurring processes and forms, but convince the public that it is rational to do so.

While the territory occupied by "Glacier / Island / Storm" might sound like science-fiction (or perhaps James Bond film villainy), it might better be described as a direct challenge to the parameters within which architects and landscape architects conventionally operate – a provocation. Many of the blogs participating in this exercise are focusing on cataloguing case studies and identifying typologies, so to provide some counterpoint I will sketch out three tangents related to the spirit of the studio: architecture as weather control, representation and natural processes and issues of mobility and scale.

Architecture as Weather Control

The construction of shelter is fundamentally connected to weather systems, one only need look as far as building practices within a cold climate to prove this fact. However, while there is an extended history of ritualistic engagement with the weather, it is worth noting that (probably) the first verifiable instance of weather modification was developed as an architectural assembly. A lightning rod is a metal rod or conductor attached to the highest portion of a building – if lightning strikes the building it will be drawn to the rod and the charge will be conducted to the ground instead of starting a fire or electrocuting a hapless occupant. The device was simultaneously developed by Ben Franklin and Prokop Diviš in the mid 1800s and later improved by Nikola Tesla (the above drawing is a detail from Tesla's "Lightning-Protector" patent from 1918). The lightning rod is an interesting precedent as it reveals a desire for structures to divert and control one of the more unpredictable and dangerous phenomena occurring during storms; this is an example of what we might refer to as architecture managing the weather rather than "owning it".

If devices like the lightning rod illustrate how architecture manages weather, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Blur Building suggests how architecture might emulate it. Constructed for the Swiss Expo in 2002, this pavilion pumped water from the lake above which it was situated and redistributed the moisture as a heavy fog that enveloped the entire structure. The goal here was clearly an architecture of ephemerality, but one that obfuscated the primary sense with which occupants experience space – sight. A person moving through the Blur Building would only have been able to see a few metres in front of them, and these inhabitants did not so much occupy a conventional program as explore a constantly-evolving gaseous field. This is probably the textbook example of how atmospherics might intersect with built form, but given the context of "Glacier / Island / Storm" one can't help but ask: Why even bother with the building? Why not just The Blur?

Liz Diller in her 2007 TEDTalk: "Aside from keeping the rain out and producing some usable space, architecture is nothing but a special effects machine."

[diagram courtesy of Hugo Ahlenius]

Representation and Natural Processes

Rob Holmes in an excellent post on (among many things) time and landscape published on mammoth earlier this week:

A possibility: glaciers, islands, and storms are as much events as they are objects; as events, they are primarily composed of processes of accretion and erosion. A storm is a relatively brief event, a glacier is a very long event, and an island is an even longer event; yet all are, on a geological time scale, ephemeral.

This line of thinking highlights how glaciers, islands and storms are not only accumulations of forces and matter, but temporal events. Given the variance between the duration of a fleeting pulse storm and the incremental creep of glaciers across a landscape, a question arises: If architects were to take the reins of these phenomena, how would they communicate the intention of their designs? The graphics standards of this domain are more in tune with physical geography than architectural representation. Furthermore, how do drawing conventions like the cross section and elevation change when your materials are ice, soil and wind? Taking command of these elemental forces is not about creating polite zones of inhabitation but enacting fundamental environmental shifts that play out at a regional or continental scale.

The above projection of the cryosphere depicts a gradient of permafrost, glaciers, ice sheets and snow, a sprawling field that is intrinsically connected to discourses of freshwater, energy resources and sovereignty. A recalibration of this portion of the climate system could open up key trade routes but could just as easily raise sea levels. While these examples are dramatic they speak to the types of interdependencies one encounters when engaging these systems. Again: how does one represent proposals of this scale?

Let's return to the notion of temporal events mentioned above, specifically those pertaining to the atmosphere. A lucid representation of the earth-atmosphere interface can be found in Martin John Callanan's A Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe). This artifact is a 3D model of global cloud coverage from a single moment in time – a view that not only presents the ephemeral, but the (virtually) unobtainable. An excerpt from Data Soliloquies, a book written by Callanan and Richard Hamblyn:

Unlike most of NASA's own data visualizations, the globe features no added colour, only the sculpted whiteness of the raw material that throws a maze of faint shadows across the structure. From out of these shadows, in the right angles of light, emerge the global cloud patterns as captured on 2 February 2009 at 0600 UTC precisely, and, under them, the implied outlines of the continents below, seen as though glimpsed through fog, or rather, through the mystifying quantity of atmospheric data that is currently being collected from the silent fleet of satellites in orbit some 36,000 kilometres out in space—an increasingly hertzian environment, where an electronic Babel of satellites, radio signals, text messages and security frequencies vibrates, day and night, with invisible streams of man-made weather.

This model is exciting because (beyond stock conversations about climate change) it illustrates how the topology of cloudscapes is a filter through which we can consider our activities on earth. It also foregrounds the degree to which we have quantified the atmosphere – perhaps remote sensing/satellite photography and cartography are the only mediums appropriate for communicating how we might operationalize glaciers, islands and storms. Meteorological imaging is an appropriate segue into the final vignette to be discussed, that of mobility and natural phenomena.

Mobility and Scale

Pictured on the above left is a satellite image of the Presidents' Day storm that took place in February 1979 and buried much of the Midwest and East Coast under a half metre of snow. The headline of the New York Daily News describing this blizzard proclaimed SNEAK STORM CRIPPLES CITY as if to suggest this weather event was sentient and devious. The meteorological data from this storm was used as the basis for Atmospherics/Weather Works, a 2002-03 collaboration between artist Andrea Polli and scientists Glenn Van Knowe and Kenneth T. Waight. The project mapped the area affected by the storm and scaled this 1000km footprint down to the size of a small gallery/performance space (see the above right diagram which maps the space and illustrates the position of speakers). Meteorological data from the entire East Coast was used to model a multi-channel sonification of the storm. Some context on how the piece represented altitude and time:

A complete model of each storm has been created at 5 points of elevation: sea level, approximately 8500 feet, approximately 18,000 feet, approximately 35,000 feet, and approximately 60,000 feet (or, the top of the atmosphere), and each day’s storm activity is performed in full at each elevation. Each speaker performs a composition using data produced approximately every three minutes over a 24-hour period of the greatest storm activity.

Atmospherics/Weather Works is obviously a far cry from true reproduction of a storm but the idea of miniaturizing and redeploying a weather event is fascinating. Imagine a pint-sized storm like a dust devil whirling around a pristine gallery space or a wind tunnel recreation of a freak gust of wind. Although whimsical, these examples convey how we might play with the position and scale of natural phenomena to move them into spaces or roles that they wouldn't otherwise occupy.

For another example of a translated weather event see Katie Paterson's Streetlight Storm that ties the rhythm of lightning storms to the illumination of a Kent pier.

Another example of an artist project that examines scale and permanence is Alex Hartley's nowhereisland. As part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad the artist will move an arctic island to South West England. Hartley discovered the "football pitch-sized island" during a 2004 expedition to the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and registered it with The Norwegian Polar Institute. The plan for 2012:

A portion of the island will be transported to South West England through international waters and whilst en route it will apply for micronation status. The new 'micronation', nowhereisland, will navigate the entire 702 miles of coast around the South West region, visiting its ports and harbours, accompanied by a travelling embassy support vehicle. nowhereisland will embark from Poole and arrive in Weymouth and Portland for the duration of the Olympic sailing events, before continuing west and ending its journey in Bristol, the same port from which John Cabot set sail to search for the fabled North West passage.

This migration of a landform is equal parts audacious and mischievous. I wonder how the Polar Institute will feel about Hartley invalidating (or at least compromising) maps of this region. What a great idea though, taking an island out for a cruise – a nomadic performance piece. In considering nowhereisland Ethel Baraona Pohl & César Reyes Nájera astutely point out the relationship between this venture and Robert Smithson's Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan, which was proposed in 1970 and realized 25 years after the artist's death.

http://serialconsign.com/2010/02/glacier-island-storm-three-tangents

Gallery: Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51

• By Noah Shachtman
• August 3, 2009 |
• 7:15 pm |
• Categories: Air Force, Bizarro, DarpaWatch

200 miles northeast of Anchorage, there’s a massive military facility tucked deep in the black pine. What goes on at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp) depends on who you ask. Self-directed “researchers” like Nick Begich say the collection of transmitters and receivers is conducting secret tests of monstrous weapons for the Defense Department: mind control, weather manipulation, long-distance spying. The military scientists in charge of this military installation insist that Haarp has absolutely no direct military applications whatsoever. It “is and always was and was planned to be a research facility,” says Dr. Paul Kossey, the Air Force’s program manager. Haarp’s antennas are being used to study the ionosphere, the electrically charged layer of Earth’s atmosphere, by pumping it full of energy. That’s why Haarp’s scientists are creating artificial Northern Lights, beaming radio waves into the crevasses of nearby Mt. Wrangell, and bouncing signals off of the Moon. Naturally.

Last year, I got a rare chance to see Haarp for myself. Here’s what I found.

Above: To get to Haarp, drive 200 miles northeast of Anchorage. Then take the Tok Cutoff for 11.3 miles, and turn onto an unmarked road. You’ll be met by this sign, at the facility’s front gates.

Photo: Noah Shachtman

Read More: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/haarp-2/#ixzz0gxfL8o3u

Alaska Wants To Upgrade Runways to… Grass

• By Jason Paur
• September 3, 2009 |
• 7:30 am |
• Categories: Air Travel

Grass runways might seem like a relic from an era when open cockpits and biplanes ruled the skies, but there are still a whole lot of them out there and they’re getting a boost from science.

In an effort that would make Carl Spackler proud, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are testing several varieties of turf in an effort to reduce the damage airplanes often endure flying into rural airfields.

Although paved runways have become the norm since World War II, thousands of dirt, gravel and grass runways are still used across the country. In an aviation-dependent state like Alaska where airplanes are used to carry everything from food to high school basketball teams great distances, such airstrips are vital. Problem is, Alaska isn’t the easiest place for grass to grow, and its brutal temperatures and freeze-thaw cycles wreak havoc on paved runways. That means most runways are dirt or gravel. But dirt and gravel can cause dings and other damage that is at best unsightly and at worst a safety hazard.

Enter the researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Stephen Brown has found a common variety of grass (red fescue for you Poaceae fans) that grows well in the state’s unforgiving climate, doesn’t need much water and can easily be planted on gravel strips.

“I planted my lawn in it,” Brown told the paper. “The cold weather doesn’t kill it, and it can stand up to drought. It has very low nutrition requirements as far as fertilizer.”

The hope is by planting the robust red fescue grass on gravel strips around the state, pilots and the communities they serve can save money in the long haul.

Photo of a plane landing at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska: Flickr / steynard

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/grass-runways/

The Architecture of Polar Ice Floes

The Architecture of Polar Ice Floes

[Image: Trapped in ice].

Back in January 2008, a ship called Tara unlocked from the polar ice near Greenland; it had been frozen in the Arctic floes for a year and four months, repeating the journey of the Fram, a Norwegian ship that once drifted across the polar seas, frozen solid in the ice fields, back in 1896.

In both cases, the ships temporarily became buildings, works of architecture wed flush with the landscape surrounding them.

[Images: Photos via Jules Verne Adventures].

As reported two winters ago in the Times:

Visitors to the North Pole in the past 15 months might have happened upon a peculiar sight: a ship, high and dry on the ice pack, her masts upright against the flaming aurora borealis, her bow pointing over the ice sheet, as if sailing on a sea of snow. They might have thought it a polar mirage.

It was, however, the Tara, a mobile building of the Arctic.

In a description so strange I have trouble visualizing it, we read about a "pressure ridge" that moved toward the boat at "super-slow" speeds, threatening everyone on board with destruction:

There was another scare that winter with a “pressure ridge” caused by colliding plates of ice advancing towards the boat. “It was like a frozen wave, moving in super-slow motion—about a centimeter a second,” said [a crew member]. “At one stage we attacked it with picks and chainsaws, but there was no way we could stop it.” It leant over the boat, then suddenly it stopped by itself and “we were released from the pinch,” said [the crew member].

When landscapes attack.

[Image: Map of the Arctic ice routes that brought ships across the sea, courtesy of New Scientist].

But what interests me here is the idea that you could build one thing—a ship—that only becomes what it's really meant to be—a building—when the circumstances it's surrounded by undergo a phase change (here, water turning into ice).

The ship's hull was specifically designed for this, we read in New Scientist; it was "broad, smooth and round so that, rather than being crushed like an egg, the boat would pop up like an olive stone squeezed between finger and thumb, and sit on top of the pack ice. It also featured a lifting centerboard instead of a fixed keel, and removable propellers and rudders. These precautions worked: Tara suffered just a small dent at the stern, and another stretching a metre or so along the hull."

What might the atmospheric equivalent of this be? Perhaps a planetary probe dropped into the skies of Titan or Enceladus, awaiting some strange aerial phase change to occur on all sides?

And, speaking of other planets, could you ever encounter such extraordinary air pressure—on a gas giant, say—such that solid objects simply become trapped in place, unable to fall any further? The atmosphere beneath them is denser than the metal they are made from.

Like machine-fossils buried transparently in air—or like Arctic ships locked in ice—NASA probes would gradually decay, compressed by nothing but air, under deformational pressures lasting tens of millions of years. Aerial tectonics. Slow weather. Sky glacier.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/architecture-of-polar-ice-floes.html