Recently, I’ve been looking back at a collaborative project with John Becker of WROT Studio. The “Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis” (2014) was a fictional design project we originally set in the vast limestone province of Australia’s Nullarbor Plain. [Image: A rock-acid drip-irrigation hub for the “Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis,” a collaboration between BLDGBLOG and WROT … Continue reading "Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis"

“Enigmatic chemical reactions” have broken out underground inside two Los Angeles-area landfills, according to the L.A. Times. These “highly unusual reactions at Los Angeles County’s two largest landfills have raised serious questions about the region’s long-standing approach to waste disposal and its aging dumps.” If landfills are the extreme endpoint of a cultural practice of … Continue reading "The Reaction Area"

[Image: The Heathen Gate at Carnuntum, outside Vienna; photo by Geoff Manaugh.] Last summer, a geophysicist at the University of Vienna named Immo Trinks proposed the creation of an EU-funded “International Subsurface Exploration Agency.” Modeled after NASA or the ESA, this new institute would spend its time, in his words, “looking downward instead of up.” … Continue reading "Agency of the Subsurface"

I don’t normally link to my short stories here, but I’m proud of a new one called “Lost Animals” that went up earlier this week. It’s about a man hired by private clients to clear houses of ghosts, not using supernatural equipment but a baseball bat. He’s been storming into abandoned homes, haunted offices, auto-repair … Continue reading "Lost Animals"

[Image: Looking out over the center of “Razish,” a simulated city at the Fort Irwin National Training Center; photo by Geoff Manaugh.] I had an opportunity to revisit the Fort Irwin National Training Center this weekend as part of a series of field trips I’ve put together for the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute’s Antikythera program. … Continue reading "Every Room A Battlefield"