Heracles, the first hydraulic engineer

According to historian Terje Tvedt the Greek god and hero Heracles derived from a much older Egyptian hero of similar name. The now submerged city Heracleion off the coast of the Nile delta was named after the god and Heracles plays a central role in the ancient literature of the region. The historian Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the 1st. Century BCE, recounts Heracles’ story in detail. Among the many feats he describes, several are connected to hydrology. The most famous one is of course from the Twelve Labors of Heracles. Here is the original passage from Diodorus’ History:

“He received a Command from Eurystheus to cleanse the stables of Augeas, and to do this without the assistance of any other man. These stables contained an enormous mass of dung which had accumulated over a great period, and it was a spirit of insult which induced Eurystheus to lay upon him the command to clean out this dung. Heracles declined as unworthy of him to carry this out upon his shoulders, in order to avoid the disgrace which would follow upon the insulting command; and so, turning the course of the Alpheius river, as it is called, into the stables and cleansing them by means of the stream, he accomplished Labour in a single day, and without suffering any insult.”

Hercules the engineer as seen by Francisco de Zuraban

The story is reminiscent of the way ancient Egyptian society used the annual floods of the river Nile to fertilize but also clean the farm land along the river banks.

Here are two other hydraulic engineering feats:

“When Heracles arrived at the farthest points of the continents of Libya and Europe which lie upon the ocean, he decided to set up these pillars to commemorate his campaign. And since he wished to leave upon the ocean a monument which would be had in everlasting remembrance, he built out both the promontories, they say, to a great distance; consequently, whereas before that time a great space had stood between them, he now narrowed the passage, in order that by making it shallow and narrow​ he might prevent the great sea-monsters from passing out of the ocean into the inner sea, and that at the same time the fame of their builder might be held in everlasting remembrance by reason of the magnitude of the structures. Some authorities, however, say just the opposite, namely, that the two continents were originally joined and that he cut a passage between them, and that by opening the passage he brought it about that the ocean was mingled with our sea. On this question, however, it will be possible for every man to think as he may please.”

“A thing very much like this he had already done in Greece. For instance, in the region which is called Tempê, where the country is like a plain and was largely covered with marshes, he cut a channel through the territory which bordered on it, and carrying off through this ditch all the water of the marsh he caused the plains to appear which are now in Thessaly along the Peneius river. But in Boeotia he did just the opposite and damming the stream which flowed near the Minyan city of Orchomenus he turned the country into a lake and caused the ruin of that whole region. But what he did in Thessaly was to confer a benefit upon the Greeks, whereas in Boeotia he was exacting punishment from those who dwelt in Minyan territory, because they had enslaved the Thebans.”

Full text in english translation

Raising a City

There are only a limited number of options to deal with SLR and land subsidence. One of the more obvious ones is raising buildings. There is of course limitations as to how many buildings you can possibly raise to save the habitats from inundation. Raising a whole city? Not likely.

Yet in the middle of the 19. Century the city of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan tried just that. The story is so extraordinary that I first assumed it to be an urban folklore from a place that has no shortage of urban legends. By the 1850s, the sanitary and health situation in Chicago had become unacceptable due to large pools of standing and infested water building in the city. Central Chicago is almost at sea level of Lake Michigan, making drainage difficult. In order to install a new sewerage system, the street level of central Chicago as well as most of the buildings had to be elevated between 1 and 2 meters.

The feat was achieved in a piecemeal fashion and over the cause of several years. Many large buildings like the Tremont House hotel (6 stories high and over 1 acre (4,000 m2) of ground space) or the Robbins Building were elevated in one piece by use of jackscrews:

“Business as usual was maintained as this large hotel ascended, and some of the guests staying there at the time—among whose number were several VIPs and a US Senator—were oblivious to the process as five hundred men worked under covered trenches operating their five thousand jackscrews. One patron was puzzled to note that the front steps leading from the street into the hotel were becoming steeper every day and that when he checked out, the windows were several feet above his head, whereas before they had been at eye level. This hotel building, which until just the previous year had been the tallest building in Chicago, was raised 6 feet (1.8 m) without incident.” (from wikipedia)

The Franklin Building was elevated in 1860 not with jackscrews but with hydraulic power. In the local newspapers on April 30th, 1860, citizens were invited to witness the event with the following note on the front page:

“The public are respectfully invited to be present between the hours of 1 and 3 o’clock P. M. on Monday, to witness the process of raising buildings by Hydraulic Pressure, at the four story brick buildings known as the Franklin House, now being raised to grade, and at that hour the machinery will be in operation.”

The images and articles from this period of the city’s history have become emblematic of the spirit of Chicagoans and their entrepreneurial bravery and wit. The Chicago Tribune in 1865 called it a “truly Herculean task”. In a sense, Chicago was really pulling herself up by her boot strings. The story serves as a striking example of how adaptation measures constitute to urban history and identity.

Thanks to Jeff Goodell’s video lecture for the lead.

M-o-s-e

The flood protection system that was installed in 2021 to protect Venice from rising sea level effects is named MOSE (for Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico). The name was chosen to allude to the story of Moses dividing the Red Sea to save the judaic tribe in the Jewish and Christian Old Testament. The plans for MOSE were already introduced in the 1980s but it’s completion took amlmost 40 years.

A flooded St Mark’s Square by St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, 15 November 2019. Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty
Venice during highwater. © Andrea Merola/dpa
The M-O-S-E Sea Barrier

In the same manner the sea wall that is currently in planning for Jakarta is named – and shaped – after an ancient myth: The giant bird Garuda.

Both projects show, that the municipalities believed in the role of cultural history in the political communication of climata adaptation measures.

Lighthouse Retreat

In 2019 this 120 year old lighthouse on the Denish coast had to be moved 70 meters back

The 23-meter-high lighthouse is located on a cliff about 60 meters above sea level. When it was put into operation, the cliff was about 200 meters from the sea. In the end, it was only six meters to the cliffs.

What seems like a looney idea from a Uncle Scrooge comic, is happening all over the world. (see my post on comics here) We will see many more cultural heritage sites on wheels like this in the years to come.

To read more about the Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, go here.

There’s a whole series of images from similar buildings here.

Conshelf or the Precontinent Project

Continental Shelf Station was an attempt at creating an environment in which people could live and work on the sea floor. Precontinent has been used to describe the set of projects to build an underwater “village” carried out by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea between 1961 and 1963. The projects were named Precontinent I, Precontinent II and Precontinent III. Particularly Precontinent II off the Sudanese coast received wide public recognition and was documented in a movie with the somewhat sensationalist yet eerie title “World without sun“. For a good overview of the project see: https://www.closed-worlds.com/conshelf-ii-iii or https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/05/27/remains-of-an-underwater-habitat-left-by-1960s-sea-dwellers

thanks to Lajos Talamonti for the lead!

Neromanna – A film about a sunken community

Athens based artist collective Latent Community produced this wonderful film about the story of Kallio in Fokida, Greece, a village that was expropriated in 1969 and was covered in 1981 by the waters of the artificial lake created by the Mornos Dam for use as a reservoir for the city of Athens. The lake has been the main source of water for the Greek capital ever since. The community got dispersed, many of the people of Kallio now living in Athens themselves.

I was lucky to meet Latent Community in their studio in Athens and discuss the impact of flooding on the collective psyche of a community and the political implications of Athens incessant thirst for fresh water.

Artificial Intelligence and false hopes: Asunder

“Asunder is an art project that responds to a growing interest in the application of AI to critical environmental challenges. […] It’s a fictional ‘environmental manager’ that proposes and simulates future alterations to the planet to keep it safely within planetary boundaries, with what are often completely unacceptable or absurd results. In doing so, Asunder questions assumptions of computational neutrality, our increasingly desperate reach for techno-solutionist fixes to planetary challenges, and the broader ideological framing of the environment as a system.” (from the artists’s website)

Found in Tactical Tech’s exhibition.

Modified marine ecosystems

Climate adaptation for coastal cities will require altered relationships to the sea and the marine ecosystem. future coastal city communities will live closer to and closer with the sea and it’s inhabitants. This will most likely require modifications of both, urban and marine landscape and structure. Engineering will not stop above sea level. The question is, how much alteration and optimization is desireable beyond our sheer technical capacity. This collaborative AI-project ask just this question. Check out the project’s web page: YANTO

Found in Tactical Tech’s exhibition.

Venice flooding from a duck’s perspective

In the Donald Duck story “Zio Paperone e la deriva dei monumenti by Italian comic artists Giorgio Pezzin and Giorgio Cavazzano, Uncle Scrooge together with Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie save the historic buildings of Venice from rising floods.

Original Italian cover

The story first appeared as early as 1977 and has all the ingredients of our current debates about the protection of cultural heritage from climate change. Uncle Scrooge suggests to put the historic buildings on large floating pillows that would rise with the flood and lower again when the waters receed. The story was published in over a dozen countries, the german version alone saw 6 reprints until 2013.

The following images are from a German edition:

Thanks to Tobias Bulang and Janet Grau for the lead and their kid’s comic book.

The new Alexandria skyline

In an effort to protect the city of Alexandria against coastal erosion, the local government plants thousands of concrete tetrapods along the remaining beach. This creates a bizarre, futuristic urban landscpae, unlike anything we know:

The images are from a German TV report from September 4. 2022. Find the video here.

Thanks to Annette Possmann for the lead.