The sprawl of the wild : a new infrastructural landscape in Silicon Valley

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-83).California faces an immediate and dire water shortage. The San Joaquin River Delta water supply system - which provides Silicon Valley with most of its fresh water - periodically draws down water delivery due to drought and environmental degradation. Currently, these policyscale decisions may only be met with very small-scale compensatory measures (on the order of "change your light bulbs"). There are not yet any solutions proposed at a middle, mediating, architectural scale. This thesis asks: how could an architectural intervention provide a solution to regional needs? Fast and furious development in recent decades has brought on and compounded major environmental problems, as well as increased the already high value of land in the region. In Silicon Valley, a growing population and a rapidly expanding high-tech (these days meaning biotech / pharmaceutical) industry pressure its few remaining large vacant parcels to develop. One can see in these sites the quiet but great potential danger of the status quo. They could just be the last large parcels slated for subdivision, and we could continue nostalgically lamenting the drain on and damage to natural resources. Or these sites could be our first chance at something new. This thesis explores a radically positive view of development, proposing an approach to program that multiplies value on all fronts economic, cultural, infrastructural, and environmental - and asks: how can a new infrastructure best perform?(cont.) In order to directly address the region's multiple needs (infrastructural, economic, civic, and environmental), normative development provides a scaffolding for waste-water treatment wetlands that double as urban wildlife sanctuaries. This combined program capitalizes on a highly valued, increasingly scarce cash crop produced as a by-product when treating waste water. This new cash crop is water. Clean enough to drink, this water be sold back to the neighbors, forming a new infrastructural network of "locally grown" gray water. This infrastructural network reinstitutes wildness - if not wilderness - in Silicon Valley, combating its homogenous regional development patterns by proposing a new network " of un-settlement. A new homestead, for the new cash crop.by Kathleen M. Flynn.M.Arch