Line of Site: Everest

Key links:

http://www.lineofsite.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest
http://insn.org/ – International Nepal Solidarity Network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_architecture
[dry stone structures]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_prayer_flag
[Mani Wall]

light plus weight – lightweight – balancing act

Some notes and links… haven’t read the brief properly yet but…. I’ve been thinking about the relationship between a structure that could be built from local materials – rock – and a lightweight more temporary element that could be brought from afar.

Anyone remember the project by Bird, Portchmouth and Russum with the cabins that were all about the stone chimneys? The extremities could change over time but over the millenia the chimney/hearth would always stay standing.

Same principle as this project:

http://rob.annable.co.uk/academic/post/d11/frameset.html

Groups of tag clusters at flickr is often a good way to source a bunch of images…

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/mounteverest/clusters/everest-tibet-himalaya/

“Fig. 5: After a very steep descent of the seitenmoraene one follows oneself again and again that changing way on the glacier. Because the glacier moves quite fast and therefore forms again and again new columns and lakes, which must be gone around.

Fig. 6: I find the enormous gletschertische fascinating

Fig. 7: Since the thick stone protects against the sun, the ice does not melt away under it. Here one can see good how much from the ice of the remaining glacier already melted away.”

[source of text and ice column images below]

http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/earth_icy_planet/glaciers06-en.html

“Isolated blocks on the glacier surface often protect the ice from melting, especially when solar radiation is strong, forming glacier tables.”

Moraine:

“Moraine is rock debris, fallen or plucked from a mountain and transported by glaciers or ice sheets. The moraine may be lying on the glacier’s surface or have been deposited as piles or sheets of debris, where the glacier has melted”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moraine
http://www.geographyhigh.connectfree.co.uk/s3glacgeoghighuplandform2.html

“Base Camp is located at the extreme north end of the bend in the Khumbu Glacier below Lingtren and Khumbutse at an elevation of just over 5,350 meters (aprox. 17,600 feet). It is on actively moving glacier ice covered by rock debris called ablation or surface moraine. A moraine is the ground up debris consisting of everything from giant boulders to fine rock powder which a glacier leaves behind. Surface moraine is the debris which is concentrated on the surface of the ice as melting and wasting takes place.

The Base Camp site is surrounded by giant overhanging ice cliffs thousands of feet above which are formed when a glacier flows over a steep or vertical rock cliff below. Thus we are treated several times per day to “icefall” and ice avalanches from Lho La (La is the local word for pass), from a huge ice cliff between Lingtren and Pumori, and from numerous ice cliffs and seracs hanging off the end of the Nuptse Ridge. And this, of course, ignores the collapses and icefalls which occur every day in the Khumbu Icefall itself.”

from:

http://climb.mountainzone.com/everest/2003/html/dispatch042.asp