Contextual Collapse
In an otherwise unpromisingly-titled article—“Could the US really release more of its strategic oil reserves?”—the Financial Times points out a surprising architectural vulnerability of the U.S....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Landscape Architecture of Auroras on Demand
I’ve mentioned the following story to so many people, I thought I might as well put up a quick post about it. There are strong Kristian Birkeland vibes with this—and, of course, anything involving an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Celestial Detector
[Image: View larger! From “Celestial Detector,” 2025 Lisbon Architecture Triennale; all text by Geoff Manaugh, all images by John Becker/WROT Studio.] I had a new piece of short fiction commissioned by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Star Forts, Mines, and Other Maastricht Subterranea
I was in Maastricht, Netherlands, for a couple nights last week, mostly as a way to break-up my trip across the Atlantic and thus help get over jet-lag before attending an archaeology conference...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mineral Hurricane
I recently had the pleasure of attending a press preview of the new documentary Architecton, directed by Victor Kossakovsky and released last week by A24. Surreally, the screening I attended was held...
View Articlegeo/acc
Slag heap debris on the English coast has apparently been fusing into a new kind of sedimentary rock. A team of geologists studying the beach recently “found a series of outcrops made from an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis
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...
View ArticleThe Reaction Area
“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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Agency of the Subsurface
[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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cleared For Approach
[Image: “Forest and Sun” (1926) by Max Ernst.] When I first saw this painting—“Forest and Sun” (1926) by Max Ernst, a composition and theme he continually revisited and changed over the course of his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Luminous Dreamlight
I spent part of the weekend down in Orange County, looking at birds, then the better part of an hour scrolling around on Google Maps, trying to figure out where we’d been all day. [Image: Courtesy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Impact Gardening
“Impact gardening” is the evocative term used to describe surface disturbance—and potential biological effects—caused by the crashing of extraterrestrial objects into planetary bodies. [Image: The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Feathered Friends
After the previous post, I was interested to see a short piece over at The New Yorker about basically the same idea—of spotting invasive species in the backgrounds of films and television shows, but,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Terrestrial Astronomy
[Image: “The Empty Quarter (Nevada)” (2021), collage by Geoff Manaugh, using maps from the U.S. Geological Survey.] I’m thrilled to have some map collages in the latest issue of the Yale Review....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Magnetic Depths
The emerging sub-genre of public service announcements about geological surveys—apparently offered not just due to FAA regulations, but to quell the growth of potential conspiracy theories—continues...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Geomedia, or What Lies Below
[Image: Courtesy USGS.] I love the fact that the U.S. Geological Survey had to put out a press release explaining what some people in rural Wisconsin might see in the first few weeks of January: a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Acoustic Archaeology
In her new book, The Bird Way, Jennifer Ackerman describes Australian lyrebirds as audio archaeologists, birds capable of keeping lost songs and soundscapes alive across multiple generations even as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Impact Gardening
“Impact gardening” is the evocative term used to describe surface disturbance—and potential biological effects—caused by the crashing of extraterrestrial objects into planetary bodies. [Image: The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Feathered Friends
After the previous post, I was interested to see a short piece over at The New Yorker about basically the same idea—of spotting invasive species in the backgrounds of films and television shows, but,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Terrestrial Astronomy
[Image: “The Empty Quarter (Nevada)” (2021), collage by Geoff Manaugh, using maps from the U.S. Geological Survey.] I’m thrilled to have some map collages in the latest issue of the Yale Review....
View Article
