• Dam it All

   

  Building dams has been the basic, brute force way to control natural flows of water since at least 3,000 BCE. Many now think that humanitarian and environmental hazards caused by the construction of dams tend to outweigh the benefits. No such doubts attached themselves to the celebrated Hoover Dam project, on the border of Nevada and Arizona. This Great Depression era initiative to create jobs, produce hydroelectric power and provide water for irrigation nevertheless caused 100 worker casualties and, once completed in 1936, seriously messed up the ecosystem of the Colorado River Delta. These figures are chicken feed, though, compared to the fallout of the Three Gorges Dam spanning the Chinese Yangtze River, which, by its completion in 2010, had displaced approximately 1.3 million people, wrecked the surrounding environment with floods and landslides, and destroyed archaeological heritage sites. Three Gorges created the biggest power station in the world, but one has to ask whether the classic trade-off scenario still stacks up – or should we perhaps just damn dams? I (ew)

  Photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior - Bureau of Reclamation.

• COVER

  COVER

  Cover

  Water
• Table of contents

  Table of contents
• EDITORIAL

  EDITORIAL

  Editorial

  Water
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  Adriaport

  Czechoslovakia's 1970s plan to build a tunnel to the sea

  Text: Rob Wilson
• FOUND

  FOUND

  China on Ice

  Harbin Ice and Snow Festival
• PHOTO ESSAY

  PHOTO ESSAY

  The Trouble with Water I

  By Sagel & Krzykowski
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Tropical Island

  A Big Brandenburg Oasis

  Text: Max Borka
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Dam it All

  Hoover Dam and beyond
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Pink Pipe Dream

  Ludwig Leo‘s Umlauftank in Berlin

  Text: Gregor Harbusch, Jack Burnett-Stuart
• PHOTO ESSAY

  PHOTO ESSAY

  The Trouble with Water II

  By Sagel & Krzykowski
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Oh Well

  Indian Stepwells

  Text: Rob Wilson
• INTERVIEW

  INTERVIEW

  Holding Back the Waves

  Climate engineer Matthias Schuler achieves active solutions through passive measures

  Text: Sophie Lovell
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Lonely as a Cloud

  Leandro Ehrlich's Cloud Collection
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Stream Lines

  Repurposed Dutch water defenses

  Text: Anneke Bokern
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Death on the Nile

  Watery pleasure dome at Hadrian's Villa
• INTERVIEW

  INTERVIEW

  Underwater Love

  Chris Bosse on water, nature and Frei Otto

  Text: Sophie Lovell
• PHOTO ESSAY

  PHOTO ESSAY

  The Trouble with Water III

  By Sagel & Krzykowski
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Ooho

  The edible water bottle
• CASE STUDY

  CASE STUDY

  Kraftwerk Artwork

  Hydroelectric power station in Germany

  Text: Leigh Theodore Vlassis
• BOOKMARKED

  BOOKMARKED

  Bookmarked

  The Drinkable Book

  Text: Max Borka
• KLAUSTOON

  KLAUSTOON

  Klaustoon

  XV. Underwater Zoom* ('e la nave va...')

  Text: Klaus
• NEXT

  NEXT

  Next

  Mexico City

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Tumblr

Uncube is brandnew and wants to look good.
For best performance please update your browser.
Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 10 (or higher), Safari, Chrome, Opera