tracing brooklyn

An Urban Archaeology of Collisions in the Sky

Thanks bldgblog

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Volume as Thesis

Open publication - Free publishing - More thesis

travelCASE

The travel case is a tool to collect, organize and decipher elements taken away from different sites and composed into one container. As a case carried around during site studies and collection, the work of the project composes itself in real time through a series of collection actions rather than distinguishing them site by site. It is then a toolbox for the thesis to operate through its program of defining site and narrative. This is the first move of thesis, a collector for the site. From here a narrative will be created overlapping the stories and then new artifacts will be created reflecting each site through the new perspective of the author.

Labeling each portion of the case as a verb for collecting, the case asks for action to insert, arrange and collect. It then forces the user to utilize the case with multiple perspectives rather than one mode of collection.

Fairy Doors

These small doors exist all around Ann Arbor, with a tale to go with them. These small scale doors appear as another world living within our own local community. We engage in it as if it were real, and they do physically exist. So when does a fictional intervention begin to play out in our real lives?

Program and Pragmatics

Rhetorical modes: Patterns of Organization
Using tropes to disguise the thing and talk about the relationship. By taking artifact and associations together with literary technique, reveals a new object itself. Rhetorical travelogues : capturing frames of events and artifacts as an agent to amplify the characteristic and genesis of “now”. What can we record and capture and what is fleeting or obsolete when those merge together. Can it rewrite a new story of place?

Accomplice: somebody helping wrongdoer: somebody who helps somebody else to commit a crime or misdeed

Wrongdoer: behavior considered wrong: behavior or an action that fails to conform to standards of law or morality

Law: the body or system of rules recognized by a community that are enforceable by established process

Process: a series of actions directed toward a specific aim, a series of natural occurrences that produce change or development

Identity, culture, tone
An accomplice because it is a specific perspective to frame the argument of new realities through parallel narratives. Possibly as an unknown accomplice, conspiracy or protege. By exploiting them and capturing an unknown voice it can not be paranoid by the outcome of the manipulations of voice.


As a feedback between a series of clients as accomplices:

One that gives (gets)

One that reacts (recieves)

One that analyzes (projects)

One that reformats (critiques)

One that gets (gives)

and loops back again...

Patterns, time, social
Because the sites have difference associations at different times it is about plucking details that may or may not reveal themselves. Time then can not act quantitative in the way each of these sites have come about today. Its an overlapping of histories.To see the past traces and overlap them out of sequence with the present and projected futures based on a new classification of criteria other than terrain vague. It can start to project new possibilities in the sites. Redux from the approach of asking what it was in the first place. These feedbacks can then inform a new hierarchy of what takes stage and how to redux based on these new values.

What then are you acting:

With?

For?

Against?

Through?

What is the reaction to the programmatic actions?

Tone?

Revelation?

Physical moves forward the action of the work and word through tangible objects. Starts to see moves through all details of a day rather than a specific ritual.
Method of working: Conscious Material and Mind
Working at a scale of creation, yet not always at one to one removes the author from the direct relationship or infact questions the direct relationship.

Space and Case

Georges Perec's book Species of Spaces and Other Pieces begins with a series of space defining terms. Through out the book he utilizes language as a medium of crafting an argument. I took this as a first exercise of exploring "____Case".

Don't Believe Billy

In a break in his career with excess downtime, Bill Geerhart began to write letters posing as his inner child "Billy". He wrote to numerous people and groups asking simple but relevant questions in the voice of a child. These letters have been published in Little Billy's Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child's Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered.  Here is one letter and response:

makes you wonder how far an author can go...


thanks http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/10/little-billys-letter.html

Literary Tropes

Sometimes things are so obvious you can't see them. When I was told to mind my tendencies to figure out what I might be interested in for thesis and have the project naturally occur from there, I only looked at projects I worked or speculated on. One of the major decisions defining my coming years was the launching of an office and then of course naming it. 

Synecdoche (si-NEK-duh-kee), while possibly not the best name to have people pronounce or help spread the word, defines our work so well. A work of simultaneous understanding, in how we work and what we work on. So its seems I've always been a bit more drawn to the connection of literary and architectural practice than I thought.

6 Literary Tropes

Metonymy

Irony

Metaphor

Synecdoche

Antanclasis

Allegory

Shifting Scenes

Monumental shifts in traditional frameworks of thought and theory lead to the creation of new paradigms.  Operating across history, architectural periods, and text our work questions reality and fiction.  The scale moves from the most concrete reality of the existence of a site to the shift in the author’s role in (re)defining the site, to the representation of a fictional narrative through image or text.  Lines connect from the reality-fiction scale to methods of narrative and historical moments.  When these lines intersect a fictional text is generated which operates in the narrative method and time period being traced.  The map then sets up two types of operations, one revealing the placement of interests within the contexts of each other and multi disciplinary practice. The orbs reveal new possibilities through unexpected overlaps and new ways of thinking through a combination of practices.

Within the map, we have cited each of our own resources and how they tie to the overarching theme of the map. Each color notates each thesis within the over all map, red - Lisa Sauve and yellow - Jessica Mattson. This map was created by linking together arguments from two of the thesis. The tracing of history (Jessica) and the style of the narrative (Lisa). At these intersecting links a new mode of narrative is generated as an example how how the thesis might play out. A work in progress...

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius : Encyclopedic Operations

Through the discussions of our first group Paradigm Map, the shift away from a static map towards a mode of operations began. Working with an Encyclopedia as an artifact of truth and fact, we begin to questions its validity through moves of additions and subtractions to the datum. Each of these moves question specific topics towards each of our thesis and begin to reference people, projects and texts with (in)/out of the discipline that strengthen each thesis polemic. 

Travelogues : Adding New Entries

A short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" speaks of a bootlegged encyclopedia with an additional set of pages not referenced in the index. It contains the information for a country call Uqbar. The article in the encyclopedia references three books about the place, one which is discovered. Either this is an exceptional hoax with all the basis covered to back up the argument or a unique discovery that is usually missed. It begins to question the content, validity and truth of the author and book.

Perspective/Periodical : Layering Information 

Abandoned : Summarizing a Focused Definition

Classification : Showing Similarities and Differences

Japan : Removing Irrelevant Information

Postage, Postage Stamp : Adding Artifact

Other thesis in group project:
http://borderinglines.blogspot.com/
http://hypo-theses.blogspot.com/

A Narrative in Parallel Acts | Percy Beck Reveals “Nothing”

Percy Beck, caught beyond his own adventures and now permanently affixed to one place. While his network of people move about the world, he himself can only imagine through his lens these places and experiences. He could be called visually dyslexic.1
1. Percy was the name of my grandmothers cat whom I despised and this is my chance to keep that same rampant character tied down to one place. Beck was my great grandmothers maiden name in which I have only traces of links to her through stories, photographs and memorabilia.

Plead for something other than romantic postcards and lighthearted stories about the places and experiences these people exist within. He instead wants to feel the lifestyle of these places and the things walked by and forgotten. Begins to catalogue what is underneath the surface of these places. Through a new way of organization connects are revealed.2
2. My favorite postcard I ever sent was one that was only black, no imagery at all. On the back was a note printed on the top that read “black hills at night” and it made obvious both the humor and reality of the circumstance which I was relaying 700 miles away. This revealed more about the person and the place while leaving room for the imagination to fill in the rest

A cousin lives in Japan that is close to Percy’s age. His uncle is stationed there for two years in the Navy. Percy’s cousin has as much adventure as Percy did. When he hears of the request to grasp places under the surface he immediately knows a place to share.3
3. My cousin did indeed live in Japan for two years, he then moved to Hawaii with a 1970’s Volkswagen Bug with a driver shaft on the right side. He was known all over the island for this exact artifact from Japan. All I ever got from my Uncle was some artwork with my name in Japanese.

And on the story goes...4
4. An idea about the forming of a narrative.

Through tying together techniques of fiction, narrative, traces, and taxonomy the layers reveal nodes of inter-relations otherwise unable to unravel under the rational lens of architecture as the sole entity.
By overlaying what seem to be disparate parts from multiple sources through a technique not of notation, graphics or physical form but through the narrative that shapes them, the lens’ begin to obscure and reveal new connections that produce new ways of seeing what were once placed in solitude of their reigning characteristic. While things may have at once seemed irrelevant, now are emergent.

By bringing attention to the non-sites in the world of architecture it will reveal to the profession the broader context and discourse outside of itself. By acclimating ourselves with adjacent practices we are then able to handle new programs and social complexities that architecture has before been unable to deliver. These places situated for thesis are already once removed from architecture being cast out and neglected, this brings them back into the conversation not as a ruin but an active engagement to the ellipses of after the built form.

Through collecting information, stories, images, maps and histories about places and spaces that seem to have a blanket association with a single characteristic the less than apparent connections will begin to emerge to help understand new linking resources to aide in architectures approach towards the social, cultural and built world. The juxtaposition presented between sites, time, artifacts and stories can relay ideas of not one ideology but the synthesis of many.

The thesis may appear as a series of travelogues corresponded by the narrative of a character. The author does the work of the thesis while the travelogues aide in the background. A place where the author manipulates his stories and information to go not so far as fiction but adding and displacing facts to amplify the argument. These travelogues may be expressed in a series of photographs, artifacts (debris, remnants, materials), and texts that are then overlaid with the new approach to terrain, ruin, and traces /imprints of time and activity.

Astoria Park Diving Pool

© NYTimes

 Astoria's, at 330 feet long, 165 feet wide and a rather disappointing 4 feet deep, is the largest.1.3 million gallons.The decrepit, three-tiered diving platform, which has been unused since the 1980's, would also be replaced. Construction of the whole center would take three years, Mr. Kriegel said, and would cost $22 million. Next to the mega swimming pool, sits an abandoned high dive, with diving platforms at 5, 10, and 15 meters above the surface of the (hypothetical) water.The 74-year-old high dive has been closed since 1980 (the age of litigation), and IMHO will likely never re-open to the public. Now sits the question of what to do with the gaping concrete crater that many consider an eye-sore.Life-long Astoria resident and City Council Member, Peter Vallone (D), has teamed up with Queens Borough President, Helen Marshall to raise over $5MM to be used to repair/repurpose the high-dive and surrounding swimming plaza.The Olympic-size pool in Astoria Park is said to have been among the crowning achievements in legendary city planner, Robert Moses’ career. The pool, NYC’s largest and oldest was opened on July 4, 1936, and subsequently used in two U.S. Olympic qualifying swimming, diving, and water polo trials (1936 and 1964).

© IrishNYC

http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/AstoriaPark/highlights/8892
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5091

Where am I?

In the spring of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans to document the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its outcome four and a half years later. The context of the investigation was about the idea of a "natural disaster" and what it can actually mean to a city. Other than the brute force of the storm and the physical destruction that happened in the moments of its impact, the long term ramifications are as much a disaster and have been charged in the realms of social, political and cultural disrepair. Is nature then more than the earth, wind and sea? Human nature can then trace back to natural disasters of cultural and social unease just as much as the way hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, and earthquakes can disrupt our world.

This then led to the question of the aesthetics and outcomes of a disaster and the city. The freeways that split the black bottom neighborhood as well as the riots began to tear Detroit apart with just as much force as a category 5 hurricane. The outcome looks much the same. Of these four photographs, two are from New Orleans while the others from Detroit. The worn outcome of both cities with two very different starting trajectories leads me to wonder what are the tipping points of other sites that too end up with the same characteristics? When do the stories divert and when do they converge? So when both places end up looking so much the same, sometimes I wonder... where am I?

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

The mood | Traced in the shadow | An indecipherable cause. 

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 I'm lingering on this right now. I'll hold it in my back pocket, it could come in handy.

A Con and the Mark

Site as Thesis

In the expanded field of concern for STORMFRONT, site is not merely a simple and static geographical coordinate. Instead, its definition must be expanded to define and frame the situation at hand. Using description, capture, discussion, searching, revealing, observation, and the like, s ite is opened to further scales, times, paces, locations, situations, and understandings.

Context 

1. text surrounding word or passage: the words, phrases, or passages that come before and after a particular word or passage in a speech or piece of writing and help to explain its full meaning

2. surrounding conditions: the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place Con 1. Short for "confidence trick" a fraudulent scheme by gaining ones confidence.  2. Against a proposition, pro's and con's 3. Prefix to apply notion of similarity Text 1. main body of work mainly in words that have been written down, typed, or printed

While situating thesis within the context of relevant systems, characteristics revealed themselves in multiple sites. Utilizing the play on words that has thread itself throughout the process, context rather than site has expressed bits of site otherwise unseen. 


In the practice of a confidence trick, commonly known as a "con" the character of the con man exploits characteristics of the "mark" for an outcome that would not have evolved from either individually. The ability to navigate weak points and divert them into productive outcomes is in the hands of the artist. While each artist may have a style to the craft, part of the skill is the camouflage of the practice as to not get caught. The film Catch Me If You Can showcases the life of Frank Abagnale Jr. and his endeavors as a con artist playing the art of impersonation. Although the character and place may change in each situation Frank is still himself, abiding by his own set of rigor to carry out these fraudulent acts. 


In Site as Thesis the goal is much the same. Finding a layer of rigor that may be camouflaged in an outer layer that may begin to relate to each context. While the first two sites proposed might be considered context and their characteristics are the marks onto which to carry my con artist style. I may then find myself flying from place to place (Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles) impersonating a thesis that produces an outcome that neither artist nor mark could create alone. 

Degrees of Separation

In the middle of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control I began to write down a few things that I felt I connected with or had been connected to me through other projects I have exposed myself to. The score by Caleb Sampson brought about the same tone as Phillip Glass' work in Koyaanisqatsi. The continual references of the circus and its characters mingling with the ideas of all four naratives reminded me of Fellini's La Strada and his merging of cast, scenario and fiction. The entire time I felt the film was a feature length presentation of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World. 

Koyaaniqatsi

An exceptional film by Godfrey Reggio, Koyaaniqatsi translates to "life out of balance". The film sweeps over landscapes, catalogs cities, defines the imprints of society and captures the unbalanced destruction and differences in our world. When reflecting as sites in which Reggio finds interest, these out of balance places blur boundaries. Frame by frame the life of the film begins to create a network of chaos that all link into a systemic instable reality. 

La Strada 
I'm not sure how I even stumbled upon Fellini films. And I'm not even sure how it is relevant, but something did click with between the films for me (probably the clowns but hopefully something more). The female character Gelsomina does stumble across a high wire walker in the film whom she grows fond of. I just wanted to throw this out there as a thought or connection that while cloudy in relevance it is a very distinct movie to grasp the character and tone of Fellini's work. There is something very true about his work while I also feel like I am being left out. 

Out of Control  

While always entertained by the ideas that Kevin Kelly presents in his book, the take away is much larger than the specifics of the book. Written in 1995 the book is somewhat projective in terms of its catalog of upcoming technologies and explorations. Fifteen years later we are experiencing some of the things that once only happened in the lab. It is the motivation of the exploration and the intuitive notion of connectivity that helps us humbly realize the small parts we may play in a larger system.

We don't have a word for learning and teaching at the same time, but our schooling would improve if we did.

The tendency to adopt ideas outside of the field is how we are able to grow. It is with these new perspectives that we are not a fixed lens with one trajectory. So I leave you with  a few other things I keep in my catalog and reach to as background noise or foreground focus when needing to be humbled:

art21

National Public Radio

NOVA

NOAA Weather

What the Bleep?!

Abelardo Morell

Strike a Prose

Ahoy, 
After the discussion about the 'arious ways arguments may be orchestrated, I began t' think about the 'oice behind the words. Just like an e-mail might be taken the wrong way because thar is no tone attached t' it, the same can be as detrimental in an essay. While the projection o' an idea through words is important, the tone in which it is done can be as re'ealin' t' the author as it is t' the reader. While mindin' the tendencies o' intarsts and the subject matter t' be written should be focused with rigor, I''e been recently ponderin' the character and prose that carries those ideas through.

Annie Choi's "Dear Architect" seems t' deli'er the ob'ious in a new light o' obser'ations through her forward 'oice and quirky humor. Aye.

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don't know how to spell subpoena, One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

Ahoy, I''e found through writin' and ramblin's that sometimes these often light hearted jokes and obser'ations have the potential t' actually propel the discussion t' a place we might not have thought o' before. So whar Me wish t' start my ramblin's may ne'er make it back out o' the wastebasket Me feel that puttin' on a new face, or 'oice for that matter might make me look at my thesis and intarsts through someone else's eyes. Aye, me parrot concurs.

Demo | litio(n)strate

Simple systems applied to derelict sites allow new intervention to come out of raw matter. With the understanding and study of systems that once put these abandoned sites into the situation they are now in, we can utilize an intelligent rebellion against the previous actions of these weathering patters by harnessing them into raw systems of intervention that allow these spaces to repair themselves over time and through a sequence of procedures. By working from the ground up to tap into all local and relevant resources the capacity of a project can be amplified by the context that had at one point turned its back on the project. These material and system technologies should be explored through a catalog of situations and scenarios that all fall under the criteria of a terrain vague location that can reemerge next to its neighboring sites as a place even more vital than when it was first conceived because of the deep rooted reliance and resilience to the surrounding landscape.

As part of the House as Thesis project the model may have only enhanced the artifact more than exhibiting the idea. While it did give scale and examine the operation of the project, it also did not dig deeper into the  details of how far the project reaches into the context and systemic links of the project.

Taken from an excerpt from "Living Systems" which was referenced during the review, this project looks at frameworks and expectations. As a set of scaffolding it allows for the anticipated to make its way through in an manner while a bit chaotic also as an underlining organization to it.

Gambit

 

Dealing with four seasons of extremes temperature and exposed in three hundred sixty degrees to the surrounding winds and atmosphere, the water towers of abandoned Detroit give a fruitful breeding ground of experimental labs for interventions of variable climactic conditions. In the house as thesis gambit the water tower is a shelter of refuge as well as itself seeking refuge from the terrain vague it has been identified with. By controlling the outcome of weather and climate rather than the weather and climate themselves we can trace patterns and intervene in critical approaches towards remediating abandoned spaces. Simple acts of raw resources collect themselves into a system networked together for the use of occupancy and production. At the first level of intervention the tower is fit to prepare for all seasons.

Above the ground and atop a terrain vague territory of itself, the abandoned water towers in Detroit allow for an escape and catalog of the city from high above. The roof and its water tower remnant both give opportunities for intervention and living capacity. Exploding the water tower into a series of panels that can shift and respond to the current season and conditions gives flexibility and adaptability to a once derelict artifact. This series of layers can shift to allow the walls to breathe or insulate. A layer of striated surface covers the roof, agitated by seeds and debris carried onto the roof by the wild occupants of the city flying overhead and the breezes from the river carrying them there, begins to emerge throughout the seasons. With the simple placement of a striated surface, water can be collected, roots can be planted, and life and vitality can emerge. Moving up the tower, the manipulation of the tower and its materials transitions the users space from outside to in. It is the blurring of thresholds and the capturing of atmosphere that helps define architecture of a place set in as part of the systems of a site rather that a barrier to them.

Water Towers

Applied physics always sounded like a practice of big lab experiments and excessively long equations. But, alas these old water towers are also applied physics. When we moved to places where rivers were not flowing down streams in close enough proximity, applied physics came to the rescue. A gallon of water weighs approximately 8.78 kg, when a vertical distance is applied this weight can pressurize itself giving us a pleasant stream of water in the shower. This water must sit above those in need of it for the water to flow with the force of gravity. This raises them above all the surrounding context exposed from the buffers of all other infrastructure. These liquid storage units are completely exposed to the elements, attached to a light frame that reaches to the ground. 

This detachment from context and ground makes them bare to the atmosphere. While slower to react to the weather because of the large mass of water inside that would take long durations to flux, extremes can push these containers past their capacity. Scranton, Iowa's extremely cold weather once froze the water mains, and the resolution was a simple matter of applied science much like the gravity that generates these towers. Officials decided to build a simple fire under the water tower to raise the temperatures back to levels that would thaw the pipes. While another encounter with fire was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 left few buildings standing. The Chicago Water Tower was one that did not burn in that district. In fact, it was the only public building that survived and the only one that still stands today.

This extended frame of reaction to the atmosphere reminds me of a post-industrial weather ball. With a few tweaks and details these too could react and project the conditions it is exposed.

Scanton and Chicago information from: http://watertowers.com/facts.html

Lexicon : tracingGrade

“APE” David Gissen

Dialectic/Mimetic

•of the nature of logical argumentation/exhibiting or the nature of imitation

“it enables us to establish linkages between buildings and nature that are more dialectical than mimetic”

Metabolize

•the process of converting material to energy

“examining the ramifications of building as sites that metabolize both new concepts and new forms of nature matter.”

“Hyper-locality On the Archeology of the Here and Now in the Architecture of R&Sie” Andreas Ruby

Hyper-locality

•overstimulated/ties to a place or area

“This work on the territory expands its traditional definition beyond the dimensions of ground, earth and site in favor of a material polyphony in all its aggregate conditions -the materiologies of a hyper-local architecture that emerges in place of the old typologies”

Threat

•indication of intent to harm or possible trouble

“Threat Inhabitation: the embodiment of the danger of a place by the architecture”

“I'mlostinParis” R&Sie

Rainwater

•water that has fallen as rain, which usually has relatively small amounts of minerals dissolved in it

Disseminated

•to distribute or spread something, especially information, widely, or become widespread

“Rainwater mixed with bacterial preparations disseminated through three hundred light-refracting glass beakers to the surfaces of twelve hundred ferns. The neighborhood is both attracted by the green aspect and repulsed by the potion and the process. Eros is not so far from Thanatos”

“Regenerative Landscapes- Remediating Places” Anneliese Latz

Wasteland

•barren land, uninhabited wilderness worthless for cultivation

“This transformation of industrial wasteland in a new urban landscape has had a strong economic and social impact on the depressed neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity.”

Bourgeois

•of the middle or middle class, being in the middle

“In the bourgeois world, nature has been cultivated in contrast to technology.”

“Weeds” David Gissen

Dirt

•a foul or filthy substance, soil

“dirty when they are 'matter out of place.' Nothing is inherently dirty or dirt like; rather, dirt is a social category that we assign to specific types of social relations. Dirt lacks any fundamental physical quality. Instead, it is a relationship.”

Marginalized

•to place in a position of barely acceptable importance, influence or power

“examine how life based subnatures are simultaneously marginalized and embraced in architectural discourse”.

“Starting Points” Gilles Clement and the Recuperation of Space” Matthew Gandy

Biotic Archipelago
•relating to life and living organisms, or caused by living organisms
•a group or chain of islands
"These patchworks of color along canals, railways tracks, and other marginal or interstitial spaces form a distinctive aesthetic and biotic archipelago that has been systematically neglected."

Transient 
•Short in duration, lasting only a short time, coming to an end, disappearing or changing.
• not permanently settle in place, staying for a short while and moving.
"These spontaneous pockets of nature seem all the more poignant for their precarious existence as largely unnoticed by-products of modernity. We routinely overlook an array of transient or neglected spaces -- widely characterized as waste ground -- that develop their own structural forms and ecological assemblages without the precise imprint of human design."