on the web

 Updated 4 Feb 1998

From a green point of view underground development has one enormous virtue: ending the zero-sum struggle between humans and the biota. (There are about 10 quadrillion cubic feet in the first mile under the continental US, which should be enough to absorb our ambitions for the next few decades no matter how crazy they get.) Sectors like transportation (especially parking and highway interchanges), storage, utilities, industrial production, retail, cultural facilities (convention centers, sports arenas), and office space are among the more obvious candidates to start this transition.

Of course there are those who balk at this vision.   (Perhaps the most famous critique of the idea was written by Lewis Mumford.)  One problem is expense, but for most what seems decisive is the atrocious design heritage of underground space.  And it is certainly true that  parking garages, subway stations, highway tunnels, not to mention cellars, are among the ugliest structures that humans build, competing for this honor perhaps only with prisons.

Neither of these barriers should last for very long. The cost of underground construction is falling (though slowly) and designers and interior architects in Japan and Europe, where underground construction is more aggressively pursued than here, have started to grapple with all the issues (lighting, surface texture, air quality, orientation, and confinement) that the previous generation of underground architects felt free to ignore.

This site will cover developments in the design and manufacture of underground space (including such economizing shortcuts as roofing over highways and parking lots).  It will link to and report on conferences, publications, projects, technological advances, industry developments, and experiments in design. It should be useful to clients, contractors, designers, and activist groups exploring the case for siting habitat-destroying projects where they do the least damage (if you don't count the lithic biota).
 

Cities

Perhaps the most dramatic application of underground space is in moving urban activities, which are almost all indoors anyway, under the surface.  In theory this would make it easier to devote the surface to recreational open spaces, habitat restoration, and  preservation.

Underground cities do exist: about a dozen cities around the globe are growing what some architects call 'urban roots'.  So far they are not being built for environmental or preservationist motives but to protect shoppers from weather and traffic. The largest is  Montreal's Underground City  (30 km of roads, 1700 businesses, 1615 residential units, 200 restaurants). Other underground city sites include Toronto (11 kilometers, 4 million sf, over 1000 stores), Atlanta (six city blocks, 220,000 sf, 126 shops), Tenjin, and Crystal City (VA).

It is worth noting that during the summer Montreal closes several downtown streets in order to host a number of festivals.  Some planners feel that the consequences of closing these streets would be much harder to cope with without the Underground.  I f so, perhaps this is one sign of an emerging functional differentiation of  the surface and the underground , with each being used for it does best.
 
None of the better work done in underground interior design seems to be on the web. The best I can do to date is a reference to a show in the Retretti Art Center in Kobe, famous for its subtle uses of the visual qualities of underground space.  I have found two books on the topic: Geo-Space Urban Design, by Gideon S. Golony, and Underground Space Design, by John Carmody.
 

Commercial Real Estate

Kansas City's (Missouri) only source of building rock is a large limestone shield that runs under the city. Over the decades many quarries have been dug into this limestone, most horizontally, through the sides of hanging valleys.  All these quarries are eventually abandoned, since once they reach back far enough  the cost of transporting the tailings to the mouth makes it more economical to start a new cut.  Since the 50's these spaces have been converted into industrial parks for applications like document storage, light manufacturing, and goods distribution centers.  Underground space now makes up almost 20% of KC's commercial real estate market, making the city  one of the most interesting experiments on the planet on the incorporation of underground space into the culture.  At the moment the only one of these businesses that seems to be on the web is the World's only Underground Paintball Arcade.
 

Highways

If you assume that the relation between humans and the automobile is indissoluble, then over the long term the society will probably be forced to start moving its highways underground. Several such projects are underway around the world now; the only one on the web is Boston's  Central Artery/Tunnel Project.    The site is a model of how a large public works project might explain itself to the public. Includes Quicktime animations of the finished design.

The strong compatibility between green values and underground development was nicely illustrated by a recent campaign undertaken by the citizens of San Mateo to replace a planned road extension with a tunnel. The site supporting the campaign is a brilliant example of how the internet can be used to mobilize opinion and advance the public interest. Includes galleries of the threatened landscapes, tour schedules, a full archive of studies, inspiring endorsements, and environmental art projects.
 

Utilities

Over the next several decades the countries of the globe, North and South, will be laying an enormous quantity of utility lines, from water to gas to sewage to electric lines to communications. Ideally most of these, together with their associated generation, storage, and processing facilities, will be built underground. Many societies are doing just this. One of the new technologies being brought to bear is microtunnelling. (Also see Andy Robinson's Digging-Deep).) In this technology vertical shafts are dropped at two points and a remotely operated "mole" is used to dig a tunnel from one to the other. This allows lines to be laid without tearing up the surface, which is especially convenient for those trying to lay a sewer through a wealthy suburb.

The Tunnel Connection offers a general view of a broad range of underground development projects, from the Cairo Metro to the Inland Feeder Project in Southern California. One of the objectives of the latter, which entails building 45 miles of large tunnels, is the replenishment of the groundwater reserves of the state.
 

Associations

Industry news is at The American Underground Construction Association site.  Each month one of great underground construction projects in the country is profiled.  Organizational motto: "Think Deep".
 

Research

Civil engineering, and especially the public works end of civil engineering, seems notably research-averse.  However, in recent years several research centers specializing in the field have sprung up around the world.  Perhaps the largest is the Excavation Engineering and Earth Mechanics Institute at the Colorado School of mines. The Warren Center for Advanced Engineering at the University of Sydney in Australia also has a strong program.  (Note: this server is up and down.) Many of these Institutes and Centers belong to The Associated Research Centers for Urban Underground Space, which maintains a site in English and French.  The premier publication for research and out-there proposals in underground construction and design is Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology.

 

Enthusiasts

As primitive as the design vocabulary of the first generations of  underground interiors has been there are those who love it.  The term of devotion  here is "Souterrains"; these are man-made structures like quarries, mines, waterwells, road- and railway tunnels,  underground aquaducts, catacombs, underground defence systems, troglodyte dwellings etc.   Subterranean Brittanica covers these structures in Britain; the International Subterranean Heritage Organization and the Souterrain homepage list global resources.

 

Fred Hapgood, Liberty Tree's Intrepid Net Mariner, and author of "Up The Infinite Corridor" is a regular contributor to Wired. Check out his homepage! (www.pobox.com/~hapgood)