deconcrete

A 700 metres deep mine in Northern Chile. Only one entry and no emergency exit. 33 miners trapped in the lowest underground shelter. 35 ºC and 98% humidity.

After 20 days of survival, rescue teams have found them by means of an 8 cm wide drill. Food, messages and medicines are to be interchanged from now on.

Final rescue is predicted to last another 3 months, since the drill machine can excavate only 15 m per day of the salvation tunnel, 66 cm wide, enough for average male shoulders to pass through.

Meanwhile, their relatives camp at the entrance of the mine, to provide psychological support to the miners, trapped until Christmas.

The owner of the mine has not appeared in public yet. Apart from a ridiculous salary and non-existent safety controls, miners were reported to have been given only water and 2 biscuits inside the tunnels per working day.

[source and image> vertical section of Chile Mine disaster by El Pais paper version 24/08/2010]

Troy, Paris and Montreal have a lot in common, but everyone cannot experience it. Cities below street level may either conceal or profit from their fantastic realities.

In Secret Tunneling [dpr-barcelona], Paris Catacombs and their 155 miles of linking passages are one version of underground leisure for adventurous urban explorers. Paris lies over the result of a peculiar topography, excavated both by natural caves and artificial quarries. After centuries of usage, either as a mineral source or as a public ossuary, the city forbids any functional use of them.

Troy, as many antique cities, enjoyed reusing its street layout. This settlement’s organic process of expansion throughout the centuries made buildings disappear and reappear when reusing their stones, bricks, walls or partial structures. But this overlapping urban growth, like in Paris, is not readable for city-users any more.

Montreal’s tough winters made the city expand in the vertical dimension, but towards the centre of the Earth. A 30 km network of underground leisure passages, protected from freezing winds, created a new layer of retail pedestrianism underneath conventional skyscrapers. However, the underground city, much more than the surface, is a controlled space, just like any other enclosed public space. Thus, the subterranean still resists the appropriations that people are able to make of city spaces outdoors. [Emily Raine]

Invisible Troy, Paris and Montreal originated their underground complexity in teleported walls, recycled ossuaries and harsh winters. But today controlled environments simplify them to the maximum.

[image1>overlapping Troy maps by the TroyProject] [image2> Underground Catacombs of Paris, 1855 via dpr-barcelona] [image3>Montreal underground passages map via readingo]

Philippines, like most tropical islands, uses flip-flops as its most common footwear. As a paradox, Metropolitan Manila houses today the “shoe capital of Asia” Marikina City, where 200,000 people are said to work on the shoe manufacturing industry along its Sandal Street or Slipper Street.

But this suburb is also the site where flip-flops pay tribute to a woman who had not enough time in her life to wear all the shoes she owned. After a popular revolt in 1986, former Dictator’s wife Imelda Marcos had to leave her collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes in the Presidential Palace, before fleeing the country. Imelda stock-piled 5,400 luxury brand shoes in the same way as other kings gathered over 3,000 women in their harems. Palaces, contrary to common dwellings, have this virtue of housing any possible paradox whim inside their walls. 18th century French merchant Beaujean was too fat to walk along his amazing gardens and suffered from insomnia inside a palace full of splendid bedrooms…

At least Imelda can show off her collection; some years ago she turned her precious treasure into a populist Shoe Museum, maybe as a tool to win Manila’s Major Elections. She was wearing a pair of locally made silver high-heels the day of the extravagant opening.

[image1> Malakañang Palace in Manila with Imelda Marcos' shoe collection via indecorous taste] [image2> shoe manufacturers distribution in Marikina City, Manila by Allen J. Scott]