Phantom Surge

This slideshow is part of: Master of Architecture II Spring 2013

Phantom Surge
Seguam Island – Aleutian Arc, Alaska

Stefan van Biljon

The disjunction between Seguam's diminutive scale and the monumental vocanic, geological engines that shape it provided the impetus for its selection as a site. Though dramatic at a human scale, Seguam's topography is but a ripple produced by a titanic metabolism of time, pressure and heat beneath the earth's surface. In Seguam's scars, we read the phantom after-image of a ballet buried in the depths. What to human eyes appear timeless is, in fact, rendered ephemeral in geological time. After two cataclysmic caldera collapses 9,000 years ago, Seguam's surface was levelled and reconfigured beyond recognition, fleeting like a ripple in a pool of water. Buried engines never stop. The Aleutian Arc is grinding deeper into the Arctic Circle, pulling the western United States toward Siberia. Slowly (at 6.8cm / year), the magmatic conveyor belt morphing small Seguam is working in utter darkness to produce its masterpiece – the birth of a new continent from unstable prehistory.

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  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

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