Sinkhole:
A sculptural and
photographic essay
After Earth & Marine Sciences was built, the ground beneath it collapsed, swallowing part of the foundation. What would be done to save it? A geologist “stuck a 30 foot rebar into one of the open holes and couldn’t feel the bottom of the cavern,” according to a Santa Cruz news report. To save the building, they poured concrete in until they believed the foundation was solid again. This is not an uncommon construction process globally or on campus. Many of the seemingly solid buildings on campus have been stabilized by concrete pouring.
The collapse of the foundation could have been predicted on a campus like ours, built on a bed of karst. Karst landscapes are characterized by the dissolution of underlying limestone bedrock. When rain falls, it reacts with compounds in the soil to form carbonic acid, HCO3-, which is fantastic at dissolving limestone. The acidic rain poses no threat to humans, but over thousands of years can widen tiny fissures into vast caverns.
Our campus has a history of involvement in the cement industry. Before it was a university, it was a ranch that was the largest producer of lime in California. The decline of the ranch began when lime cement was replaced by Portland cement. Nowadays concrete is still a very important part of the landscape, but in a different form.
Many of the iconic buildings on campus, including McHenry Library, were built in the post-war era, when concrete was all the rage. Irvine and San Diego also were built in this period, but their concrete forms are mostly aboveground.
By bringing a hidden aspect of the campus “to the surface” I hope to engage other students and help them begin to explore concepts of boundary, campus, and environmental responsibility.
Many have commented that this piece looks like a cast of an anthill, which is much more similar to it in scale. It is impossible to portray the scale of these sinkholes in part because nobody actually knows how big they are. It can almost be said that the scale of the two objects represents their importance to the campus in general – the complicated efforts to deal with the topography are never discussed and the gleaming façade steals the show.
There are areas on campus where the caverns caused by limestone dissolution are the centerpiece, but they are few. One is the Empire Cave near the Porter meadows. The university has signs posted around it instructing visitors to tread lightly for fear of disturbing a delicate ecosystem. It is worth wondering how concrete pouring affects ecosystems like these – one would guess it does not have a positive impact.
Even if the process does have a negative impact, the University has needs also. We need buildings! There are very few areas on campus that are unaffected by some kind of barrier to development. Much of the land is covered by redwoods, inhabited by threatened species, on a steep grade, or out of the reach of utilities. Of these problems, sinkholes are one of the easier ones to fix.
Mystery abounds this object because sinkholes are rarely seen from the inside
and even then, only in fragments. The intent for this project was to represent those speculations in one solid object.
Concrete could not be used because it is not readily accessible and moldable. My choice was foam for three reasons:
1. It represents the bulbous form of the limestone formations well
2. Concrete and foam are both widely viewed as “unnatural” and “synthetic”
3. “Triple expanding” foam plays with the idea of the the sinkholes being solid at the moment but ever-expanding over a geological time frame
Despite not being made of concrete, the object is meant to share its likeness. I hope that by placing this object near the building itself, it can be seen in dialogue with the aboveground structures. The building is built with spectacularly clean lines for which hundreds of calculations were necessary, no doubt.
In contrast, the underground concrete structure is chaotic, unmeasured and unplanned. The intent was to make an object that seemed of similar color and texture as the surrounding environment but whose form differed greatly, evoking feelings of uneasiness and even disgust. It reminds people that not everything about this environment is stable, measurable, orderly.
Although it may seem to be, this is not an environmental statement. Things we do always affect the environment, and there is not enough research to confirm significant negative effects in the long-term.
However, it’s important to think about all the aspects of the environment we live in, even those that are invisible. This project seeks to share information that challenges the idea that everything beneath the earth is “natural,” and to stretch our ideas about what constitutes the built environment.
