Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Nov - Dec Vol. 9 No.6 | Page 38

Roundup

The toilet seat stadium and other unfortunate designs

global measurements of soil moisture ever obtained
from space and will detect whether the ground is frozen
or thawed. The data will be used to enhance scientists’
understanding of the processes that link Earth’s water,
energy and carbon cycles.

A basketball team’s proposed stadium has been lampooned
for looking like a toilet. It’s not alone, writes Chris StokelWalker.
The Golden State Warriors are moving home. The
“preliminary concept” for a new arena in San Francisco was
released recently by design advisers Snøhetta. The plans
have suffered some lampooning. Stuck on to the 135ft-tall
circular arena is a squat, square terrace. Coloured a muddy
cream in the architect’s renders, some have pointed out its
similarity to a toilet with the seat down.
The toilet-shaped arena may not materialize. Though
Manica Architecture, the lead architect on the project,
would not comment, PJ Johnston, a spokesman for the
Golden State Warriors team, explains that: “All images to
the project to date are preliminary concepts, which are
being vetted as part of the master planning for the site.”
The toilet-like arena is not the first architectural misstep in
sport. The Al Wakrah stadium, designed by Zaha Hadid
for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, was widely said to
resemble female genitalia. It’s a claim Hadid strenuously
denied. Her firm asserted that the Al Wakrah stadium was
inspired by the design of the dhow, a traditional Arabian
boat.

Soil moisture is critical for plant growth and supplies
aquifers, which are underground water supplies contained
in layers of rock, sand or dirt. Through evaporation, water
in the soil cools the land surface and lower atmosphere
while seeding the upper atmosphere with moisture that
forms clouds and rain. High-resolution global maps of
soil moisture produced from SMAP will allow scientists to
understand how regional water availability is changing and
inform water resource management decisions.
“Water is vital for all life on Earth, and the water present
in soil is a small but critically important part of Earth’s
water cycle,” said Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager
at JPL. “The delivery of NASA’s SMAP spacecraft to
Vandenberg Air Force Base marks a final step to bring
these unique and valuable measurements to the global
science community.”

Serene green

NASA Soil Moisture Mapper Arrives At Launch Site
A NASA spacecraft designed to track Earth’s water in
one of its most important, but least recognized forms
-- soil moisture -- now is at Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California, to begin final preparations for launch in
January.
The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft
arrived last October at its launch site on California’s
central coast after traveling from NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The spacecraft
will undergo final tests and then be integrated on top of a
United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket in preparation for
a planned Jan. 29 launch.
SMAP will provide the most accurate, highest-resolution
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • November - December 2014

Atmospheric aurora captured from the International
Space Station (ISS) in a pic taken by German astronaut
Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency (ESA).
(Nasa/ESA/)