Albuquerque, NM, 2007
Limited Edition Pigment Print

In New Mexico, summer is thunderstorm season, known locally as the monsoon. Although Albuquerque receives a scant eight inches of rain a year, in an August cloudburst, half of that can fall over the span of a few hours.

To route all the runoff gracefully, Albuquerque is laced with a network of concrete drainage apparatus. There's the ubiquitous open-air channels ("ditches" in local-speak), underground sewers, and several dams to buffer the flows at key points.

Concrete teeth, each about four feet high, line the spillways of the larger dams, slowing the overflow to avoid downstream damage. Stoutly they stand, an army of concrete warriors, ready to do battle upon the arrival of the once-a-century deluge.

From the Functionally Structural series.