The Hoover Dam

This website is a project for the 2001 Philosophy of Structures class at McGill University. My name is Diana Biggs, student number 9927041, and the topic for my project is dams. In particular, I will focus on the social and environmental impacts of large dams. Throughout the last century, many large dams were built worldwide and only today are the implications really being understood. The infrastructures and ecosystems of the regions in which these dams were created were severely damaged/destroyed, reaking havoc on the people, animals, and vegetation who called these places home. Included on this website are case studies of the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the Three Gorges dam which is currently under construction on the Yangtze river in China. As well, I have included a brief overview of dams and a page on environmental concerns.

The topic of large dams is a perfect example of the way different types of structures are related. Dams, a man-made structure, have huge impacts on the natural structures of the ecosystems of the rivers they divide. The social structure of the community which is flooded by the reservoir is also hugely impacted by the dam's construction. Looking even deeper, the psychological structures of these people will be affected, as they lose their homeland and, often, their sense of history and culture.

In conclusion, I would like to state that before the creation of any large, imposing, human-made structure, one must take into consideration the inter-relatedness of the world around us and realise the effects of everything around it, now and in the future.

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