Annotation Do you really know what's under that new house you just bought? How about what's underneath the neighbourhood playground? Was the big-box retailer down the street built atop a toxic site?These are just a few of the worrisome scenarios as our cities begin a stealthy relocation of industrial facilities from the inner city to the urban periphery. These are the places Alan Berger has coined "drosscapes," and this is his guide to the previously ignored field of waste landscapes.
Berger (design, Harvard U.) provides an overview of what possibilities are offered by converting abandoned mines, as well as the physical, philosophical, technological, environmental, political, regulatory and ethical issues involved. In the opening chapters, he addresses the history, size, scope, and various forms of reclamation projects. Subsequent topics cover more speculative and theoretical discussions of aesthetics, space, nature, time and revaluing, together with photographic evidence. The book contains 199 color illustrations and is oversize: 11.25x9.5". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim—who is at the forefront of this new movement—has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world—including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bolanger, Julia Czerniak, and more—capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.
This open access book provides new perspectives on circular economy and space, explored towards the definition of regenerative territories characterised by healthy metabolisms. Going beyond the mere reuse/recycle of material waste as resources, this work aims to understand how to apply circularity principles to, among others, the regeneration of wastescapes. The main focus is the development over time, and in particular the way how spatial planning and strategies respond to new unpredictable urgencies and opportunities related with territorial metabolisms. The book specifically focuses on living labs environments, where it is possible to tackle complex problems through a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach - including the use of digital spatial decision support environment – which could be able to include all the involved stakeholders. Through a spatial scope of circularity, this book describes several examples including among others ideas from different contexts such as Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Vietnam. Through including reflections on methodology and representation, as well as on solutions for circular and healthy metabolisms, the book provides an excellent resource to researchers and students.
Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.
The second edition of The Urban Design Reader draws together the very best of classic and contemporary writings to illuminate and expand the theory and practice of urban design. Nearly 50 generous selections include seminal contributions from Howard, Le Corbusier, Lynch, and Jacobs to more recent writings by Waldheim, Koolhaas, and Sorkin. Following the widespread success of the first edition of The Urban Design Reader, this updated edition continues to provide the most important historical material of the urban design field, but also introduces new topics and selections that address the myriad challenges facing designers today. The six part structure of the second edition guides the reader through the history, theory and practice of urban design. The reader is initially introduced to those classic writings that provide the historical precedents for city-making into the twentieth century. Part Two introduces the voices and ideas that were instrumental in establishing the foundations of the urban design field from the late 1950s up to the mid-1990s. These authors present a critical reading of the design professions and offer an alternative urban design agenda focused on vital and lively places. The authors in Part Three provide a range of urban design rationales and strategies for reinforcing local physical identity and the creation of memorable places. These selections are largely describing the outcomes of mid-century urban design and voicing concerns over the placeless quality of contemporary urbanism. The fourth part of the Reader explores key issues in urban design and development. Ideas about sprawl, density, community health, public space and everyday life are the primary focus here. Several new selections in this part of the book also highlight important international development trends in the Middle East and China. Part Five presents environmental challenges faced by the built environment professions today, including recent material on landscape urbanism, sustainability, and urban resiliency. The final part examines professional practice and current debates in the field: where urban designers work, what they do, their roles, their fields of knowledge and their educational development. The section concludes with several position pieces and debates on the future of urban design practice. This book provides an essential resource for students and practitioners of urban design, drawing together important but widely dispersed writings. Part and section introductions are provided to assist readers in understanding the context of the material, summary messages, impacts of the writing, and how they fit into the larger picture of the urban design field.
Photographs and essays express "the way the American landscape has been forged by various cultures in the past and what the possibilities are for its future design."--Jacket.
