“Challenging the Default” at NCSU with Alan Berger – “Exterial Landscapes”
Monday night’s lecture by Alan Berger, associate professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture from MIT, entitled “Exterial Landscapes” is now available (for free!) not available at NCSU’s College of Design’s iTunes U page.
Please feel free to repost!
Alan Berger’s Lecture Exterial Landscapes at NCSU’s College of Design on November 15, 2010.
He brings up a variety of engaging issues, including the concept that we are now a “place-less” society, whether or not we (as landscape architects) should be either attempting to make places or commit all of our energy to preserving the unbuilt environment and re-mediating the natural environment and systems in our world. It’s definitely worth considering now in our postgeographical culture, where we are at once immediately public (with post-Web 2.0 technology) and incredibly isolated within our car-centric lifestyle. What do we do? What are the trade offs? Where do we go from here?
brentrl
davetoms
dtoronyi
graysonmaughan
hbrhymes
jdisrael
Leslie Morefield
Marie Hermansson
mbtomasulo
meberle
mhlynskey
mikeygoralnik
shiftncsu
tfowlkes
He claimed he was “challenging the default”, but I didn’t see it. He got in bed with the default. Promoting isolated suburbs on cheap land along highway corridors while waiting for technology to solve the fuel challenge IS the default.
And why does he want to remove the human social influence when his own slideshow demonstrated his need for it? He couldn’t have re-flooded the wetlands without gaining social buy in.
Berger’s claim that he wants to remove the human social influence – “I don’t care about people.” – was particularly interesting (and somewhat offensive to us landscape architects!) I agree, his slide show and, at one point, claiming that polluted water sprayed on food crops could potentially kill babies (shock value) revealed how human social influence is inherent in the landscape architecture field.
In regards to shock value; his color choice and text formatting, combined with the highly stylized “futurist” almost video-game graphics, are unusual for landscape arch graphics and is rather confrontational. His argument techniques may in fact be slanted toward the “shocking.”
Personally, I am terribly interested in finding ways to re-purpose the big-box phenomena and potentially reusing the soon to be abandoned gated communities. My interests are more anthropological and theoretical, exploring the potential in isolated enclaves in a post-recession/post-geographical world with a slightly anarchistic bent.
Berger’s concepts were exciting, but if his design is dependent on technological innovation, I can agree that we (in land arch field and global community) do not have the time to wait for that. We need exceptional answers now.
Was he promoting isolated suburbs? Didn’t he mention some of his work was done for an auto company? I wonder what company funded MIT’s research into “horizontal urbanism?”
“Berger’s primary concern is how these sites are cleansed, valued and considered for adaptive reuse to have a positive environmental and programmatic effect in their urban territories. His work emphasizes the link between our consumption of natural resources and the waste and destruction of landscape, to help us better understand how to adapt our wasteful places for future productive use and more sustainable outcomes. He currently serves as a consultant to the US Environmental Protection Agency on Brownfield and Superfund site revitalization in the American landscape.” – from MIT’s site
I love the potential here. THIS is why I am becoming a landscape architect.
But, if one must receive funding for research from an AUTO COMPANY…. (“Mobility After the City” multi-year research contract with TOYOTA. – http://www.theprex.net) then the work one is conducting is at ethical odds with the content produced, therefor invalid.
I totally was into his concepts and ideas, but if you really, really, really GIVE A SHIT then let’s set our Macbooks on fire and grow some food.
Also, remember Fernando’s question about Berger’s use of language? Berger is creating a heavy personal brand/company and also creating new terminology to get away with building more “SPRAWL”.
Oh lord, I am on a roll. lols