Pierre Belanger - Landscape as Infrastructure: A Base Primer

pierre blanger

As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projection of landscape as infrastructurethe contemporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban planninghas become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories todayincluding shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities, are addressed and strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion of technological systems at the end of the twentieth century, this book argues for the strategic design of infrastructural ecologies, describing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape and direct the future of urban economies and cultures into the 21st century.

Pierre Blanger is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard Universitys Graduate School of Design. As part of the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Advanced Studies Program, Blanger teaches and coordinates graduate courses on the convergence of ecology, infrastructure, and urbanism in the interrelated fields of design, planning, and engineering. Dr. Blanger is author of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series from Princeton Architectural Press, GOING LIVE: from States to Systems (pa35.net), co-editor with Jennifer Sigler of the 39th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter, and co-author of ECOLOGIES OF POWER: Countermapping the Logistical Landscapes & Military Geographies of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a landscape architect and urbanist, he is the recipient of the 2008 Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture, as well as the Curator for the Canada Pavilion and Exhibition EXTRACTION (extraction.ca) at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.

First published 2017
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Pierre Blanger

Layout, Design, Cover: OPSYS Media
Copyediting: Danika Cooper, Erin Wythoff, Karen Moser, Hernn Bianchi Benguria
Image Editing & Permissions: Srna Vanbutsele

The right of Pierre Blanger to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Dedicated to the memory of Michael Houghlandscape architect, urban ecologist (19282013): Total control is impossible, biodynamics can only be triggered, manipulated, amplified, attenuated or registered. Nothing is new; everything exists already in one form or another.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Landscape as Infrastructure: A Base Primer / Pierre Blanger.
New York, NY: Routledge, 2017.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
LCCN 2015049549
Subjects: 1. Landscape Architecture. 2. Sustainable Development. 3. Infrastructure (Economics)
SB472 .B3585 2016
DDC 712 dc23
LC Record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049549

ISBN: 978-1-138-64391-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-64392-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62915-5 (ebk)

Typeset in News Gothic and Century
by OPSYS Media

Funding: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation, Netherlands Architecture Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and Wageningen University.

pierre blanger

a base primer

foreword by
rosalind williams