Nature reorganized

The history of humanity is a story of organized action upon the land, whether that is considered as a complex ecology that includes living and non-living things or as a functionally empty surface for the imposition of efficient systems and forms. If a place teems with hidden riches then these can be extracted as valuable views and useful materials. Such organization of the natural and its opposite is one of the first and perhaps most fundamental architectural acts.

Miller, David View of the Canadian National Port Bridge and Canadian National Wellington Bridge looking south from the control tower, Montréal, Québec October 1985

The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California

Power and Planning

First, the Forests

Primers of Forestry

Learning from… Labrador Trough

Everyone Just Left

Waste-Wilderness

Marilyn Bridges and the Exotic Restricted Areas of the US Military

Views of Lake Ontario

Olmsted, Burley, Friedlander, James

Troubled Waters

No Parks?

Gardens and Parks Can Sometimes Cheat

Direct from Nature

George Ranalli, architect and model maker, 1977-, George Ranalli, model maker 1946-, Aaron McDonald, model maker active ca. 1995 and Julie Shurtz, model maker active ca. 1995

Put man into possession of his own Earth

New Tropicality

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First, the Forests

A lecture by Dan Handel

Forestry can be considered an activity that creates highly designed environments with unprecedented scale, ambition and precision through apparently abstract systems. It is the disciplining of natural environments to the logic of artificial organizations.

There are four productive and culturally specific modes of managing forests: bureaucratic forestry, scientific forestry, tropical forestry and economic forestry. Each of these corresponds to specific geographies and phases in the evolution of modern forestry, from 16th century lists of forests and their owners in the republic of Venice, to architectural experiments in 1960s America.

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Dan Handel was CCA Young Curator in 2011 and curated the exhibition First, the Forests.

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First, the Forests

A lecture by Dan Handel

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