the book will take you about an hour to read. not sure if it was intentional, but there is a lot of white space (dross). thom mayne is a name-dropper.

Haven't looked at Drosscape although I look forward to doing so. His other book, Reclaiming the American West, is excellent. Very much in the vein of Jim Cormer's Taking Measures across the American Landscape.

I was in a studio two years ago that was heavily involved with the remediation of a toxic mine site. Berger came to speak to the studio over a day or two and he was great, you can tell by the way he thinks and speaks that the cultural and even artistic implications of these types of landscapes are, for him, totally wound up and inseperable from their political, scientific, and economic aspects.

I think he also has an essay in an anthology called Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, but I haven't read that one yet, either.

I know nothing about the book but I leafed through it for about 20 seconds in the bookstore yesterday and immediately got significantly depressed. It should be subtitled something like "Images of Gut-Wrenching Ugliness".

i just so happen to have the book sitting next to me right now...

here are berger's strategies for designing with drosscapes:

one: dross is understood as a natural component of every dynamically evolving city. as such it is an indicator of healthy urban growth.

two: drosscapes accumulate in the wake of the socio- and spatio-economic processes of deindustrialization, post-Fordism, and technological innovation.

three: drosscapes require the designer to shift thinking from tacit and explicit knowledge (designer as sole expert and authority) to complex interactive and responsive processing (designer as collaborator and negotiator).

four: the designer does not rely on the client-consultant relationship or the contractual agreement to begin work. in many cases a client many not even exist but will need to be searched out and custom-fit in order to match the designer's research discoveries. in this way the designer is the consummate spokesperson for the productive integration of waste landscape in the urban world.

five: drosscapes are interstitial. the designer integrates waste landscapes left over from any form or type of development.

six: the adaptability and occupation of drosscapes depend upon qualities associated with decontamination, health, safety, and reprogramming. the designer must act, at times, as the conductor and at times the agent of these effects in order to slow down or speed them up.

seven: drosscapes may be unsightly. there is little concern for contextual precedence, and resources are scarce for the complete scenic amelioration of drosscapes that are located in the declining, neglected, and deindustrializing areas of cities.

eight: drosscapes may be visually pleasing. wasteful landscapes are purposefully built within all types of new development located on the leading, peripheral edges of urbanization. the designer must discern which types of "waste" may be productively reintegrated for higher social, cultural, and environmental benefits.

i'm currently writing a paper to be presented at a conference that sorta centers around these ideas (particularly strategy #8)... if you can find a copy (i tried to find it on the web without any luck) you should also check out Lars Lerup's essay Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metropolis

architphil, that sounds really interesting, can you tell us anything more about the conference?

berger did his grad schooling at penn- not sure the year, but he's buddies with corner. last I checked, berger was teaching at CU-Boulder.

I'm definitely hearing 'scape envy on this thread.



midwesternchic -welcome to archinect-

this is my alias

765, i mentioned the conference on thread central, but it is the 51st annual world congress of the international federation of housing and planning... it will be held in copenhagen at the end of september... keynote speakers include rem koolhaas, jan gehl, ricky burdett, and ken yeang... the theme is "futures of cities: impacts, indicators, implementations"

the paper that i will be presenting will be examining left over spaces in the city (particularly ones that are "designed" into the suburban development patterns like setbacks, parking lots, and rights of way) and suggesting strategies about how these spaces can be used in beneficial ways as public spaces, ecological habitats, etc...

Update

Review
This book is a natural extension of the direction Alan Berger took in his first book Reclaiming the American West. While in his first book he examined the "leftover" space, of human industrial development in the American West in his new book he examines the range of wasted spaces which are created by current urban development patterns. Although specifically about the American urban landscape, his work can be at least loosely applied anywhere where sprawl or horizontal urbanity has become the norm. A key aim of his book is to go beyond the partisan debate of pro-or anti sprawl activists. Instead, Berger sets out to initiate a conversation and to develop a vocabulary through which this phenomenon of "inevitable" horizontal development can be understood and critiqued. However, this is arguably one weakness of the book. Although he develops a wonderful analysis of the phenomenon, his acceptance of it's inevitably, especially in the face of the efforts of many to change the game, can come off as defeatist. Yet, his focus on the liminal nature of the typologies he outlines does open up many fascinating areas of discussion. For inspiration he draws on everything from William Gibson's Neuromancer to Lars Lerups' concept of Stim & Dross. Ultimately, his approach is hopeful though. He concludes that because of the large scale nature of the problem, any solution must draw on abilities and knowledge of all the design disciplines from landscape architecture to urban planning. Berger suggests a paradigm shift, asking "designers to consider working in the margins rather than at the center."



Review posted here
http://archinect.com/books/detail.php?id=65006_0_25_0_C

nam- thanks for the critique. I've been looking forward to reading this book for a few weeks. just need to find the 70 bucks it costs...

is well past now, architphil, but how was conference?

i was supposed to present a paper there but my uni wouldn't fund the trip so am really envious that you got to go.

@ treekiller,
My pleasure....
@ Architphil yes, how was the conference?
Care to enlighten us