Customer Reviews

Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape

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Niall Kirkwood has edited a very interesting panorama on the problems of wastelands and brownfields from the overview of the landscape researchers [what they insist in calling "manufactured sites"].
The book presents many well analysed study-cases and has a collection of theorethical texts produced by the editor and invited colleagues that covers many voids on this fundamental theme to better understand our complex and mutant cities.
We just remain intriguing on the resistant use by the authors on terms and concepts well developed by many expertises on the problem, mainly the architects: the "terrain vague" classic concept developed by the Catalan Ignaci de Solá-Morales; "wastelands" and "brownfields" by many American authors; "urban voids" used by many European thinkers [Koolhaas] to describe and analyse these residual spaces, usually derived from the post-industrial territory.

Adapted from the review by J. William Thompson

"This book is the proceedings of an extraordinary conference held at the Harvard's Graduate School of Design in the spring of 1998, organized by Niall Kirkwood, ASLA, a GSD professor and editor of this volume
The purpose of this book appears to be to provide a thoughtful overview of current approaches and issues that includes numerous case studies of actual sites, including such well-known brownfield redevelopments as Duisburg Nord in Germany, Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, and the Sydney Olympic's site.
Overall the value of this volume is in making a bold start at "rethinking the post-industrial landscape", as the subtitle suggests. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the book is the gritty, substantive role it charts for landscape architects in brownfield reclamation"

'Manufactured Sites' edited by N. Kirkwood resulted from a conference in 1998 at Harvard that presented complex
contaminated industrial sites and their cleanup and reuse.
It assembles authorities on the science, engineering, planning and design of brownfields and other remediated
sites and is necessary for anyone involved in the reuse of these landscapes. Simply the only book addressing the intersection of different disciplines and fields who have to confront the legacy of the 20th century industrialization.