Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America [Hardcover]

Keller Easterling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1999

The dominant architectures in our culture of development consist of generic protocols for building offices, airports, houses, and highways. For Keller Easterling these organizational formats are not merely the context of design efforts—they are the design. Bridging the gap between architecture and infrastructure, Easterling views architecture as part of an ecology of interrelationships and linkages, and she treats the expression of organizational character as part of the architectural endeavor.

Easterling also makes the case that these organizational formats are improvisational and responsive to circumstantial change, to mistakes, anomalies, and seemingly illogical market forces. By treating these irregularities opportunistically, she offers architects working within the customary development protocols new sites for making and altering space.

By showing the reciprocal relations between systems of thinking and modes of designing, Easterling establishes unexpected congruencies between natural and built environments, virtual and physical systems, highway and communication networks, and corporate and spatial organizations. She frames her unconventional notion of site not in terms of singular entities, but in terms of relationships between multiple sites that are both individually and collectively adjustable.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In its innovations of form, its depth of research, its acute analysis, and its enormous relevance, this is a remarkable work. Keller Easterling has written one of the most original works about the American environment I've ever read."
—Michael Sorkin, architect, Institute for Urbanism, Vienna

From the Inside Flap

In her book, Easterling does not so much supply new design instruments as successfully reveal those forces and principles which have more impact on the spatial organization of our physical environment than the work of architects and urban planners. Her analysis of subdivision cries out to applied to today's output of business parks and shopping malls. The tightly structured nature of the text makes it well suited to repeated and selective reading. —Tom Leenders, Archis, no.10 (October 2000)

Easterling challenges us as designers and planners to engage our attention in territories whose history and culture we generally ignore. Her focus on the structuring elements of landscape is certainly compelling for anyone steeped in morphological research and refreshing as well, as she shifts our attention from the narrow field of urban and architectural typology to the infrastructural armature provided by the three systems of landscape, infrastructure and subdivision. —Jacqueline Tatom, Urban Morphology, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2001)

Easterling astutely deploys her interest in network architecture to examine historical American territories-landscapes, highways and houses. the historical information Easterling provides is rich and rewarding, and one can only hope that others will follow her lead in charting the architecture of networks. —Ralph Stern, AA Files, no. 42 (Autumn 2000)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 215 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262050617
• ISBN-13: 978-0262050616
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,921,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.