Landscapes of Housing: Design and Planning in the History of Environmental Thought

In the twenty-first century, housing has become a site of ecological experimentation and environmental remediation. From the vantage point of contemporary architecture, conservation concerns and emergent building science technologies support one another, with new processes and materials deployed to reduce energy usage, water consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. Landscapes of Housing examines this trend in historical perspective, arguing for a more considered environmental vision that includes the organic, social, and cultural dimensions of landscape. By shifting the focus from architecture, the book highlights and critiques the relationship between dwelling and landscape itself. Contributors from a wide range of international perspectives propose a more integrative ecology that includes history, culture, society, and materiality, in addition to technology, within contemporary ecological housing programs. This book will be a resource for upper-level students, academics, and researchers in landscape architecture interested in the social and political implications of ecological housing.

Jeanne Haffner is director and chief curator of the Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center. She is the author of The View from Above: The Science of Social Space (2013) and has written for Arch+, BBC Radio 3, The Guardian, Urban Omnibus, Landscape Architecture Magazine, the Hudson River Valley Review, and other publications. She was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in urban landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection (Harvard) and has held visiting positions at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University in Berlin. She has taught at Harvard and Brown Universities and holds a Certificate in GIS from the Harvard University Center for Geographic Analysis.