The Spoils of Dust

Once the third-largest lake in California and among the world’s greatest sources of dust, for decades the dried Owens Lake was merely a footnote to the most notorious water grab in modern history. Now, the desert lake has undergone an ingenious “redemption” that tenuously preserves Los Angeles’s main water supply and controls the dust. In The Spoils of Dust this “bargain” redemption and its conjuring of an ecologically rich “lake-like” landscape is the backdrop for investigating contemporary relationships between landscape architecture, engineering, and perception. Assembled atop a barren waste, the Promethean lake reveals the frameworks we use to reinvent nature in the Anthropocene. Whether by dust “drawings” or birding fieldwork, the new, water-wise lake is an awkward and beguiling monument to the prismatic ways we know and value landscapes today. Unexpectedly, this has made its imaginative design the linchpin for critical water resource decisions, thrusting landscape architecture into a consequential position. The book concludes with a landscape atlas and robotic interface for a playful and integrated approach to landscape infrastructure design.