The Spoils of Dust

Reinventing The Lake That Made Los Angeles

$30.00

Once the third largest lake in California, and among the world’s greatest air pollution offenders, the deadened Owens Lake was for decades merely a catastrophic footnote to the most notorious water grab in modern history…

SKU: 90698
Size: 7″ x 10″ Portrait
Pages: 256pp
Binding: Softbound with flaps
Publication Date: Fall 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940743-48-6
Rights World: Available

SKU: 90698 Categories: , , Tag:

Description

“The Promethean lake reveals the frameworks we use to reinvent nature”

Additional information

Size

7" x 10" Portrait

Pages

256pp

Binding

Softbound with flaps

Publication date

Fall 2018

ISBN

978-1-940743-48-6

Rights world

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Details

Overview

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.

Authors

Alexander Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture & Urbanism program in the University of Southern California School of Architecture, and principal of the Office of Outdoor Research/LMLab in Los Angeles, California. A landscape architect, researcher, and scholar, he is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a lifelong explorer of the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierras. His research advances the design craft of large-scale, multifunctional infrastructures through a synthesis of historical analysis, advanced design tools, and public engagement. His last book, coauthored with Liat Margolis, is Living Systems: Innovative Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2007), a treatise on landscapes as material performance systems

Additional Info

SKU: 90698
Size: 7″ x 10″ Portrait
Pages: 256pp
Binding: Softbound with flaps
Publication Date: Fall 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940743-48-6
Rights World: Available


The Spoils of Dust

“The Promethean lake reveals the frameworks we use to reinvent nature”

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Tel: +(86) 755-84556863

CONTACT US
USA - San Francisco Bay Area
Tel: +1(415) 883-3300
Asia - Singapore & China
Tel: +(65) 9068-1860
Tel: +(86) 755-84556863

CONTACT US
USA - San Francisco Bay Area
Tel: +1(415) 883-3300
USA - New York
Tel: +1(646) 322-2466
Asia - Singapore & China
Tel: +(65) 9068-1860
Tel: +(86) 755-84556863

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