Faculty
Niall G. Kirkwood
Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture
Research
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Manufactured Sites Conference and Exhibition
Spring 1998
"Manufactured Sites, A Landscape Conference on Site Technologies for Contemporary Practice" was held on April 3 and 4, 1998, at Gund Hall, Harvard University. This conference brought to the Graduate School of Design an international panel of scientists, landscape practitioners, and industry representatives who presented current research and case studies of progressive site technologies and their application to environmentally disturbed sites. Critical knowledge was introduced concerning innovative site technologies which address these conditions alongside discussion of the emerging landscape design possibilities arising from them.
Speakers included: George Hargreaves
Polluted city riverways and wetlands, derelict waterfronts, landfills, railroad yards, and abandoned industrial processing plants, -- these are the emerging sites of contemporary practice in landscape architecture, urban design, and site architecture. Characterized as waste, despoiled, and toxic, these landscapes are initially dependant for their reuse on a range of site engineering and environmental reclamation technologies. These include on-site techniques of soil and groundwater cleanup, bioengineering, the alliance of biological and engineered systems used in the remediation of site contamination, landfill capping, wastewater management systems, and environmental monitoring. New federal initiatives and legislation on the cleanup of these contaminated and hazardous land and waterbodies, their critical locations within regional transportation centers and infrastructure, and the dimishing number of "greenfield" sites available for development, all currently act to focus research, planning, and design efforts on their potential for future development. In the Manufactured Sites exhibition, however, the main issue to be addressed is not whether landscapes of this type should be reclaimed, restored, or redeveloped, but, rather, the precise nature of how this is to be carried out, and specifically, the relationship of landscape design to the site technologies used in this endeavor.
The title and material of the exhibition offers two possible interpretations. The first simply denotes the former uses of these landscapes as "sites of manufacture", for example, as the location of chemical and oil storage facilities, town gas production, railroad yards, heavy industrial plants or more recently, decommissioned factories and marine terminals. Secondly, and of greater significance to planners and designers, manufactured sites is a potential framework to be used in the future description, analysis, and development of urban landscapes. In this framework, the continuous occupation of land and water bodies with industrial and site processes is acknowledged. The designer looks to the current physical site conditions, however degraded, the spatial and systematic form of new technologies introduced onto the site, and the interaction of these technologies with progressive landscape design practices in the "manufacture" or systematic production of the future site. Ten contemporary international and regional professional landscape reclamation and redevelopment projects are represented here through drawings, models, and sets of site construction photographs. Some have been completed as part of new civic infrastructure and building programs, while others, such as the site of the Olympic 2000 Games in Australia, are still currently under design and construction. At the forefront of current national and international scrutiny, a broad range of initial site conditions are addressed, ranging from the reuse of the A. G. Thyssen steelworks and blast furnace plant in Germany's Ruhr region, the restoration of a contaminated marsh in the Hudson River Estuary near Staten Island, to landfilling operations at Hillingdon, near London's Heathrow Airport, Byxbee Park, Palo Alto, California, and Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor. This exhibition was organized and curated by Niall G. Kirkwood, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Rebecca Krinke, Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture, and Brooke Hodge, Director of Exhibitions, with support from George Hargreaves, Chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Final assistance in preparing for the exhibition was provided by Kim Everett and James Stone of the Graduate School of Design.
PROJECTS:
1996-present Hargreaves Associates Landscape Architecture, Urban Design & Planning, San Francisco, CA. with Government Architectural Design Directorate, Sydney, Australia
1991-present Latz + Partner Landscape Architects, Kranzberg, Germany
1994-present Hargreaves Associates Landscape Architecture, Urban Design & Planning, San Francisco, CA.
1998 Martha Schwartz, Inc. Landscape Architects, Cambridge, MA
1988-92 Hargreaves Associates Landscape Architecture, Urban Design & Planning, San Francisco, CA.
1991-present Brown and Rowe, Inc. Landscape Architects and Planners, Boston, MA
1990 City of New York Parks and Recreation, Natural Resources Group, New York, NY.
1985-present
1981-present
1992-present Ove Arup & Partners, Consulting Engineers, London, England
Selected Current Research Projects, 1998-2000
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