Landscape Futures Arrives

[Image: Internal title page from Landscape Futures; book design by Everything-Type-Company].

At long last, after a delay from the printer, Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions is finally out and shipping internationally.

I am incredibly excited about the book, to be honest, and about the huge variety of content it features. It includes original essays by Sam Jacob, Cassim Shepard, and Elizabeth Ellsworth & Jamie Kruse of Smudge Studio; a short piece of dredge-themed landscape fiction by Pushcart Prize-winning author Scott Geiger; and a readymade course outline—open for anyone looking to teach a course on oceanographic instrumentation—by Mammoth's Rob Holmes.

These join reprints of classic texts by geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, on the incipient fossilization of our cities 100 million years from now; a look at the perverse history of weather warfare and the possibility of planetary-scale climate manipulation by James Fleming; and a brilliant analysis of the Temple of Dendur, currently held deep in the controlled atmosphere of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and its implications for architectural preservation elsewhere.

And even these are complemented by an urban hiking tour by the Center for Land Use Interpretation that takes you up into the hills of Los Angeles to visit check dams, debris basins, radio antennas, and cell phone towers, and a series of ultra-short stories set in a Chicago yet to come by Pruned's Alexander Trevi.

[Images: A few spreads from the "Landscape Futures Sourcebook" featured in Landscape Futures; book design by Everything-Type-Company].

Of course, everything just listed supplements and expands on the heart of the book, which documents the eponymous exhibition hosted at the Nevada Museum of Art, featuring specially commissioned work by Smout Allen, David Gissen, and The Living, and pre-existing work by Liam Young, Chris Woebken & Kenichi Okada, and Lateral Office.

Extensive original interviews with the exhibiting architects and designers, and a long curator's essay—describing the exhibition's focus on the intermediary devices, instruments, and spatial machines that can fundamentally transform how human beings perceive and understand the landscapes around them—complete the book, in addition to hundreds of images, many maps, and an extensive use of metallic and fluorescent inks.

The book is currently only $17.97 on Amazon.com, as well, which seems like an almost unbelievable deal; now is an awesome time to buy a copy.

[Images: Interview spreads from Landscape Futures; book design by Everything-Type-Company].

In any case, I've written about Landscape Futures here before, and an exhaustive preview of it can be seen in this earlier post.

I just wanted to put up a notice that the book is finally shipping worldwide, with a new publication date of August 2013, and I look forward to hearing what people think. Enjoy!

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Blogger Phaeton said...

Any chance of an ebook version?

August 13, 2013 8:17 PM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Phaeton, alas, no, at least not that I am aware of. But, as a fan of paper, I think it's a pretty solid tome to carry out and read.

August 13, 2013 9:37 PM  
Blogger Jared Nagel said...

I'm really enjoying it so far, but it makes me wish I could have seen the related exhibit.

August 14, 2013 12:02 PM  
Blogger Elliott Bledsoe said...

"I am incredibly excited about the book" so am i! it is en route at the moment. if only we could track its journey!

August 16, 2013 4:43 AM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Jared, I would have loved for the exhibition to travel a bit but, unfortunately, it was a one-venue gig. Glad you're enjoying the book, though.

And thanks, Elliot, for the enthusiasm! Looking forward to hearing what you think.

August 16, 2013 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Dave Irwin said...

Congrats Geoff! Looking forward to checking it out- front to back cover.

Take care!

August 17, 2013 10:35 PM  
Anonymous The World Archive said...

Great stuff. Is it matt or glossy paper?

August 19, 2013 10:52 AM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Thanks, Dave!

It's on matte, uncoated paper, a little thinner and more flexible than the BLDGBLOG Book (it feels great to hold, if I do say so myself...).

August 19, 2013 1:59 PM  

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