Media Matters in Landscape Architecture

by Keith Vandersys, Karen M'Closkey (Editor)

Overview

Media Matters in Landscape Architecture makes a unique contribution to landscape architectural praxis for its explicit framing of “environmental media” in terms of its dual meaning within our discipline. In the sciences, environmental media are the materials of the natural world—soils, air, water, plants, microbes.

Within STS and media studies, “environmental media” refers broadly to the relationship between environmental issues—such as pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change—and the creation and application of the tools, interfaces, and images, through which information about these issues is conveyed. This book focuses on how these two distinct understandings of environmental media coalesce within the discipline of landscape architecture and other spatial design fields.

Authors from a wide-range of disciplines—landscape architecture, media studies, history of science, civil engineering, ecology, planning, and architecture—examine how the creation and use of data, images, and models acts as intermediaries—the mediums through which a particular understanding of “environment” or “landscape” arises. This framing of environmental media emphasizes the relationships among various design media and the specific material and social environments within which they operate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781957183671
Publisher:	Applied Research & Design
Publication date:	10/01/2025
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Karen M’Closkey is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design and Editor in Chief of LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture.

Karen M’Closkey + Keith VanDerSys (eds) are faculty in landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design and co-founders of PEG office of landscape + architecture and Penn’s Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab). Their work in the EMLab specializes in environmental simulation modeling and remote sensing related to designing and monitoring natural infrastructure in coastal environments. The work has been acknowledged through numerous awards, exhibitions, and fellowships, including a PEW Fellowship in the Arts, and has appeared in over 70 design publications.

Read an Excerpt

“Advances in earth observation and environmental remote sensing have opened unprecedented opportunities for landscape monitoring, analysis, and interpretation using customizable instruments, state-of-the-art imaging products, and novel types of derived datasets.” (Iryna Dronova) “Forests have become increasingly digitalized. Whether to prevent deforestation or enhance carbon storage, smart forest technologies are often programmed to optimize or augment particular forest services for addressing the climate crisis.” (Jennifer Gabryś) “There is an increasing dependency on systems of digital imaging and sensing technologies to monitor the environment and produce environmental data at a planetary scale.” (Lila Lee-Morrison) “Lakes have played a crucial role in the history of geodesy both as reference points for local measurements and as objects of scientific inquiry.” (Wilko Graf von Hardenberg)