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Environment

05.20.13: Daniel A. Barber

Hubbert’s Peak, Eneropa, and the Visualization of Renewable Energy
On Places, Daniel Barber traces the energy debates back to the postwar era, when leading scientists argued that shifting from fossil fuels to renewables was not just technically feasible but also ethically necessary.
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04.18.13: Dennis DeHart

Confluences
On Places, photographs by Dennis DeHart examine a landscape of contradictions in the Inland Pacific Northwest.
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03.25.13: James Barilla

My Backyard Jungle
On Places, James Barilla writes about the process of turning his backyard in Columbia, South Carolina, into certified wildlife habitat.
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03.19.13: Mark Feldman

Illuminating the Petrochemical Landscape
On Places, Mark Feldman reviews collaborative projects that blend photography with environmental activism, including Petrochemical America and Arctic Voices.
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02.07.13: Armando Carbonell

Nowhere and Everywhere: The Landscape of the Colorado Delta
On Places, planner Armando Carbonell explores, in aerial photographs, the fragile yet resilient landscapes of the Colorado River Delta.
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01.31.13: Kristi Dykema Cheramie & Michael Pasquier

The Lost Graves of the Morganza Floodway
On Places, Kristi Dykema Cheramie and Michael Pasquier tell the story of a small Louisiana church relocated by Mississippi River engineers so the area could be designated as floodable territory.
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01.28.13: Richard Campanella

Beneficial Use: Toward Balancing America's (Sediment) Budget
On Places, Richard Campanella argues that the promethean geo-engineering of our river systems has resulted in the catastrophic erosion of our coasts — and proposes one potential solution.
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12.06.12: Michael Light & Aaron Rothman

Above Lake Las Vegas
On Places, aerial photographs of the bankrupt luxury communities of Lake Las Vegas, by Michael Light.
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10.25.12: Terry Evans & Alan Thomas

Heartland
On Places, a portfolio by photographer Terry Evans documents the "disturbed, cultivated, militarized" landscapes of her native American Midwest; with commentary by Alan Thomas.
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10.19.12: Josh Wallaert

Countrymen
On Places, a poem by Josh Wallaert, from the chapbook A Guide to the Northwest Territory.
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10.17.12: David Bacher

Far North
On Places, photographer David Bacher documents the semi-nomadic Laevas Sami community of northern Scandinavia, which now moves fluidly between tradition and modernity.
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10.15.12: Robert Macfarlane

Ice
On Places, Robert Macfarlane recounts his journey to the "formidably difficult" Minya Konka, in western China, which has long attracted devout Buddhists and intrepid mountaineers.
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10.11.12: Richard Campanella

What the Nation’s Best-Educated Amateur Planners Learned from Hurricane Isaac. And Gustav. And Rita and Katrina. And Cindy, Ivan, Lili, Isidore, and Georges.
On Places, geographer Richard Campanella analyzes the many lessons that New Orleanians have learned from weathering powerful hurricanes — and he argues that the toughest test is yet to come.
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09.06.12: Daniel Kariko & Aaron Rothman

Storm Season
On Places, a portfolio by photographer Daniel Kariko records the fragile and changing landscapes of the barrier islands of southern Louisiana.
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09.04.12: James Barilla

The Vernacular of Disaster
On Places, in the midst of storm season, James Barilla explores the links between place, weather and disaster, and the increasingly global language of environmental catastrophe.
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08.28.12: Aaron Rothman, David La Spina, Ed Panar & Michael Vahrenwald

Landscape Photography: New Visions, Part 5
On Places, the fifth installment in a month-long series, curated by Aaron Rothman, on currents in landscape photography.
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08.21.12: Aaron Rothman, Bryan Graf, Christina Seely, Kirsten Kay Thoen & Letha Wilson

Landscape Photography: New Visions, Part 4
On Places, the fourth installment in a month-long series, curated by Aaron Rothman, on currents in landscape photography.
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08.14.12: Aaron Rothman, Bleda y Rosa, Patrick Manning, Richard Mosse & Stephen Tourlentes

Landscape Photography: New Visions, Part 3
On Places, the third installment in a month-long series, curated by Aaron Rothman, on currents in landscape photography.
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08.08.12: Aaron Rothman, Matthew Brandt, William Lamson, Chris McCaw & Mieke Woestenburg

Landscape Photography: New Visions, Part 2
On Places, the second installment in a month-long series, curated by Aaron Rothman, on currents in landscape photography.
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08.01.12: Aaron Rothman, Marisa Baumgartner, Guillermo Gudiño & Dan Holdsworth

Landscape Photography: New Visions
On Places, the first installment in a month-long series, curated by Aaron Rothman, on currents in landscape photography.
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06.18.12: Ian Baldwin

Rolling to a Stop
On Places, Ian Baldwin reviews ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking and Reinventing the Automobile.
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06.04.12: David Heymann

An Un-flushable Urinal: The Aesthetic Potential of Sustainability
On Places, David Heymann explores the unmet challenge of developing the "radical aesthetic potential" of sustainability in architecture.
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05.17.12: Eric William Carroll

Plato's Home Movies
On Places, a portfolio of images by photographer Eric William Carroll, who set up a projection screen in Golden Gate Park and laid out blueprint paper on the sidewalks of Brooklyn to capture ephemeral portraits of trees.
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05.10.12: Zhang Xiao & Aaron Rothman

The Last Days of Kaixian
On Places, a slideshow by Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao, documenting the last town to be submerged by the reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam; with an introduction by Aaron Rothman.
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04.26.12: Mark Feldman

Visualizing the Ends of Oil
On Places, Mark Feldman looks closely at how the photographers Edward Burtynsky and Chris Jordan have each struggled to visualize and critique the effects of our dependence on oil.
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04.02.12: Adelheid Fischer

Shaking Hands with a Sloth
On Places, Adelheid Fischer examines the links between biomimicry and design education, and argues that "the very act of looking to nature is conducive to creativity."
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03.29.12: Robert Adams & Aaron Rothman

We Are in a Western Town
On Places, Aaron Rothman explores the enduring power of the photographs of Robert Adams, and what they reveal about the paradoxical landscape of the American West.
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03.21.12: Hadley Arnold & Peter Arnold

Drylands: Water and the West
On Places, an essay and slideshow by Peter Arnold and Hadley Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute, on what they call "the largest and least understood environmental challenge of the 21st century."
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03.06.12: Giovanna Borasi & Mirko Zardini

Demedicalize Architecture
On Places, Canadian Centre for Architecture curators Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi explore the changing social and political concepts of “healthy” buildings and cities.
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01.26.12: Michael Lundgren, Aaron Rothman & Josh Wallaert

If There Be Such Space
On Places, a slideshow drawn from a collaborative exhibition by two photographers who share an interest in the perception and representation of natural landscapes.
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01.23.12: Austin Troy

Thirsty City
On Places, Austin Troy assesses the massive infrastructure required to bring water to the arid American West — and the huge amount of energy that makes it possible to take a shower in Los Angeles.
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11.10.11: Andrew Ross

Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City
On Places, Andrew Ross analyzes the contradictory political and economic forces that once made Phoenix the fastest-growing city in the U.S. — and today a prime casualty of the crash.
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09.22.11: Laura Tepper

Road Ecology: Wildlife Habitat and Highway Design
On Places, Laura Tepper looks at the emerging field of road ecology and its influence on a new generation of highway landscape design.
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09.06.11: James Barilla

The Road to Exurbia
On Places, James Barilla recounts the rural pleasures of growing up in a hill town in Western Massachusetts — yet regrets the deep environmental footprint of low-density exurban life.
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08.22.11: Barry Lopez

Dixon Marsh
On Places, a short story by Barry Lopez set in the Petersen Mountains on the Nevada-California border.
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08.15.11: Anthony Doerr

Village 113
On Places, a short story by Anthony Doerr set in a Chinese village soon to be drowned by the Three Gorges Dam.
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07.14.11: David T. Hanson

Colstrip, Montana
On Places, a photo essay by David T. Hanson, focusing on the massive coal mine at Colstrip, Montana, and the complicated nexus of energy politics and land use in the American West.
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06.20.11: Adelheid Fischer

Starry Night
On Places, Adelheid Fischer describes the growing night-sky movement, which advocates for the cultural and biological benefits of reducing light pollution — and keeping the Milky Way visible.
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05.31.11: Martin Hogue

A Short History of the Campsite
On Places, Martin Hogue traces a history of the campsite, from early 20th-century wilderness camps to today's domesticated campgrounds, where the amenities include day spas and wi-fi.
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04.18.11: Timothy Beatley

Blue Urbanism: The City and the Ocean
On Places, planning professor Tim Beatley makes a case for blue urbanism — a new planning focus on how the design of cities affects the health of the planet's oceans.
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03.21.11: Kristi Dykema Cheramie

The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River
On Places, Kristi Dykema Cheramie explores the ruins of the abandoned Mississippi River Basin Model and ponders the decades-long battle to control the great river.
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02.24.11: Dorothy Tang & Andrew Watkins

Ecologies of Gold: The Past and Future Mining Landscapes of Johannesburg
On Places, Dorothy Tang and Andrew Watkins explore the ecological rehabilitation of the defunct gold mines of central Johannesburg.
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01.24.11: Karen Piper

Dreams, Dust and Birds: The Trashing of Owens Lake
On Places, Karen Piper narrates the latest chapter in one California's longest water wars: Los Angeles' efforts to undo the environmental damage done to Owens Lake, decades after its waters were diverted to supply the thirsty metropolis.
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12.13.10: David Heymann

Site, Ascendant
On Places, the last installment of David Heymann's series on the rising importance of landscape to architecture, seen in works by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Peter Zumthor, OMA, Zaha Hadid, and others.
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12.06.10: David Heymann

Nature-ization Takes Command
On Places, the second in a series of essays by David Heymann exploring the dynamic relationship of landscape and architecture, evident in works ranging from big civic projects by Norman Foster to small rural houses by Glenn Murcutt.
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11.04.10: Charles Waldheim

Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism
On Places, Charles Waldheim sketches a history of agriculture in cities, from Frank Lloyd Wright to ecological urbanism.
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10.21.10: Javier Arbona

Dangers in the Air: Aerosol Architecture and Invisible Landscapes
On Places, Javier Arbona looks at innovative projects that conceptualize air — the atmosphere that surrounds us — as a dynamic and even political component of buildings and landscapes.
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09.09.10: Elizabeth Mossop and Jeffrey Carney

In the Mississippi Delta: Building with Water
On Places, Elizabeth Mossop and Jeffrey Carney report on the work of the Coastal Sustainability Studio at Louisiana State University, which is proposing long-range solutions to the environmental and social challenges of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
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09.07.10: Richard Campanella

New Fuel for an Old Narrative: Notes on the BP Oil Disaster
On Places, geographer Richard Campanella recalls a long hot summer, and sets the BP oil spill into the complex environmental and cultural contexts of America's third coast.
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06.02.10: Alejandro Bahamón & Maria Camila Sanjinés

Rematerial: From Waste to Architecture
On Places, Rematerial: From Waste to Architecture: a gallery of architecture projects constructed from discarded materials, ranging from recycled tires to repurposed refrigerators to the steel supports of a dismantled expressway.
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05.10.10: Timothy Beatley

Green Metropolis
On Places, urban planning professor Timothy Beatley, author of Green Urbanism, reviews Green Metropolis, by David Owen, which argues that Manhattan is the greenest city in the U.S.
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04.22.10: Paho Mann & Nancy Levinson

The Art of Solid Waste
On Places, a slideshow of photographer Paho Mann's images of post-consumer detritus — a.k.a. trash — part of a new public art project at a solid waste facility in Phoenix, Arizona.
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04.08.10: Mimi Zeiger

Two Feet High and Rising: On Optimism, Speculation and Oysters
On Places, Mimi Zeiger reviews MoMA's ambitious new architecture and urban design show, Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront, which explores how New York Harbor might be adapted in the face of rising sea levels.
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04.01.10: Richard Campanella

Delta Urbanism and New Orleans: After
On Places, the second of a two-part essay by Richard Campanella, on the ongoing struggles of New Orleans to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
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03.29.10: Richard Campanella

Delta Urbanism and New Orleans: Before
On Places, an excerpt from Delta Urbanism: New Orleans, geographer Richard Campanella's account of the ongoing environmental and political struggles of post-Katrina New Orleans — and why a great American city remains pathetically vulnerable to further catastrophe.
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02.03.10: Aaron Rothman

This Place is a Message
On Places, a portfolio of recent photographs of natural and built landscapes by Arizona-based artist and photographer Aaron Rothman.
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11.14.09: Center for Land Use Interpretation

Urban Crude
An online gallery extracted from Urban Crude, an exhibition created by the Center for Land Use Interpretation, documenting the metropolitan petroscape of Los Angeles.
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10.17.09: Charlie Cannon

Partly Sunny
Partly Sunny — an exhibition curated and produced at the Rhode Island School of Design — showcases three dozen projects and programs that are successfully confronting the challenges of climate change.
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09.12.09: Nicole Huber & Ralph Stern

Urbanizing the Mojave
America's greatest boomtown has gone bust. Architects Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern explore the cultural and environmental consequences of the rapid expansion of Las Vegas into the Mojave Desert, tracing a troubled history of mining, militarization, tourism, and water politics.
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10.15.08: UrbanLab

Growing Water
Growing Water is a bold proposal by a team of Chicago urban designers for how cities can ensure the availability of an increasingly scarce resource.
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10.15.08: Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt & Adam Yarinsky

On the Water: The New York/New Jersey Harbor
As the planet warms, rising seas will endanger coastal communities around the world. Engineer Guy Nordenson proposes a bold plan to protect New York City.
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05.28.07: Alexandra Lange

Fantasy Island
The fantasy of converting Governors Island to a pedestrian playground is closer to becoming a reality.
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07.15.83: Kathy Halbreich, William Porter and Lois Craig

An Interview with James Turrell
A 1983 interview with James Turrell, then beginning his transformation of the Roden Crater. The monumental work is scheduled to open to the public in 2012.
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