New Geographies #2: LANDSCAPES OF ENERGY @ Storefront

Please join New Geographies for the presentation of NG02: Landscapes of Energy Speakers: Rania Ghosn, Hashim Sarkis, Charles Waldheim. Energy infrastructures deploy space at a large scale, yet they remain invisible because the creation of value in the oil regime has long externalized spatial costs, sliding them out of sight and away from design’s agency. Contemporary environmental, political, and financial crises have brought energy once again to the forefront of design concerns. Rarely, however, do practices of sustainable design—efficient building skins, islands of self-sufficiency, positive-energy machines—address the spatiality of energy systems. Instead, they tend to emphasize a renewable/nonrenewable binary that associates environmental costs exclusively with the infrastructure of oil and overlooks the geographic imperative of all forms of energy. Volume 2 of New Geographies proposes to historicize and materialize the relations of energy and space, and map some of the physical, social, and representational geographies of oil, in particular. By making visible this infrastructure, Landscapes of Energy is an invitation to articulate design’s environmental agency and its appropriate scales of intervention. Contributors to New Geographies #2 include: Ivan Illich, John May, Carola Hein, Gavin Bridge, Abdellatif Benachenhou and El Hadi Jazairy, Santiago del Hierro and Gary Leggett, Andrew Barry, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Geoffrey Thün and Kathy Velikov, Martin Melosi, Maria Kaika, Geoff Manaugh, Pierre Bélanger, Kazys Varnelis and Robert Sumrell, Jean Robert, Mirko Zardini. The Panelists: Rania Ghosn is an architect, geographer, and doctoral candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Her dissertation explores the territoriality of energy transport through the historical case study of an oil pipeline across the Middle East. Rania received her bachelor’s in architecture from the American University of Beirut and a holds a master in geography degree from University College London. Hashim Sarkis is the Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He teaches design studios and courses in the history and theory of architecture. Sarkis also directs the Aga Khan Program at the GSD. Sarkis is a practicing architect between Cambridge and Lebanon. His projects include the award winning housing complex for the fishermen of Tyre, a park in downtown Beirut, two schools in the North Lebanon region, and several urban and landscape projects. He is author of several books and articles including Circa 1958: Lebanon in the Pictures and Plans of Constantinos Doxiadis (Beirut: Dar Annahar, 2003), editor of CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital (Munich: Prestel, 2001), co-editor with Peter G. Rowe of Projecting Beirut (Munich: Prestel, 1998), and executive editor of the CASE publication series (GSD/Prestel). Charles Waldheim is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He teaches design studios and seminars at the intersection of landscape and contemporary urbanism, particularly in the North American context. He has written extensively on the topic and edited The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), CASE: Lafayette Park Detroit (Prestel / Harvard Design School, 2004) and co-edited, with Jason Young and Georgia Daskalakis, Stalking Detroit (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2001). On the history and future of Chicago urbanism, he is author of Constructed Ground (University of Illinois Press, 2001) and co-editor, with Katerina Ruedi Ray, of Chicago Architecture and Urbanism: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). He is currently writing the first book-length history of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, entitled Chicago O’Hare: A Natural and Cultural History (Ch icago: University of Chicago Press). NEW GEOGRAPHIES #2: LANDSCAPES OF ENERGY Editor-in-Chief: Rania Ghosn Editorial Board: Gareth Doherty, El Hadi Jazairy, Antonio Petrov, Stephen Ramos, Neyran Turan. Editorial Advisor: Melissa Vaughn Advisory Board: Bruno Latour, Mohsen Mostafavi, Antoine Picon, Hashim Sarkis, Charles Waldheim. Graphic Design: Tomas Celizna and Daniel Harding New Geographies is distributed by Harvard University Press. Landscapes of Energy is funded by the Graham Foundation for the Arts, the Aga Khan Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University. Copies of the journal will be on sale at the event. For further information on the New Geographies journal, visit: www.gsd.harvard.edu/newgeographies