Skip to content
MIT Press
  • MIT Press
  • Books
    • Column
      • View all subjects
      • New releases
      • Catalogs
      • Textbooks
      • Series
    • Column
      • Authors
      • Distributed presses
      • The MIT Press Reader
      • Podcasts
    • Column
      • MIT Press Direct

        MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide.

        • Learn more
  • Journals
    • column
      • Journals all topics
      • Economics
      • International Affairs, History, & Political Science
    • column
      • Arts & Humanities
      • Science & Technology
      • Open access
    • column
      • MIT Press journals

        MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

        • Learn more
  • Open Access
    • column
      • Open access at the MIT Press
      • Open access books
      • Open access journals
    • column
      • Direct to Open
      • MIT Open Publishing Services
      • MIT Press Open on PubPub
    • Column
      • Open access

        The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition.

        • Learn more
  • Resources
    • column
      • Current authors
      • Prospective authors
      • Instructors
    • column
      • Media inquiries
      • Booksellers
      • Rights and permissions
    • column
      • Resources

        Collaborating with authors, instructors, booksellers, librarians, and the media is at the heart of what we do as a scholarly publisher. If you can’t find the resource you need here, visit our contact page to get in touch.

        • Learn more
  • Give
  • About
    • Column
      • About
      • Jobs
      • Internships
      • MIT Press Editorial Board
      • MIT Press Management Board
    • Column
      • Catalogs
      • News
      • Events
      • Conferences
      • Bookstore
    • Column
      • The MIT Press

        The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits. Most recently, we have pioneered a new open access model, Direct to Open, that has enabled us to publish more than 80 open access titles in a single year.

        • Learn more
  • Contact Us
Newsletter
MIT Press
  • Home
  • architecture
  • DIRT
DIRT

DIRT

Edited by Megan Born, Helene Furján and Lily Jencks

  • $40.95 Paperback

330 pp., 8 x 11 in, 315 color illus., 60 b&w illus.

  • Paperback
  • 9780262516921
  • Published: January 6, 2012

$40.95

For Professors: Request permissions

  • Penguin Random House
  • Amazon
  • Barnes and Noble
  • Bookshop.org
  • Indiebound
  • Indigo
  • Books a Million

Other Retailers:

  • Penguin Random House
  • Amazon
  • Barnes and Noble
  • Bookshop.org
  • Indiebound
  • Indigo
  • Books a Million
  • Amazon.co.uk
  • Blackwells
  • Bookshop.org
  • Foyles
  • Hive
  • Waterstones
  • Request permissions
  • Description
  • Author(s)

Dirt as fertile medium and metaphor in cities, landscapes, process, and design: dirty attitudes in essays, interviews, and projects.

Dirt presents a selection of works that share dirty attitudes: essays, interviews, excavations, and projects that view dirt not as filth but as a medium, a metaphor, a material, a process, a design tool, a narrative, a system. Rooted in the landscape architect's perspective, Dirt views dirt not as repulsive but endlessly giving, fertile, adaptive, and able to accommodate difference while maintaining cohesion. This dirty perspective sheds light on social connections, working processes, imaginative ideas, physical substrates, and urban networks. Dirt is a matrix; as a book, it organizes contributions from architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, historic preservation, fine arts, and art history.

The chapters predict and report on city waterfronts revamped by climate change, the reinvention of suburbia, and cityscapes of ruins; dish the dirt with yet-to-be proven facts; make such unexpected linkages as ornament to weed growth and cell networks to zip-ties; examine the work of innovative thinkers who have imagined or created, among other things, a replica of Robert Smithson's famous earthwork Spiral Jetty in “table-top scale,” live models of the Arctic ice caps, and an inhabitable “green roof”; and describe an ecological landscape urbanism that incorporates the natural sciences in its processes.

Megan Born is a landscape and architectural designer at James Corner Field Operations in New York.

Helene Furján, Director and founding editor of viaBooks, is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and author of Glorious Visions: John Soane's Spectacular Theater.

Lily Jencks runs the landscape and architectural design office LJA+Land in London.

Related Books

The Architecture of Bathing
What Is Landscape?
On Accident
Overgrown
Extraction Empire
Uncommon Ground
Wanderlust
ReThinking a Lot
Ecologies of Power
The Genius of the Place
logo
  • Column 1
    • Books
    • Journals
    • The MIT Press Reader
    • Podcasts
    • Imprints
  • Column 2
    • The MIT Press
      • About
      • Bookstore
      • Catalogs
      • Conferences
      • Press Editorial Board
      • Jobs
      • Internships
      • Press Management Board
      • News
      • Staff
      • Code of Conduct
      • Give
  • Column 3
    • Site Help
      • Accessibility
      • FAQ
      • Our eBooks
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms of Use
  • Column 4
    • Resources
      • Current Authors
      • Prospective Authors
      • Booksellers
      • Instructors
      • Rights and Permissions
      • Media Inquiries
      • MIT Discounts
  • Column 5
    • Digital
      • CogNet
      • Digital Partners and Products
      • Knowledge Futures Group
      • MIT Press Direct
  • US

    One Broadway 12th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142

  • UK

    Unit 57710 PO Box 6945 London W1A 6US UK

  • Contact

Connect

© 2022 MIT Press. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by Supadu