ON SITE 26: DIRT
Dirt. It is more than the neutral tray upon which we do our projects and live our lives. Dirt, as it emerges in this issue of On Site , has its own integrity, its own history, its own power. ‘Dirt is matter out of place’, that famous phrase of Mary Douglas, echoes through this issue. But often dirt is exactly ‘in place’. Ancient architecture is characterised by a deep relationship with the elements: earth, air, water and fire. Geothermal heat recovery from the earth, and its dark twin, geophysical extraction of oil from the earth – both remain in our future. Construction sites, those semi-permanent installations, places of great danger, are the ground plane of the cit; they question all sorts of notions of cleanliness and architectural propriety. And earth itself, made up of dirt: we walk it, we measure it, we move it around. It is our plasticine, rarely accorded much respect, more seen as an exploitable resource. Matter out of place? Weeds, say, or vigorous hybrids: the case for micro-zoning, or no zoning at all. Things that don’t fit an urban paradigm based on zoning are seen as transgressive, weed-like and as such are vulnerable to a good sanitising scrub. Often to our loss.
CONTENTS
the aesthetics of dirt Reza Aliabadi and Lailee Soleimani
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the eroticism of sun and dirt the aesthetics of dirt: a manifesto dirty salt, dirty world the art of Katy Bentall at DOM, in Dobre, Poland a career of moving dirt around drowning in garbage in Juba, South Sudan World Cup Park, the landfill parks of South Korea the value of landfills as necessary open space the pigeons of St-Hubert, Montréal collecting air-born scraps
WAI Think Tank Enrique Enriquez Meaghan Thurston Barbara Cuerden
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waste, garbage and landfill Joshua Craze Ina Kwon
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Maya Pryzbylski Chloé Roubert Michael Blois
urban difficulties Liam Brown Tanya Southcott Matthew Neville John Szot dirt and health Greg Barton Joshua Craze Joseph Heathcott Arthur Allen
dispersing ashes in secular urban environments the lost houses of Yaletown the morphology of collective housing on the urban edge first dereliction, then occupation
62 70 73 76
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interview with Kate Forde, curator of Dirt, the filthy reality of everyday life a visit to Dirt , at the Wellcome Collection, London WPA migrant camps: modernity against environmental disaster tuberculosis sanitoriums in the dust bowl
geological landscapes Stephanie White
the Whitemud Formation that fills our kitchens the Aral Sea finding 5000 year old ash layers beneath our feet soil horizons, a project at les Jardins de Métis, 2005 Sudbury: be not afraid of greatness earth and sky
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Ksenia Kegner Gerald Forseth Infranet Lab Kenneth Hayes M Alexandrescu landscapes Lisa Hirmer Kenneth Hayes Don Gill
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dirt piles the Weeping Garden, Sudbury Comrades, be happy in your work
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working environments Gerald Forseth Michael Leeb Stephen Reither and Jayda Karsten
3 44 56
the pyramids of Huaca Pucllana the Medalta pottery factory, sinking back to the earth DIRTT, doing it right this time.
other matters calls for articles masthead
on site 27: rural urbanism, on site 28: sound who we all are
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