Projective Ecologies

Acknowledgments Projective Ecologies grew out of a colloquium titled “Critical Ecologies” conceived and organized by Chris Reed in the spring of 2010; it was sponsored by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and its Department of Landscape Architecture.

Presentations by Richard Wrangham, Sanford Kwinter, Ann Dale, Peter Del Tredici, Alexander Felson, Steven Handel, Karen Kramer, Sune Lehmann, Nina-Marie Lister, Paul Moorcroft, Piet Oudolf, Steward Pickett, and Maximilian Schich—as well as conversations moderated by Charles Waldheim, Richard Forman, Anita Berrizbeitia, Christian Werthmann, and Michael Meredith—set a very broad table for taking stock of current thinking and practices across a range of disciplines relative to complex adaptive systems. The colloquium was instrumental in shaping the content and structure of this volume, and we very much appreciate the contributions of the colloquium participants, the contributors to this volume, and the authors of the drawings included here.

We would like to thank Mohsen Mostafavi and Patricia Roberts, Dean and Executive Dean, respectively, of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Charles Waldheim, Chair of the GSD Department of Landscape Architecture, for their steadfast support, resources, and contributions that have both informed the content of this work and allowed it to be presented in colloquium and book formats. In particular, we acknowledge the support of the GSD’s John D. Scruggs Research Fund.

We would also like to thank Assistant Dean of Communications Benjamin Prosky and Senior Editor Melissa Vaughn for their oversight and organizational and editorial contributions. Actar’s Ramon Prat, Lluis Ortega, and Ricardo Devesa were fantastic in their efforts to organize and design this volume in a way that captures our full ambitions.

Thanks, too, to the phalanx of research assistants over a number of years who have helped to organize the publication and colloquium, and contributed to its content, including Christina Antiporda, Anne Clark Baker, Michael Ezban, Tomás Folch, Chris Alton, Marta Brocki, McKenna Cole, Kimberly Garza, and Difei Ma. Finally, we would like to recognize the various collective contributions of the incredibly insightful and interdisciplinary students in the research seminars we have taught at both the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Ryerson University’s Faculty of Community Services and the School of Urban and Regional Planning.

Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister