“In stark contrast to the 20th century paradigm of speed, the effects of future transformation will be slow and subtle, requiring the active and sustained engagement of long-term, opportunistic partnerships that bridge the private and public sectors.”

if you expanded infrastructure to include social spaces (social infrastructure?) you would have to include the berkeley guys walt hood and randy hester as people approximating this model.

but yes, the majority of academics are not doing much beyond pure academia and a little side work.

you guys seem to follow belanger a bit- i was under the impression his toronto “center for landscape research” was explicitly taking this tack- work with scientists and bureaurcrats to develop proposals for executing real infrastructure work. Don’t know that he’s had time for a successful example yet, though. Am I correct there?

I’d sort of come at the question from the opposite direction, so maybe that’s part of why I was excited when I started to think about the Pontine project — I wasn’t looking for academics whose research had developed into design, but looking for examples of landscape architects designing large-scale landscape infrastructures (and in particular, infrastructures associated with continuing or revitalized industrialization). It seemed to me that there are a lot of barriers to landscape architects negotiating roles in the design of such infrastructures, including the question mentioned in the post (what do landscape architects offer that, say, engineers don’t?, and then convincing the power structure that you’ve got a good answer to the question — which Berger has been able to do), as well as the difficulty for ordinary landscape firms of cultivating the contacts and relationships necessary to be taken seriously in such matters.

Maybe the end statement though — “it nonetheless illustrates a clear path for developing the agency of designers in new fields” — was completely obvious, but I’d think that if it were really so obvious (or easy) it’d be more common.

Berger effectively makes this point about the role of research clear in Drosscape–saying its about time that landscape architects and related designers create, rather than follow received design agendas via the quality of their research. In another interview in Kerb 2 years back he expressed his distaste of design competitions for that very reason.
Whereas Corner ‘expanded the field’ of inquiry and design agenda in the 90s through his writings, he now chases the same work as everyone else.

I think Berger has picked up where Corner left off and continues to lead the way to broader and more relevant questions. This type of research is both the privilege of an academic position as well as its responsibility.

Yes, it definitely is (all the examples you noted, and many more), but what I think is much less common is parlaying that speculative work into the opportunity to design landscape infrastructures, through connections developed with those scientists and bureaucrats.

I think of people like Kristina Hill, Belanger, Walter Hood, Mason White, and Elizabeth Mossop, or Randy Hester and John Lyle back in the 80′s. Perhaps Berger’s focus on scientists and bureaucrats is unique?

It is definitely a great model, a way of doing significant work with an academic post. I wonder to what degree it affects their teaching?

Yes — as I hinted in the last sentence of the post — I do think it’s a bit harsh to slam practitioners for continually treading the same ground when many are barely staying afloat (or aren’t at all), and so have every incentive to be as conservative as possible (and lack the financial freedom that Berger’s role in academia affords him). And “…will catch up with me” does come off as unfortunately self-aggrandizing, but it’s presumably an extemperaneous interview, so I’d tend to not to read too carefully between the lines of his word-choice.

But despite all that, I think Berger really is onto something (as I’m guessing you agree, given that you say you like his work), in that he is pushing the profession into genuinely new territory and that its an important territory which the profession as a whole has generally ignored (whether for lack of interest or for lack of models for developing agency in that territory). So I think it’s to be expected that, if he believes that work is of great importance, he’d be a bit frustrated with a profession that generally shows little interest in it.