Böcker av Richard Weller

The book takes the reader on an intellectual adventure through a carefully curated selection of 120 places that can be understood as metaphors of contemporary global culture. Spread across all seven continents, from the depths of the ocean to outer space, these places are divided into six chapters: Paradises, Utopias, Machines, Monsters, Ruins, and Instruments. The spectrum ranges from Steve Jobs' Apple Park in California to a national park in Costa Rica, a small field station for the protection of wild orangutans in Borneo, the Great Green Wall in Central Africa, the Trump resort Mar-a-Lago, to the border wall between Israel and Palestine. This book is a grand tour of the most pertinent places in the world today.

Through selected works this monograph showcases the design work and research of leading landscape architect Richard Weller, Chair of Landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. The book documents the evolution of Weller's practice from small scale artworks to planning megaregions, including his latest proposal for a World Park. With essays by Jillian Walliss and Dirk Sijmons as well as his own writing, the book explains Weller's methods and motivations; a unique window on to the ways in which the discipline of landscape architecture has matured over the last 40 years. Through a carefully curated selection of work, the book makes the case that landscape architecture is at best "art of instrumentality." The two essayists in the book are highly regarded. Jillian Walliss of Melbourne University is a contemporary landscape architectural critic and in 2017 Dirk Sijmons received the IFLA sir Geoffrey Jellicoe award, the highest international achievement in landscape architecture.

In this moment of seemingly compounding global crises and existential concerns about the future of the planet, LA+ pauses to consider the values and implications of speculation. How are speculative acts understood differently within specific disciplinary structures versus broader cultural perceptions? Whether employed as a means of influence, a method of production, a form of practice, a manner of inquiry, a way of seeing, or a motivating ideology, LA+ Speculation engages speculation and the speculative as world-shaping concepts worthy of deep and critical reflection. Guest edited by Christopher Marcinkoski with Javier Arpa Fernandez, and other contributors include: Merve BedirCasey Lance BrownStuart CandyPaul DobraszykAroussiak Gabrielian Daisy GinsbergAdrian HawkerSouhei ImamuKaren LewisMin Kyung LeeMpho Matsipa Alexandra Sankova Jonah SusskindYtasha Womak