Today’s conversation is with Jeffrey Nesbit about his book ‘Nature of Enclosure’.
So much of our architectural education and practice is reliant on the idea of control. Take representation for example. Without being able to quantify information about a site, materials or even people, how can we be expected to make decisions about what we ultimately build. If you can’t quantify it in a representation of some sort, how can you be expected to design with it. How can you be expected to make creative and informed choices? I'm confident in saying that’s the prevailing opinion. If we play this forward, there’s the assumption that if an architect or landscape architect knows enough to represent it in drawing, diagram or statistics, then we can also reasonably understand the implications of those decisions. But that simply isn't the case. Either because we willfully exclude information (representations are of course by nature a kind of filter) or because our understanding of the information at hand was inherently lacking without our knowing.
In this edited book by Jeffrey Nesbit called ‘Nature Enclosed’, he and the contributors cover many scales and facets of what enclosure has meant over the past several centuries. What I found the most interesting about the book is often the look back at the original assumptions when decisions were initially made about enclosing nature (either from us or for us). Doing so highlights just how much more influential these decisions were not only on changing the makeup of nature, but our perspectives and expectations of nature. Beyond that, such conversations help to demonstrate how we seem to continually reframe our own bodies through our changing expectations. Reframing is an ongoing practice and not one that will come exclusively through the control we exert on nature but in being reminded just how mailable we as humans are. Demonstrating control seems increasingly less likely to be the answer moving forward. But stretching and exploring our expectations and where we place value might be.
Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, and founding director of the research group Grounding Design. Nesbit’s research focuses on processes of urbanization, infrastructure, and the evolution of "technical lands." Currently, his research examines the 20th-century American spaceport complex at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, and aerospace history. Nesbit has published several journal articles, book chapters, and is editor of Nature of Enclosure (Actar, 2022), co-editor of Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Jovis, 2023), New Geographies 11 Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019), Nesbit is Assistant Professor in History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at Temple University.
Jeffrrey S. Nesbit’s Nature of Enclosure
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Today’s conversation is with Fred Sharmen about his book ‘Space Forces’.
Sometimes what you need is a little distance to get a clearer perspective on your current situation. Doing so lets you see a larger whole which often allows you to ask questions that might otherwise go unasked. This new distance might not give you any new answers to your current situation at first but just having new questions can be enough to keep you moving. When it comes to the topic of outer space, many people question why we would put so many resources into exploring a future in space when we have so many unresolved problems and crises here on Earth. This is obviously a valid argument, and one that Fred covers, but his book also goes to great lengths to demonstrate that it’s through this new perspective, this distance gained from earth that we can better understand our assumptions for how we currently live, how we currently govern and what we place value on here on earth. As Fred says, ‘Living in space is a thought experiment for how we better understand how we live on Earth.’
Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning. He is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, an art and design consultancy based in Baltimore, Maryland. His first book, Space Settlements was published in 2019. His writing has been published in Atlantic CityLab, Slate, Log, Volume, and Domus the Architect's Newspaper, and in the local alt-weekly Baltimore City Paper.
Fred Scharmen’s Space Forces, A Critical History of Life in Outer Space
You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com
Thoughts or suggestions, email me at NWS@seanlally.net