Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements

251 Pages·2019·10.321 MB·English

by  Jane Hutton

“ Reciprocal Landscapes shows us what matters about landscape by revealing
what matter is doing in it – where it came from, why it was taken, and how
it was extracted, worked, fought over, and transported. Original in conception,
rigorous in execution, Hutton’s book is nothing less than a brilliant synthesis
of materialisms ‘historical’ and ‘new’; an incisive model for the critical analysis
of landscape.”
– Douglas Spencer, Director of Graduate Education and Associate
Professor, Department of Architecture, Iowa State University

Reciprocal Landscapes
How are the far-away, invisible landscapes where materials come from related
to the highly visible, urban landscapes where those same materials are installed?
Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements traces fi ve everyday
landscape construction materials – fertilizer, stone, steel, trees, and wood – from
seminal public landscapes in New York City, back to where they came from.
Drawing from archival documents, photographs, and fi eld trips, the author
brings these two separate landscapes – the material’s source and the urban site
where the material ended up – together, exploring themes of unequal ecological
exchange, labor, and material fl ows. Each chapter follows a single material’s
movement: guano from Peru that landed in Central Park in the 1860s, granite
from Maine that paved Broadway in the 1890s, structural steel from Pittsburgh
that restructured Riverside Park in the 1930s, London plane street trees grown
on Rikers Island by incarcerated workers that were planted on Seventh Avenue
north of Central Park in the 1950s, and the popular tropical hardwood, ipe,
from northern Brazil installed in the High Line in the 2000s.
Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements considers the social,
political, and ecological entanglements of material practice, challenging readers
to think of materials not as inert products but as continuous with land and the
people that shape them, and to reimagine forms of construction in solidarity
with people, other species, and landscapes elsewhere.
Jane Hutton is a landscape architect and teacher whose research looks at the
expanded relations of material practice in design, examining linkages between
the sources and construction sites of common building materials. Hutton is an
Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo.

Reciprocal Landscapes
Stories of Material Movements
JANE HUTTON
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Jane Hutton
The right of Jane Hutton to be identifi ed as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hutton, Jane Elizabeth, 1976– author.
Title: Reciprocal landscapes : stories of material movement / Jane Hutton.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2020. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2019018724 (print) | LCCN 2019022305 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138830684 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315737102 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Landscape architecture—History. | Building materials—
Transportation—History. | Landscaping industry.
Classifi cation: LCC SB472.3 .H43 2020 (print) | LCC SB472.3 (ebook) |
DDC 712—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018724
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022305
ISBN: 978-1-138-83068-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73710-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my parents: Bea & Peter, Bill & Bruce
This book contains excerpts and reworked material from several previously
published articles including “Reciprocal Landscapes: Material Portraits in
New York City and Elsewhere,” Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2013,
8:1, pp. 40–47; “Inexhaustible Terrain” published in www.cca.qc.ca (Cana-
dian Centre for Architecture, February 2017) CCA; “On Fertility: Night Soil,
Street Sweepings, and Guano in Central Park,” in the Journal of Architectural
Education, 2014, 68:1, pp. 43–45; “Range of Motions: Granite Flow from
Vinalhaven to New York City,” in the Harvard Design Magazine, Do you Read
Me?, No. 38, Spring – Summer, 2014, pp. 33–38; and “Trail of Stumps,” in
Landscape Architecture Magazine, May, 2013, pp. 116–126.
Contents
List of fi gures x
Introduction 1
1 Inexhaustible Terrain: Guano from the Chincha Islands,
Peru, to Central Park, 1862 26
2 Range of Motions: Granite from Vinalhaven, Maine, to
Broadway, 1892 66
3 Rivers of Steel: Steel from Pittsburgh to Riverside Park, 1937 104
4 Breathing with Trees: London Plane Trees from Rikers Island
to Seventh Avenue, 1959 146
5 Arresting Decay: Tropical Hardwood from Para, Brazil, to the
High Line, 2009 188
Epilogue 218
Acknowledgments 223
Index 226