Books
Landscapes of housing: design and planning in the history of environmental thought
London: Routledge Press, 2021
In the twenty-first century, housing has become a site of ecological experimentation and environmental remediation. From the vantage point of contemporary architecture, conservation concerns and emergent building science technologies support one another, with new processes and materials deployed to reduce energy usage, water consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. Landscapes of Housing examines this trend in historical perspective, arguing for a more considered environmental vision that includes the organic, social, and cultural dimensions of landscape. By shifting the focus from architecture, the book highlights and critiques the relationship between dwelling and landscape itself. Contributors from a wide range of international perspectives propose a more integrative ecology that includes history, culture, society, and materiality, in addition to technology, within contemporary ecological housing programs. This book will be a resource for upper-level students, academics, and researchers in landscape architecture interested in the social and political implications of ecological housing.
The View from Above: The Science of Social Space
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. Forward by Peter Galison, Harvard University
In mid-twentieth century France, the term “social space” (l'espace social)―the idea that spatial form and social life are inextricably linked―emerged in a variety of social science disciplines. Taken up by the French New Left, it also came to inform the practice of urban planning. In The View from Above, Jeanne Haffner traces the evolution of the science of social space from the interwar period to the 1970s, illuminating in particular the role of aerial photography in this new way of conceptualizing socio-spatial relations.
“[Haffner] argues in her nuanced, rich, and elegantly written history that the distinction so often made between ''top-down' urban planning and its 'bottom-up' critique' simplifies a more complex story-a story that can best be unraveled by an interdisciplinary approach. By offering such an interdisciplinary history, this book complements not only the literature on visual culture, the history of science, and French architectural, urban, and planning history, but also the work on individual thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, and it will therefore prove valuable reading for scholars in all these fields.”
Listed as Core Reading in e-flux curriculum, 2019
Related article: “Historicizing the View from Below,” escholarship 2010.
Exhibition: New Work on Aerial Vision, Harvard GSD, 2013
Reviews
Journal of Modern History, ISIS, Technology and Culture, History of Photography, Aperture, JSAH, Journal of Historical Geography, French Studies, LSE Review of Books, H-HistGeog