Moved Earth: Designing Landscapes With Discarded Fill

Moved Earth explores discarded fill to construct designed landscapes from a designer’s perspective. Some geologists estimate that humans now move more earth than natural processes. The 20th century saw an increase of ‘made ground’ and of discarded fill production, accompanied by the fact that an ‘away’ for waste disposal no longer exists. So far, discarded fill materials have been addressed predominantly in a technical way.

This book shows how discarded fill offers opportunities to construct significant designed landscapes, with designers playing a positive role in a multidisciplinary environment. Legible constructedness can communicate the nature of these landscapes, in contrast with approaches that tend to hide this aspect in natural‐looking landscapes or through camouflage. Moved Earth addresses issues of design, form, and aesthetics; materials and meanings; openness and closure; processes and material movements; technical aspects; and the role of the designer. Thirty-one international examples and four case studies are included, ranging from an unconstructed project for an artificial island with a garden hill envisioned by Alvise Cornaro in Renaissance Venice to three contemporary projects: Spectacle Island (US) designed by Brown Richardson + Rowe; Sigirino Depot (Switzerland) by Atelier Girot; and the Tejo and Trancão Park (Portugal) by PROAP/Hargreaves Associates.

Moved Earth offers readers a unique insight into the opportunities discarded fill offers designers and is essential reading for landscape architects.

Chiara Geroldi is a PhD, architect, and Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research concerns the landscape design of discarded earthy fill, the landscape of energy (mining, electricity, and oil landscapes), and the regeneration of brownfields.