Cathryn Dwyre & Chris Perry 
Ambiguous Territory 
Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural

The writers and designers in this collection are among the most thoughtful architects, artists, landscape architects, and theorists working today. The editors organized these essays and works of art and design around three territories: the atmospheric, the biologic, and the geologic. Each cluster of essays is further framed by forewords and afterwords, which draw individual points of view into a larger articulation of what an ambiguous territory might be and how it operates. 

Ambiguous Territory emerged from a symposium and exhibition held at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2017, and exhibitions at the University of Virginia and Pratt Manhattan Gallery in 2018, and at Ithaca College in 2019. The conversations that arise in this book are inquisitive and critically engaged. They pressure assumptions we routinely make about what constitutes meaningful and principled perspectives in architecture, landscape architecture, and art. Both the texts and the work take on some of the trickiest issues of our time. 

— Excerpt from a foreword to the book by Catherine Ingraham 

Professor, Graduate Architecture and Urban Design, Pratt Institute 

The works in Ambiguous Territory exist in a creative space, in the moody realm of possibilities. It’s a sphere of design in which solutions (or lack thereof) have yet to settle. That should be a familiar feeling for all creative people, whose daily life may include exploring a way out of a problem without being able to nail down an exact answer. This volume belongs in that territory of ambiguity and curiosity, a place where there is room for musings, laughter, and despair. The projects convey, in different ways, a hope for a better future, but also a sense of not knowing if that future is at all possible. 

— Excerpt from an afterword to the book by Peder Anker 

Professor, the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University 

With Contributions of Ellie Abrons, Paula Gaetano Adi, amid.cero9, Amy Balkin, Philip Beesley, Ursula Biemann, The Bittertang Farm, Edward Burtynsky, Bradley Cantrell, Gustavo Crembil, Brian Davis, Design Earth, Mark Dion, Formlessfinder, Lindsey french, Adam Fure, Futureforms, Michael Geffel, Rania Ghosn, David Gissen, El Hadi Jazairy, Harrison Atelier, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Lisa Hirmer, Catherine Ingraham, Lydia Kallipoliti, Perry Kulper, Sean Lally, Landing Studio, Lateral Office, LCLA, Mark Lindquist, Liquid Factory, Ariane Lourie-Harrison, Meredith Miller, Thom Moran, Ricardo de Ostos, Na Ja & de Ostos, Nemestudio, Mark Nystrom, OMG / O’Donnell Miller Group, The Open Workshop, Ricardo de Ostos, o OR / Office of Outdoor Research, Jennifer Peeples, pneumastudio, Alessandra Ponte, Office for Political Innovation, Rachele Riley, RVTR, Smout Allen, smudge studio, Neil Spiller, Terreform ONE, Andreas Theodoridis, Unknown Fields, Liam Young, Marina Zurkow

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Peder Anker’s teaching and research interests lie in the history of science, ecology, environmentalism, design, and environmental philosophy. He is the author of From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of Ecological Design (Louisiana State University Press, 2010), which explores the intersection of architecture and ecological science, and Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order
in the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2001), which investigates how the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Anker’s latest book explores the history of ecological debates in his country of birth, Norway, The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Anker received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1999. He is Professor of History of Science at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.