REVIEWS
Book Review
— Justin Loucks
The House of Light and Entropy
The House of Light and Entropy is a collection of thoughtful and well researched accounts of landscapes in Canada and the United States. The collection of writing takes the reader from the suburban lawns of America in “Professional Pastoral: The Writing on the Lawn 1850-1950”, radioactive american deserts of the United States in “Desert Testing”, to Quebec “northerness" and landscapes of communication in “Journey to the North of Quebec: Understanding (McLuhan’s) Media. The author, landscape historian Alessandra Ponte, has a fascination with extreme landscapes, whether that may be the manicured, commercialized, painterly, nuclear, or political. She uses these extreme sites to reveal and reflect on society, an example such as desert tourism and the colonial tension with First Nation peoples. Extreme landscapes are quite effective at providing a lens to the cultural landscapes hiding beneath.
Ponte, Alessandra. The House of Light and Entropy. London: AA Publications, 2014 Cover image: courtesy of Bedford Press, Architecture Association School of Architecture London.
Look for this title at The FOLD's local Recommend Shelf at Shelf Life Books in Calgary.
Justin Loucks is an Architect currently based in Toronto, Canada. He is interested in understanding what it means to live and build in a Canadian context, and how globalization, market economies, and digital technology are transforming territories.