Designed Forests

Dan Handel is an architect and curator whose work focuses on underexplored ideas, figures, and practices that shape contemporary built environments. Over the past fifteen years, he has been studying the links between scientists, forest managers, and spatial designers, resulting in various exhibitions and publications on the subject.

“Forests cover over four billion hectares of our planet earth. In his brilliant book, Dan Handel reminds us that our forests project a powerful image of nature even though they are constructed, man-made and totally designed. Handel skillfully weaves together a riveting narrative inextricably linking forest to culture, geography, and our human condition.”Professor Brigitte Shim, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto"In the process of asking questions about how forests are rationalized culturally, Handel advances the political control of reforestation, which ultimately reveals that making or conserving forests is a design project. Outside of the current environmental crisis, what this book offers is a richly illustrated account of the global movement to create, protect and plant forests, while provoking artists, designers and planners to consider their role in the affair."Rosetta Elkin, Academic Director, Master in Landscape Architecture Program, Pratt Institute“Handel’s book establishes a parallel between two forms of cognition: ‘thinking machines’ and ‘thinking forests.’ This parallel has important implications for built and natural environments, particularly in relation to developments in artificial intelligence and discoveries about tree communication.”Phu Hoang, Head of Architecture, Knowlton School, Ohio State University"Designed Forests: A Cultural History uncovers human entanglements with forests as a design metaphor through a series of gripping stories Dan Handel researched in serious depth, not leaving room for much romance. Taking us on a global journey through projects that involve forests as a point of departure, Handel catches us in our preconceived ways of thinking, traversing the undergirding ideas, cutting to the stem of those lines of thought. The book is not an answer to what a forest is, yet we might get an idea of how forest metaphor gets instrumentalized in discourse in spatial design practices and what this metaphor lacks."Urška Škerl, for Landezine

• Preface Introduction 1. Engineered Forests 2. Jungle 3. The Thousand-Year Forest 4. Ecological Havens 5. Ubiquitous Intelligence