Technology and Place

"I consider this book the most insightful discussion of place and technology I have encountered over the past twenty years of thinking about place and its role in modern society.... I think that it will create an intellectual stir and give a significant boost to scholarship bringing together social science and the design professions." --John Agnew, Professor and Chair of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles Developing "sustainable" architectural and agricultural technologies was the intent behind Blueprint Farm, an experimental agricultural project designed to benefit farm workers displaced by the industrialization of agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Yet, despite its promise, the very institutions that created Blueprint Farm terminated the project after just four years (1987-1991). In this book, Steven Moore demonstrates how the various stakeholders' competing definitions of "sustainability," "technology," and "place" ultimately doomed Blueprint Farm. He reconstructs the conflicting interests and goals of the founders, including Jim Hightower and the Texas Department of Agriculture, Laredo Junior College, and the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, and shows how, ironically, they unwittingly suppressed the self-determination of the very farm workers the project sought to benefit. From the instructive failure of Blueprint Farm, Moore extracts eight principles for a regenerative architecture, which he calls his "nonmodern manifesto."