"At a time when visions of the future come shrink-wrapped in Anthropocene-induced guilt, an analysis of the state of our water systems could make for difficult reading, so it's heartening to find that Mary Pat McGuire and Jessica M. Henson, editors of Fresh Water: Design Research for Inland Water Territories, make a compelling case for critical design intervention to address this critical issue. The book layers two narratives: a clear-eyed overview of the degraded state of American water systems and a portfolio of design research projects by landscape architects that navigate the murky legacy of water control intervention to show how we might build a resilient "hydrosocial" landscape." --Journal of Architectural Education
2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist: Nature/Environment
"Fresh Water is a book that addresses regional, territorial, and continental water issues through interdisciplinary design research in landscape architecture. The geographical and hydrosocial context of the major inland (non-coastal) watersheds of the North American continent--the Mississippi, the Great Lakes Basin--St. Lawrence and the Nelson--remains an under-explored field for design research. Major spatial, temporal, biological, and geological manipulations of water bodies, systems, and flows raise critical questions about how to redefine human-hydro relationships and to reverse the deterioration of freshwater systems across the territory."--Architecture Lab
"This volume brings together the research of practitioners and educators from the groundbreaking Fresh Water symposium held last year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Landscape Architecture.... Fresh thinking lays the groundwork for much-needed future research in this area." --Landscape Architecture Magazine