Perishable is an initiative by the Center for Land Use Interpretation and independent interpreter Nicola Twilley to research and document the architecture, infrastructure, and mobile apparatus of cold preservation in the United States. The results of this investigation are disseminated in a digital exhibition at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, accompanied by associated tours and programming, as well as through the addition of a new category in the CLUI Land Use Database. In America—the first refrigerated nation—a network of artificially chilled warehouses, cabinets, and reefer fleets have elided place and time, reshaping both markets and cities with the promise of a more rational supply and an end to decay, waste, and disease. Yet the location, form, and function of these cold spaces remain a mystery to many, and have never been analyzed as manifestations of a single land use typology upon which our current lifestyle is utterly dependent.

Matthew Coolidge has been the director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation since he founded the organization in 1994. Coolidge was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2005, and the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian in 2006. He is the author and editor of several books, including Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation; The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to the Nation's Nuclear Proving Ground; and Up River: Man-Made Sites of Interest on the Hudson from the Battery to Troy.

Nicola Twilley is a writer and curator whose work examines landscape, space, and culture through the lens of food. She is the author of the blog Edible Geography (http://ediblegeography.com) and codirector of Studio-X NYC part of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation's global network of advanced research laboratories for exploring the future of cities. She is also cofounder and cocurator (with Sarah Rich) of the Foodprint Project, (http://foodprintproject.com); coinstructor and cocurator (with Geoff Manaugh) of Landscapes of Quarantine, an independent, interdisciplinary design studio produced in fall 2009, as well as the exhibition of the same name on display at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (2010); and the former food dditor at GOOD (http://good.is/food). Among her other recent projects and publications, she created Scratch 'n Sniff NYC, an interactive map of New Yorkers' olfactory preferences, which was commissioned and displayed as part of the You Are Here exhibition at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in 2010;.Twilley has also contributed chapters to the publications What is a City? Rethinking the Urban after Hurricane Katrina and MIXM:Extending The Museum.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation, founded in 1994, is dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.