IAAC Lecture Series 2022/23 – OPENING LECTURE
Charles Waldheim
Date: October 13th , 2022
Time: 19.00h (CEST)
Title: “Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns”
Charles Waldheim is a North American architect and urbanist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Waldheim’s research examines the relationships between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. On these topics, Waldheim is author, editor, or coeditor of numerous publications on these topics, including Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory (Princeton University Press) and The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press). He developed the theory of landscape urbanism in response to the industrial economies and emergent ecologies of the American city and on this topic, he curates the Harvard GSD’s Future of the American City platform with support from the Knight Foundation.
Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he directs the school’s Office for Urbanization. He also serves as the Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston where he convenes The Larger (Landscape) Conversation. Waldheim is recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan; and the Cullinan Chair at Rice University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany.
Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns
China’s rapid urbanization has come at the expense of its agricultural countryside. As China has urbanized, its rural villages and landscapes have been subject to environmental degradations, economic disparities, and societal inequities. In response to these challenges, China has proposed a series of rural planning and reform programs. Yet the history of agricultural modernization in the United States illustrates the dangers of cultural erasure and environmental devastation associated with these programs. 50 Species-Towns presents an alternative model for agricultural modernization and agrarian new-town planning in China. This model is derived from a close reading of Chinese agricultural history and village life in support of the vital economic, environmental, and societal reforms currently underway. The research project is informed by the extraordinary wealth of culinary diversity and heritage crops found across China.
IAAC Lecture Series 2022/23
OPENING LECTURE
Thursday 13th of October 2022
Charles Waldheim
John E. Irving Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
19:00 // Doors Open
19:10 // Welcome by IAAC leadership
19:20 // Lecture – Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
19:50 // Dialogue – On China’s urbanization processes with Charles Waldheim and Vicente Guallart, moderated by Daniel Ibañez
20:10 // Q&A session
20:30 // Refreshments
Location: IAAC Auditorium, C/ de Pujades 102 & Zoom
Free and Open to the Public