The SOM Foundation is pleased to announce its inaugural lecture for
the SOM Foundation Research Prize, a new annual lecture series that
aims to expand discussion around a new topic each year. CHARLES
WALDHEIM, juror of the 2019 Research Prize, will discuss his work as
it relates to this year’s focus: “Shrinking our Agricultural
Footprint.”Charles Waldheim’s talk opens with a brief
reconsideration of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s vision of Chicago as a
distributed agrarian urban field and will locate that project in a
long history of progressive urban projects that addresses societal and
environmental reform. This brief prehistory sets the context for the
topic of the 2019 SOM Foundation Research Prize and will reference a
number of contemporary practices that are also engaging with the
relationship between agricultural production, culinary culture, and
urbanization. Referencing Waldheim’s current research through the
GSD Office for Urbanization, the talk presents projects that
explicitly focus on the agrarian context for new urban propositions.
CHARLES WALDHEIM is a North American architect and urbanist. He
advises public and private clients on questions of contemporary
urbanism and collaborates with multidisciplinary teams on urban
projects internationally. Waldheim’s research and practice examine
the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism.
He coined the term “landscape urbanism” to describe the emergent
discourse and practices of landscape in relation to design culture and
contemporary urbanization. On these topics, Waldheim is author of
Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory and editor of The Landscape
Urbanism Reader. Waldheim developed the theory of landscape urbanism
in response to the industrial economy, emergent ecology, and
particular histories of the American city. On this topic, he curates
the Future of the American City platform. Waldheim is John E. Irving
Professor of Landscape Architecture 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. Waldheim is the
recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in
Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship from the Canadian
Centre for Architecture; the Cullinan Chair at Rice University; and
the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan. He has been
visiting scholar at the Architectural Association School of
Architecture in London and the Bauhaus in Dessau.
ABOUT THE SOM FOUNDATION
Founded in 1979, the SOM Foundation’s goal is to advance the design
profession’s ability to address the key issues of our time by
bringing together and supporting groups and individuals, each with the
highest possible design aspirations. The Foundation’s grant
programming was established in 1981 and currently offers four annual
awards across the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. The
grants support students and faculty of architecture, landscape
architecture, urban design, and engineering to undertake rigorous
interdisciplinary research that can help shape our future. To learn
more, visit the SOM Foundation's website: www.somfoundation.com.
Image: Ludwig Hilberseimer, planner, with Alfred Caldwell, delineator,
“The City in the Landscape,” 1942. Courtesy Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Montreal, Gift of Alfred Caldwell.
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16/04/2020 Last update