Towards an Agrarian Urbanism

Architect and urbanist Charles Waldheim, juror of the 2019 Research Prize, will discuss his work as it relates to the topic of the Research Prize: “Shrinking our Agricultural Footprint.” The talk will open with a brief reconsideration of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s vision of Chicago as a distributed agrarian urban field and will locate that project in a longer history of progressive urban projects that address societal and environmental reform. This brief prehistory sets the context for the topic of the 2019 SOM Foundation Research Prize and will reference a small number of contemporary practices who are also engaging with the relationship between agricultural production, culinary culture, and urbanization. The main body of the talk will focus on Waldheim’s current research through the GSD Office for Urbanization including projects that explicitly focus on the agrarian context for new urban propositions.

The lecture is organized in collaboration with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.