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Image from Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns, Charles Waldheim (Cambridge, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2022)
Image from Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns
11/17/22, 6pm - 8pm
Location
Center for Architecture

Architect and urbanist Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, invites you to a reception for his recent book, Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns (Harvard Graduate School of Design Office for Urbanization, 2022), which presents an alternative model for agricultural modernization and agrarian new-town planning in China.

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 degradation, 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. The model presented in 50 Species-Towns 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.

Brief remarks on the book will be followed by a networking reception.

Speaker: 
Charles Waldheim,  AIA, ASLA (Hon.), FAAR, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture Director, Office for Urbanization, Harvard Graduate School of Design

About the Speaker:
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, 2016) and The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). 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 the 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.
 

Publication Credits:

Project Team
Charles Waldheim with Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization, Charlie Gaillard, Mariano Gomez-Luque, Mercedes Peralta, Seok Min Yeo, and Boya Zhang.

Research Assistants
Mark Heller, Camila Huber Horta Barbosa, Mingyu Kim, Sue Kim, Jaewon Lee, Xiuzheng Li, Ting Liang, Xun Liu, Jianpu Meng, Sam Naylor, Sudeshna Sen, Joshua Stevens, Abbey Wallace, Zhaodi Wang, Erin Yook, Xin Zhong, and Haoyu Zhao.

External Design Research Collaborators
Andrew Witt/Certain Measures, Ajmal Qureshi, Scott Rozelle, Norman Scott, Michael Rock/2×4, and Seth Denizen.

This event is offered in person; COVID-19 vaccinations and face masks are strongly encouraged for all visitors. Read our full Health and Safety Protocol here.

Organized by
Center for Architecture
Image from Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns, Charles Waldheim (Cambridge, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2022)
Image from Agricultural Modernization and Collective Memory: 50 Species-Towns
11/17/22, 6pm - 8pm
Location
Center for Architecture
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