On Thursday, 2 November 2023, at 12 PM CST
At the Thompson Center, located at the Clark/Lake Stop in Chicago, Illinois
The Chicago Architecture Biennial and Columbia University’s Buell Center invite you to a book discussion of the latest publication by the Buell Center, Architecture and Land in and out of the Americas. Published in conjunction with the Buell / AD–WO installation at the Chicago Cultural Center, 100 Links. Copies of the book will be available at no cost.
With Lucia Allais (Columbia GSAPP), Chana Haouzi (Architecture for Public Benefit), and John McMorrough (University of Michigan)
While land is usually assumed to be something that comes before architecture and is out of the hands of designers, this book re-narrates the history of land in the Americas. It gives new architectural depth to a lexicon that has become mainstream but flattened: survey, nature, market, dispossession, offset, improvement, toxicity; these words have relentless entangled building and settling. The book collects and presents research from a wide array of historical, architectural, and scholarly sources that point towards a recognition of land not as an object but as a relationship.
Speakers:
Lucia Allais is a historian of architecture in the modern period and the director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Her 2018 book, Designs of Destruction, traced the internationalization of “monuments” through destructive scenarios in the middle of the 20th Century. She also writes on the history of architectural knowledge, the architecture of global institutions, and the science of architectural materials. Allais is Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia, a member of Aggregate, and an editor of Grey Room.
Chana Haouzi is an architect, educator, and fierce advocate that good design can and should be for everyone. She is the founder of Architecture for Public Benefit, a mission-driven practice serving nonprofits and community organizations. Chana teaches at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her practice and teaching focus on promoting socially engaged and inclusive design rooted in community and context. Chana holds a Master in Architecture II from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from McGill University.
John McMorrough is an architect and writer who works on the relationship between design methods and culture, focusing on architecture’s extended field (buildings, but also complementary media such as images, installations, films, and other structured narratives). He is currently a Professor of Architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.
