Architecture and Abundance: Studies in the History of American Architecture
How has land’s endlessness been constructed? How has abundance been secured by design, and what architectural shadow is cast by its counterpart, scarcity? Over the last two years, the Buell Center has conducted research and hosted discussions interrogating the core assumption that land precedes architecture. This work focused on the ways building, infrastructure, surveying, and related disciplines make land available for ownership and exploitation in the Americas.
This new series of occasional talks, launching in Spring ‘24 and continuing through the ‘24-’25 academic year, offers a more specific cut through the history of architecture and land in the United States, asking how land’s abundance as a natural commodity has been constructed with architectural means. Scholars in this project work on building and landscape designs that helped circumscribe who was deemed worthy of the freedoms afforded by natural abundance and who was excluded from taking part in nature’s liberal gifts.
Abundance Talk #1
April 12, 2024; 5 pm EST | 300S Buell Hall and online
Jennifer Chuong (Harvard)
Maura Lucking (UW-Milwaukee/Buell Fellow)
Response by Daniel Abramson (Boston University)
Design by Marie Otsuka