October 23, 12pm
300S Buell Hall and online
Jonathan Levy (UChicago) and Courtney Bender (Columbia) follow by a response by Chelsea Spencer (Buell Fellow).
The finitude of planet earth as a natural resource became especially evident in the late 20th Century. In these talks, the scale of the planetary is redesigned in multiple registers, from religion to capital, from urbanity to secularism. Jonathan Levy takes Houston, a largely unzoned city built mostly after 1970, as a scalar test for writing the history of climate change, featuring the financial and architectural imagination of the Hines company. Courtney Bender investigates the secular interests that rebuilt and reorganized religion in the 20th Century via planning, including at the 1939 World’s Fair.
Organized by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architectute.