CAAD Forum: Phoebe Lickwar

Extractive monoculture is an increasingly perilous strategy for agriculture, the primary driver of biodiversity loss and the source of roughly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists predict that 90 percent of the earth’s soil is likely to be degraded by 2050. Agriculture is fundamental to our future survival and how we practice agriculture matters. While extractive monoculture is a relatively recent development of the twentieth century, traditional agroecological practices have endured for thousands of years, surviving systems of oppression, land theft, and persecution. Agroecology is a powerful force for change when it integrates processes of care embedded in gardening with the growing of food that intimately connects humans to the land as a source of life. In this talk, Associate Professor Phoebe Lickwar will discuss agroecology as a land-based practice of repair in a time of climate crisis. She will share work completed at the American Academy in Rome as the 2022 Garden Club of America Rome Prize fellow in landscape architecture as well as ongoing research and practice in traditional and experimental approaches to rebuilding agroecological gardens for deep climate adaptation.

The CAAD Forum series is hosted by the Center for American Architecture and Design to bring faculty, students, and staff together for informal and inquisitive discussions about ideas relating to architecture and its history, theory, practice, and future. Presentations introduce and offer insight into new and ongoing research, and are followed by time for Q&A.