This event will be conducted in person in Room 315F.

Join writers, critics, and documentarians to discuss the radical architecture of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement. This conversation accompanies the exhibition Primers for a Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California, on view at The Cooper Union from Thursday October 8 to Thursday October 29.

Half a century ago, a legion of young idealists—disillusioned with the governance and exploding consumer culture of 1960s America—dropped out of society and went “back to the land,” in what proved to be the greatest urban-to-rural exodus in American history. The backwoods of Northern California became the movement’s epicenter, where a patchwork of utopian communes sprouted, together with an experimental, deeply individualized approach to building design and construction.

Author David Jacob Kramer and photographer Michael Schmelling’s new book Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California (D.A.P./Edition Patrick Frey) documents the history, inspiration, and contemporary condition of these utopian communities. They will discuss the success—and failures—of this under-documented movement with experts in the field as well as one of the original back-to-the-landers.

Participants include:

Irene Cheng, associate professor in architecture at The Cooper Union and author of The Shape of Utopia: The Architecture of Radical Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).

David Jacob Kramer, co-author of Handmade Utopia: Back-to-Land Architecture in Northern California (D.A.P./Edition Patrick Frey, 2026).

Alexandra Lange, architecture critic for Curbed and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Chris Larson, Northern California resident and one of the subjects featured in the book and exhibition.

Michael Schmelling, photographer and co-author of Handmade Utopia: Back-to-Land Architecture in Northern California (D.A.P./Edition Patrick Frey, 2026).