This symposium is co-sponsored by the Architectural League of New York and The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design.

The Five Thousand Pound Life: Land addresses the need to consider settlement patterns and competing land uses in new ways given the reality of climate change.  The value assigned to various forms of land use, and various attitudes towards land as a resource, must be understood in terms of ecological services and impacts, rather than narrowly-defined economic imperatives. In sessions on “Nature and the City,” “Spatial Logistics,” “Density,” and "Land, Climate, and Culture," speakers will consider American approaches to development, attitudes toward nature, and whether the current dominant narrative of the environmental superiority of concentrated high density development might be challenged by a counter-narrative of lower density land-use that takes advantage of distributed energy production and localized treatment of waste. Ultimately, The Five Thousand Pound Life: Land will ask what the desirable and politically achievable mix of these narratives could be.

The Architectural League launched The Five Thousand Pound Life—an initiative of public events, digital releases, and a major design study—in September 2013 to address the intertwined challenges of reimagining the American way of life to address climate change and to rebuild a robust economic structure that offers viable livelihoods across the income spectrum. The League brings the perspective of the design professions to these issues, as its contribution to what must be a broad collective effort spanning geographies, generations, occupations, disciplines, and ideologies.

FREE TO CURRENT COOPER UNION STUDENTS/FACULTY/STAFF AND ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE MEMBERS.

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