A History of Ecological Design
Peder Anker is an Associate Professor at New York University, his teaching and research interests lie in the history of science, ecology, environmentalism and design, as well as environmental philosophy. He has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and been a visiting scholar at both Columbia University and University of Oslo. With Louise Harpman and Mitchell Joachim, Professor Anker is the co-author of Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned (Prestel, 2014), a showcase of design research as it relates to visionary architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, and ecological planning. He is the author of From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design (Louisiana State University Press, 2010), which explores the intersection of architecture and ecological science, and Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order of the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2001), which investigates how the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Anker’s current book project explores the history of ecological debates in his country of birth, Norway. He received his PhD in history of science from Harvard University in 1999.
This lecture is offered as part of the seminar “Speculative City: Crisis, Turmoil, and Projections in Architecture” led by David Eugin Moon.