Ants of the Prairie lecture

In her 2014 Emerging Voices lecture, Joyce Hwang advocates for cross-species design.

July 18, 2014

Recorded on March 13, 2014.

Emerging Voices spotlights individuals and firms based in the United States, Canada, or Mexico with distinct design voices and the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.

Joyce Hwang founded Buffalo-based firm Ants of the Prairie in 2004 as an architecture and research practice “dedicated to developing creative approaches in confronting the pleasures and horrors of our contemporary ecologies.”

In 2014, The Architectural League named Ants of the Prairie an Emerging Voice. In her presentation, Hwang addresses conflicted perceptions of urban wildlife and notions of the “urban pest,” and proposes ideas for how architecture can “move the consideration of animals beyond the scope of urban regulations and toward agendas of aesthetics, space, environment, performance, and even ethics.”

She discusses projects including Generative Zoning, a research project on combatting habitat fragmentation, and the Hive City design competition she organized at the University of Buffalo.

 

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