Looking for evening of hands-on science, entertainment and discovery? Find it at After Dark, our monthly adults-only, after-hours event at the MIT Museum.
On August 13, from 6-9 pm, join us for After Dark: Gardens, celebrating gardens, green spaces, and all things locally grown. Learn about local ecosystems, growing challenges, how to fuel your garden, and more through conversations, demonstrations, and interactive workshops.
With pop-up shops, music, drinks, and bites, you won’t want to miss it! For more information visit mitmuseum.mit.edu
In the heart of European and American cities lies an overlooked yet vibrant space for resilience, ingenuity and magic: the garden. Part history, part reportage, part manifesto, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City follows the 300-year history of urban gardening—from feudal England to the Paris Commune, to Berlin’s green shantytowns, to contemporary Amsterdam, Chicago, and beyond.
Throughout, acclaimed MIT historian Kate Brown weaves in her own gardening experience, exploring the political and the practical while painting a picture of the necessity of self-provisioning in an increasingly chaotic world. Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self-provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most fertile agriculture in recorded human history, without the use of fossil fuels.
The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, too: In Nazi Berlin, working class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership. The Soviet superpower survived so long only because of its urban gardens. In Tiny Gardens Everywhere, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid of past and present, archive and experience, showing how down-to-earth gardeners, through resourcefulness, intuition, and inherited methods, can reap abundant, local, diverse and organic harvests while fostering mutual aid, community, and political engagement.
Each spring, Charles River Watershed Association looks forward to connecting with you and other river lovers at our Annual Meeting to celebrate our impact, together, for a resilient Charles River. Join us on Thursday, March 26th at 6PM for an evening full of inspiration! Thank you to our friends at MIT for providing their beautiful space. This year the 60th Annual Meeting takes place at the MIT Welcome Center, 292 Main Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Purchase your tickets at www.crwa.org
Rooted in Place will take place on Sunday, November 9 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Berkshire Waldorf High School in Stockbridge. This year the dynamic symposium invites nature lovers, gardeners, farmers, educators, and environmental stewards to explore the intersection of culture and biodiversity — and how stories, seeds and land connect us all. Lunch is included.
Keynote Speaker: Abra Lee — Cultivating the Untold Stories of Black Gardeners and Growers Horticulturalist, author, and storyteller Abra Lee will headline the symposium with a keynote address that brings to life the often-overlooked history of Black Americans in horticulture. Drawing on her forthcoming book, Conquer the Soil: Black America and the Untold Stories of Our Country’s Gardeners, Farmers, and Growers (Timber Press), Lee will share riveting narratives — from one of the first Black plant shop owners of the Roaring Twenties to a true tale of espionage with roots in the Harlem Renaissance. Lee, a Georgia native with a degree in ornamental horticulture from Auburn University, has made it her mission to unearth and amplify these hidden histories, connecting cultural heritage to ecological legacy.
Other featured speakers and presenters are K Greene of Hudson Valley Seed Company, Kevin West, whose latest book The Cook’s Garden (Knopf) celebrates the edible joys of homegrown abundance, Sandrine Harris of Emergent Nature, and a screening of Farming While Black,.
The Charles River Watershed Association’s 59th Annual Meeting is coming up fast. Join them on Thursday, March 27th at 6 PM and celebrate our collective impact on the Charles River. Every year, we look forward to this day as a chance to connect with fellow river lovers, hear from expert scientists and advocates, and award those who go above and beyond for the river we love. Food and refreshments will be provided, and all are welcome. The event takes place at the MIT Welcome Center.
The sustainable future we are collectively building comes with significant environmental costs, primarily felt by the global south. The mining and processing of rare earth metals, nickel, cobalt, copper, and many other critical materials, essential for electrification and renewable technologies, often result in considerable ecological damage.
These activities can lead to deforestation, contamination of water sources, soil erosion, and the emission of harmful gases. Consequently, the health and safety of workers and local residents are compromised along with the environment. All of this stands in stark contrast to the overall goals of the green revolution, but currently represents an unavoidable aspect of progress.
This talk will explore how the mining and extraction of these materials, while essential for driving forward the clean energy revolution, often contradicts the principles of environmental stewardship. The lecture will particularly focus on the impact in the global south, where much of the world’s mining and refining activities take place, often with less stringent environmental regulations and oversight. This raises critical questions about the true cost of our transition to renewable energy and electric mobility.
In response to these challenges, Dr. Tomas Villalón will share Phoenix Tailings’ transformative approach to mining and material processing. Our innovative strategies aim to revolutionize the industry by extracting rare earth metals and other crucial materials sustainably. He will discuss their cutting-edge techniques for minimizing ecological impact through rethinking the approach to material refining and the remediation of toxic waste. By turning a historically pollutive process into a more environmentally responsible one and cleaning up the toxic byproducts of mining operations, Phoenix Tailings is not only contributing to the cleaner production of electrification materials but also paving the way for a more equitable and truly sustainable future.
Dr. Tomas Villalón has dedicated his life to solving the issues of the mining and metals industry. He received his PhD Boston University, and BSc from MIT, going on to co-found Phoenix Tailings in 2019 with a mission of building the world’s first fully clean mining and metals production company. Tomas is an expert in the sustainable extraction of critical minerals from tailings and environmentally responsible rare earth refining.
The free event takes place February 7 from 7 – 8 pm at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, 154 Moody St, Waltham, Massachusetts, and is cosponsored by the Museum in partnership with the GBH Forum Network and the Lowell Institute. For more information visit www.wgbh.org
Hashim Sarkis is an architect, educator, and scholar. He is principal of Hashim Sarkis Studios (HSS), established in 1998 with offices in Boston and Beirut. In 2015, Sarkis became Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He will speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on Oxford Street in Cambridge on April 21 beginning at 6:30 pm in the Piper Auditorium in Gund Hall. Free and open to the public.
Before joining MIT, Sarkis was the Aga Khan Professor of Landscape
Architecture and Urbanism at Harvard University. He has also taught at
the Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, the Ameircan
University of Beirut, and the Metropolis Program in Barcelona.
The architectural and urban projects of HSS include affordable
housing, houses, parks, institutional buildings, urban design, and town
planning. HSS has received several awards for its projects including for
the Housing of the Fishermen of Tyre, Byblos Town Hall, and the
Courtower Houses. The firm’s work has been exhibited around the world,
including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the biennales
of Venice, Rotterdam, Shenzhen/Hong Kong, and Valparaiso. The work has
also been published extensively, most recently in a monograph by
Ness.docs. He recently was appointed curator of the 17th International
Architecture Exhibition at the 2020 Venice Biennale.
Sarkis earned a Bachelor of Architecture and a Bachelor of Fine Arts
from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master of Architecture and
a PhD in Architecture from Harvard University. He is author, co-author,
and editor of several books and articles on modern architecture history
and theory, including The World as an Architectural Project; Josep
Lluis Sert, The Architect of Urban Design; Circa 1958, Lebanon in the
Projects and Plans of Constantinos Doxiadis; and Le Corbusier’s Venice
Hospital.
Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.
Benefiting IT’S ALL ABOUT ARTS, MIT’s Endicott House Youth Scholarship Fund, come to a Box Lunch/Brunch on the grounds of the magnificent MIT Endicott House, 80 Haven Street in Dedham, on Sunday, September 8. Artists, Outdoor Painting on the Lawn with plein air artists Dan McCole, Ruth LaGue, Wendi Gray, Deb Putnam, Carol Schweigert, Lyasya Sinkovski, Yuko Oda, and others, Music, Raffles, Fun, Cash Bar – spend a sophisticated Sunday while relaxing at the Mansion! $30, includes lunch and entertainment. Reservations are required – visit http://www.roslindalearts.org/artinthegarden.html
The Reception is full, but contact Rachel Hangley below for membership information. Marie Law Adams and Dan Adams, founders of Landing Studio, will be discussing their vision and design for Charlesgate Park and sharing the community-led plan to revitalize this long-neglected area. Reclaiming the lost segment of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall at the intersection of three historic park spaces; the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the Fens, and the Esplanade, their innovative plan will create new multi-modal connections to reconnect the park systems of Boston.
Landing Studio is an architecture and urban design practice. Their work is focused on the design of industrial and infrastructural systems in cities through shared-use landscapes, buildings, light installations, festivals, exhibitions, tours, and industry/community operations agreements. Additionally, Dan is the Director of the School of Architecture at Northeastern University, and Marie is a Lecturer in Urban Design at MIT.
Rowan Jacobsen, author and Knight Science Journalism Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak in the Geological Lecture Hall of the Harvard Museum of Natural History on Thursday, May 3 at 6 pm on Apples: A New England History.
No other fruit embodies the horticultural and cultural range of the apple. Originally from the mountains of Kazakhstan, apples have seduced bees, intoxicated monks, nourished colonists, and inspired artists, from Paul Cézanne to Rudolf Blaschka, who created Harvard’s collection of botanically precise glass apples (now on view in the Glass Flowers gallery). James Beard Award- winning author Rowan Jacobsen will discuss his book, Apples of Uncommon Character, and will explore the surprising ways in which the apple has shaped New England history. A tasting of heirloom ciders from Vermont’s Eden Specialty Ciders will follow the talk.
Advance registration required at https://hmnh.harvard.edu/Apples. Free and open to the public. Free event parking at 52 Oxford Street Garage. Reception sponsored by the Harvard Chapter of Sigma Xi .
