Design Thesis in Landscape Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design 2011
Advisor: Pierre Belanger
Exhibition: Dialogues on Urbanization – Emerging Landscapes, IIT College of Architecture, May 2015
Publication: Lipschitz, Forbes. “Counting Chickens: The Landscape of Poultry Production in the American Broiler Belt,” Manifest: A Journal of American Art and Architecture, Vol. 1 No.1
Over the past three decades, the rising populations and growing incomes of an increasingly urbanized world have resulted in a rapid expansion global meat production and consumption. Changing consumption patterns have transformed the global livestock sector into arguably the most ecologically influential industry in the world, with livestock activities occupying 30% of the Earth’s surface. Both directly and indirectly, it impacts the world’s land and water resources, negatively impacting biodiversity and contributing substantially to climate change. Despite its profound influence across every scale, however, the livestock sector is entirely absent from landscape practice, research, and education.
Using the poultry industry in Northwest Arkansas as a testing ground, my thesis engages landscape architecture in contemporary agro-industrial discourse and identifies the livestock sector as a future field of practice. The poultry industry in Northwest Arkansas is chosen as an ideal site both because poultry occupies the largest share of the livestock sector and Northwest Arkansas in particular leads the global market. By employing a telescopic approach to research and analysis, the research-driven design frames livestock farming in the context of global urbanization and develops comprehensive landscape-based strategies for the future.
