Charles Waldheim
Charles Waldheim's research focuses on contemporary urbanism and its relation to landscape. Waldheim coined the term “landscape urbanism” to describe emerging design practices in the context of North American urbanism and has written extensively on the positions, practices, and precedents of the topic. He is currently editing the definitive account of this disciplinary realignment: The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton Architectural Press, forthcoming 2006). Citing the city of Detroit as the most legible example of urban industrial economy in North America, Waldheim is editor of CASE: Lafayette Park Detroit (Prestel / Harvard Design School, 2004) and co-editor, with Jason Young and Georgia Daskalakis, of Stalking Detroit (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2001). On the history and future of Chicago urbanism he is author of Constructed Ground (University of Illinois Press, 2001), and co-editor, with Katerina Ruedi Ray, of Chicago Architecture and Urbanism: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). He is currently working on the first book-length history of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, ORD: Chicago O’Hare.
Waldheim has authored several chapters in books including “Motor City” in Shaping the City: Case Studies in Urban History, Theory and Design, ed. Rodolphe el-Khoury and Edward Robbins (Routledge, 2003); and “Aerial Representation and the Recovery of Landscape” in Recovering Landscape, ed. James Corner (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999). He has contributed three chapters to the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture, ed. Stephen Sennott (Routledge, 2004). His writing has appeared in Landscape Journal, Praxis, 306090, Canadian Architect, Dimensions, and Landscape Architecture Magazine.
Waldheim has taught at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the Swiss Federal Institute (ETH) Zurich, the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, and the Technical University (TU) Vienna. He has been named recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and Research Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). He was elected Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design, and Honorary Member of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA). He currently serves as a member of the Toronto Waterfront Redevelopment Corporation Design Review Panel and sits on the editorial board of Canadian Architect. Waldheim is a licensed architect and maintains a consulting practice, Urban Agency, advising public and private clients on a range of issues related to contemporary urbanism. He also collaborates with multi-disciplinary design teams in competitions and urban design proposals. Waldheim received the Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded the Paul Cret Medal for Master’s Thesis Prize and the Wil Melhorn Prize for graduate work in architectural theory. He has worked as an architect with KieranTimberlake and Mostafavi + Farjadi.