Events

Creating vibrant and engaging communities helps communities recruit and retain residents, supports public gathering places in the heart of our communities, and fosters community connections. Learn about the WEDC Vibrant Communities grant and how projects create accessible locations for programming and amenities desired by local residents, with the additional benefit of boosting foot traffic for nearby businesses.

This event will include three parts: a contextualizing introduction to Nora Wendl’s book “Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth” (University of Illinois Press, 2025) by Professor Adrienne Economos-Miller; an illustrated reading of excerpts of this book by Wendl; and a conversation between Professors Wendl, Economos-Miller, and Sam Schuermann on the themes and topics of the book. Almost Nothing is a critical history of the Edith Farnsworth House (Mies van der Rohe, Plano, Illinois, 1951) written in the form of an auto-theoretical memoir. As such, it engages in topics and questions related to architectural historiography, feminism, preservation, memory, and authorship.