A 18:00 lecture introduced by Fritz Haeg, Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellow, with responses from Mona Talbott, executive chef for the Rome Sustainable Food Project; Carlo Vigevano, principal at Abbate e Vigevano Architetti; and Michael Waters, Donald and Maria Cox Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow.

The presentation is in English and followed by garden reception. A 20:30 dinner by the Rome Sustainable Food Project with limited seating (SOLD OUT).

On June 23, 2011 Carolyn Steel will give a public lecture at the American Academy in Rome related to her best selling 2008 book Hungry Cities: How Food Shapes Our Lives, which depended heavily upon early research in Rome, and how the ancient city fed itself. She will discuss the ways in which cities evolve around food, and in particular how the city of Rome has been shaped by these influences over time. Responses and questions from selected members of Academy community, including the chef Mona Talbott, the architect Carlo Vigevano, the scholar Michael Waters, and moderated by Academy fellow Fritz Haeg, will lead to an open discussion to be followed by a garden reception and a special Rome Sustainable Food Project dinner al fresco.

Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer whose chief interest is exploring the inner lives of cities, focused on developing a lateral approach to urban design that looks at the everyday routines that shape cities and the way we inhabit them. She has run design studios at the London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University and at Cambridge University, where her lecture course ‘Food and the City’ is an established part of the degree program. Her 2008 book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives follows food’s journey from land to city, through market and supermarket, kitchen and table, waste-dump and back again, to show how food affects all our lives, and impacts on the planet.