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“Agriculture ultimately is culture,” says Maria Villalobos Hernandez, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture associate professor and director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism (MLA+U) program. “It creates culture, and it becomes culture in many ways.”

This idea serves as the basis for her advanced studio course, Vineyards of Change, a multidisciplinary, transgenerational, multicultural initiative that focuses on viticulture (the cultivation or culture surrounding grapes, especially for winemaking) and the landscape of vineyards across various regions. Emerging from a partnership between Villalobos, Special Adviser Jordi Barri from Barcelona, and wine producer partners, the course aims to explore vineyards and viticulture as spaces for community gathering and cultural exchange. Students investigate territories, climate, and people involved in wine making, how to situate vineyards in harmony with the natural features of the environment, and how to design wine production facilities that bring communities together.

The research portion of Vineyards of Change features trips to vineyards in Maipo Valley in Chile; Alt Penedès in Catalonia, Spain; and Napa Valley in California—all serving different climates, geologies, languages, and economies where students get the chance to immerse themselves in the landscape by working and living on the site.

At these locations, students collect data on and analyze physical properties and cultural heritage to create a comprehensive landscape framework. The developed framework can be represented as a new building design, landscape propositions, or a collection of research embracing the relationships of terroir, ancestral gastronomy, and landscape observatory traditions.

During the 2024–25 academic year, the course collaborated with the Napa Valley Community Foundation and IIT alum Frank Naeymi-Rad (Ph.D. CS ’90) and Thereza Kepic, who hosted students at their vineyard. These collaborations helped forge further connections in the Napa Valley region, including with Darioush and Palmaz Vineyards, the Recaredo group, and winemakers from the Corpinnat Association.

The collaboration has provided funding to expand the program’s global network, including further collaborations in Napa, as well as in the Côte Vermeille, located on the France–Catalunya border, and in Mendoza, Argentina.