Landscapes in Dialogue - Landscape Architecture Lecture Series
Landscape Architecture MA/MLA presents the Spring term ‘Landscapes in Dialogue’ lecture series.
Landscapes in Dialogue - Landscape Architecture Lecture Series
09 May 2023 - 18 Jul 2023
All events in this series will be held on Zoom. Check the schedule for times and registration links.
About
Landscapes are always a work in progress and a collective work over time. Our ‘Landscapes in Dialogue’ lunchtime lectures are a series of informal talks involving practitioners and thinkers from landscape and a range of disciplines in conversations about work in progress, working methods, and the process of working with landscape.
This series is presented by the Landscape Architecture MA and MLA programmes and is open to the public.
Schedule
24 January | 13:00 | Cannon Ivers
Staging Urban Landscapes
Landscape architecture is a cultural project. In his essay Recovering Landscapes as a Cultural Practice, James Corner assert, "The emphasis shifts from landscape as a product of culture to landscape as an agent producing and enriching culture. Landscape as noun (as object or scene) is quieted in order to emphasise landscape as verb (as process or activity). Here, it is less the formal characteristics of landscape that are described than it is the formative effects of landscape in time. The focus is upon the agency of landscape (how it works and what it does) rather than upon its simple appearance."
This presentation will explain how urban spaces are increasingly used as platforms for artistic expression, installations, performances and cultural exchange and the agency of the landscape architect to define the 'precisely open rather than the vaguely loose.
Biography
Cannon Ivers (CMLI) is a landscape architect and Director at LDA Design in London. He holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree with distinction from the GSD, Harvard. Cannon is a teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Landscape Architecture and the author of the books Staging Urban Landscapes:The Activation and Curation of Flexible Public Spaces, Planting Design and the editor of 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know. His professional work includes urban public spaces and parks and he frequently contributes to design discourse through publications examining 3D design and digital fabrication, spatial programmability, intelligent water design and high impact, low maintenance planting design.
Image: Credited to Cannon Ivers
07 March | 13:00 | Céline Baumann
Studio Céline Baumann
The talk will present the work of Studio Céline Baumann in the fields of urbanism, landscape architecture and exhibitions. Through an intersectional lens, the studio aims lens to create dynamic open spaces informed by the interactive ecology between people and nature. This design work is complemented by a commitment to research, allowing to explore the collective value of nature and its impact on individuals.
Biography
Céline Baumann (1984) is a French landscape architect based in Basel, Switzerland. Her work has been exhibited at Manifesta 14 in Prishtina, Matadero in Madrid, the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Oslo Architecture Triennale. She has been nominated for the Swiss Art Awards in 2021, was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2020, alumna of the Future Architecture Platform in 2019 and was awarded the Youth awards of the European federation of landscape architects in 2018. Baumann is currently visiting professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Image: Credited to Céline Baumann
14 March | 13:00 | Joost Emmerik
Can we be guests in our own garden?
In the garden we shape our personal relationship with nature. We can shut out nature here and fill the garden with tiles, lounge sofas and outdoor rugs. But could we also welcome nature in here? Can we see the garden as a place that, although our legal property, in reality belongs to the earth, the birds and the seasons? Could we become guests in our own garden?
Biography
Joost Emmerik is a garden and landscape architect and is heading the Landscape Architecture Master's programme at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.
Image: Art by Iwan Smit, art direction by Joost Emmerik.
05 May | 13:30 | Liza Fior
More Than One Thing At A Time - Designs For The Public Realm
London architecture and urban design practice MUF's approach is grounded in the aim to make themselves useful project by project, situation by situation. Aware that by this point in the academic year, most students cannot imagine "taking" an hour off, this talk is as much a sharing of methods as anything else. What happens to all that research at that moment of detailed design? Liza Fior will present ways of doing things, through a limited number of projects and the studio's respective bedrock of research.
Biography
Liza Fior is an architect and one of the founding partners of MUF Architecture/Art, a London-based practice of architects, artists and urban designers.
Location: Room 1.02, 22 Gordon Street
Image: Altab Ali Park, London, MUF Architecture/Art
09 May | 16:00 | Martí Franch Batllori
Between Earth and Light
Celebrated Catalan landscape architect Martí Franch presents ongoing projects which trace a transect from earth to sky. These works explore and propose tools for design that give rise to and support life through the manipulation of light, shade and water.
Biography
Martí Franch is founder and principal of EMF Landscape Architecture — an interdisciplinary practice working internationally in the fields of urban and environmental design.
Franch is a landscape architect, and trained horticulturalist and engineer in agricultural sciences. He explores hybrid ways between ecological systems & cultural constructs to inform projects and build up new realities. His work has been internationally published and awarded with an ASLA American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award 2012, European Landscape Biennal - Rosa Barba Prize 2012, as well as selected finalist in FAD 2012, Rosa Barba Prize 2010, CCCB European Prize of Public Space 2012 among others. He holds a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Greenwich.
23 May | 14:00 | Jonathan Evans, RA, NOMA
“The Embrace” is a new powerful symbol of love, unity, and justice that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. In Boston, where they met, fell in love and began their work, the memorial is a call to action that demands acknowledgement and reflection of our past.
By highlighting the act of embrace, this memorial shifts the emphasis from singular hero worship to collective action, reminding visitors of our shared humanity and honoring the Kings’ ideal of fostering a "beloved community" in which everyone can realise their role in bringing a more just society. "The Embrace" marks the first step in a transformative vision for the city of Boston. Answering the call of how we can fill the voids left in America’s public spaces, once we have removed the memorials that divide us. How can we demand more memorials that unite us around our common humanity, love, and empathy?
Biography
Jonathan is a Principal and licensed architect with MASS Design Group in Boston. He has dedicated his career to architecture with measurable community value and public interest, from affordable multi-family housing to planning and urban design work for nonprofits and public agencies. He leads MASS's portfolio in multifamily, affordable and senior housing. Jonathan was the lead architect on "The Embrace" memorial.
Jonathan studied at UVA and Harvard GSD, where he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi medal for leadership, service and promise of professional merit. Jonathan is a Mayoral Appointee to the Boston Civic Design Commission, where he serves on a panel that reviews significant projects that impact the city’s public realm.
Image: "The Embrace" Memorial by MASS Design Group
19 June | 13:00 | Thierry Kandjee and Sébastien Penfornis
How to envision the transitions of our territories?
The time required for adaptation is often counted in decades, and for the first time in history, it is becoming too slow compared to the speed of the disruptions. We must therefore not only reinvent our doctrines but also find tactics to accelerate the transitions. Our talk will address two prototypes (Parckfarm Brussels, 12 seasons Park Paris) where we have tested transitional strategies in fragile urban contexts. We aim to highlight how our practice through curation and care, cultural agencies, have enabled multiple landscapes. Doing so, we will ultimately highlight our specific modes of doing, building upon tacit knowledge of gardening and bricolage.
Biography
Dr. Sébastien Penfornis, architect, is co-founder of Taktyk and senior lecturer at ENSAB (Rennes) since 2017. Sébastien Penfornis has regularly taught in several academic institutions (ENSP Versailles, RMIT Melbourne, UCT Cape Town) to supervise landscape urbanism design studios. His PhD entitled Playful tactics was part of a practice-based research developed by RMIT Melbourne and Adapt-Mackintosh School of Art Glasgow. His research focused on the notion of play as a design framework to explore new modes of engagement in his practice of landscape urbanism.
Dr. Thierry Kandjee, graduated and taught at ENSP Versailles from 2004 to 2014, he has been adjunct prof of Rmit since 2015 and Visiting Ass Prof at NUS Doa in 2022. He established Taktyk Brussels as a platform for reflection and action to reflect on current Brussels public space agenda through the means of strategic studies, projects, design studio, masterclass and events. He currently holds the Landscape Chair in the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta, ULB. The Chair promotes research and teaching on landscape creation & innovation.
Please note, this event is a hybrid event. Register and join online or in person at 22 Gordon Street, WC1H 0BQ, Room 1.02
Image: 12 Seasons Park, Paris, Taktyk.
18 July | 13:00 | Georges Farhat
This lecture will present the methodology and preliminary findings of a British Academy-funded research project that aims to reconstruct the practice of perspective in landscape architectural views created in J. A. Du Cerceau’s (1511-1585) workshop. How and why did the French Renaissance architect, surveyor, and engraver consistently bend and expand the rules that he promoted in his Leçons de perspective positive (1576)? The answers to this question will touch upon epistemic and technical aspects of the intertwined histories of perspective and landscape design.
Biography
Georges Farhat is professor of landscape history and theory at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the intersections between territorial structures, design techniques, and epistemologies of landscape. Farhat recently edited the volume Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism (Harvard University Press, 2020). Previous works include co-curating the exhibition André Le Nôtre in Perspective at the Museum of the chateau of Versailles (2013-14) and co-editing the eponymous book (Hazan/Yale University Press). He is a 2023 British Academy Visiting Fellow with a project on the practice of perspective in the works of Du Cerceau at the British Museum.
Image Credit: Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Topographical view of Château, grounds and park of Anet, France. Drawing on vellum, 51.5 x 75.0 cm, ca. 1570.
Further information
Ticketing
Open
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes