Boston Flora

Tag: Piper Auditorium

  • Thursday, November 21, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Michelle Delk

    Michelle Delk is a passionate champion and designer of the urban public realm. Based in New York City, Michelle is a Partner and Landscape Architect with Snøhetta. Her work is trans-disciplinary, evocative, and representative of a simple foundational premise shared with Snøhetta: to create places that enhance the positive relationships between people and their environments. Both aspirational and pragmatic, her work reveals and complements the sublime qualities of embedded beauty and rational functionality within the constructed environment.

    Michelle’s enthusiasm is reflected in her commitment to design and leadership within her firm and community. She is an active board member for the Urban Design Forum in New York City, a member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Stewardship Council, and lectures at conferences, universities, and communities throughout the world. Since 2001, her range of work around North America spans from small urban plazas to public parks and large-scale master plans. Currently, she leads several efforts with Snøhetta, including the design of the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon (below), a transformation of a 22-acre post-industrial site; as well as a re-imagining of the 20-acre Blaisdell Center in Central Honolulu; and the re-imagined design of a significant public plaza in midtown Manhattan.

    This November 21 program in Gund Hall Piper Auditorium at the Harvard Graduate School of Design begins at 6:30 and is supported by the Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture Fund. It is free and open to the public.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, November 8, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Thomas Woltz: Restoration Ecology

    Over the past two decades of practice, landscape architect Thomas Woltz has forged a body of work that integrates the beauty and function of built forms with an understanding of complex biological systems and restoration ecology. As principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW), a 45-person firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia and New York City, Woltz has infused narratives of the land into the places where people live, work and play, deepening the public’s enjoyment of the natural world and inspiring environmental stewardship. NBW projects create models of biodiversity and sustainable agriculture within areas of damaged ecological infrastructure and working farmland, yielding hundreds of acres of reconstructed wetlands, reforested land, and flourishing wildlife habitat.

    Presently, Thomas and NBW are entrusted with the design of major public parks across the United States, Canada and New Zealand, they include Memorial Park in Houston, Hudson Yards in New York City, NoMA Green in Washington DC, Cornwall Park in Auckland, the Aga Khan Garden in Alberta, Canada, and three parks in Nashville, including Centennial Park.

    In 2013 was named Design Innovator of the Year by the Wall Street Journal magazine and in 2017 Fast Company named Woltz one of the most creative people in business. Thomas will speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Piper Auditorium on Quincy Street in Cambridge on Thursday, November 8 at 6:30 pm. Free and open to the public. For more information visit http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/thomas-woltz/

    Image result for thomas woltz restoration ecology

  • Thursday, October 5, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Teresa Moller

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design presents a free lecture by Teresa Moller on Thursday, October 5 beginning at 6:30 pm in  Gund Hall’s Piper Auditorium on Quincy Street in Cambridge. The studio Teresa Moller y Asociados has been working for the past 35 years in the world of Landscape Architecture. The office strongly believes in the power of simplicity. A careful observation and awareness of the existing landscape is the key for developing sociocultural projects and bringing nature accessible to people and for them to find balance in a constant changing urban environment.

    The diverse landscapes of Chile have been the setting for the majority of the studio’s projects since its founding. Distinct palettes of plants and materials are utilized as project locations range from the Atacama Desert in the north to the Lakes Region of the south as well as from the Pacific Coast in the east to the Andes mountain range in the west. This diversity has developed a way of working in the studio that approaches each project by examining the valuable elements existing in the site along with the surrounding natural systems, local ecology, and architecture. Thus, every project is a direct and unique result of its environment.

    The work has an architectural base, a geometry that structures the landscape over which the vegetation interacts more freely. Moller’s work is characterized by its simplicity, and she strongly believes that in that simplicity lays its force. This force unites nature with architecture and provides a point of interaction between humans and their surroundings. The studio has developed international projects, including in China, Germany, Argentina, and Australia. The studio works in the realms of residential, public urban space, commercial, institutional and agricultural settings with many built projects to date. The goal of the office is always to collaborate with the architects and clients, using each participant’s strengths and knowledge to arrive at an integrated design solution that is both efficient and elegant.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Tuesday, March 7, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Planting in the Public Realm: Projects and Projections

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will conduct a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 7 from 6:30 – 8:30 in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Quincy Street in Cambridge.

    Plant life, long regarded in cities as an amenity, has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries also become an accepted necessity integral to the urban fabric. Yet, there are multiple challenges facing plants and planting design in urban areas. Pollution, climate change, increasingly restricted space, and insufficient or nonexistent public budgets for plants are only some of the factors that make it difficult for vegetation in our cities to survive. Yet numerous new public urban parks have been created, tree planting programs persist, new plant cultivars are developed, spontaneous plant growth is studied, and new planting design paradigms are proposed.

    In a series of short presentations and a moderated discussion, landscape architects, planting designers, and ecologists will assess the current state of the art in planting the public realm. The event seeks to draw out ideas for how plants can be used in the future design of urbanizing areas to create healthy, sustainable, inclusive, and appealing environments. What is the importance of planting the public realm today, and what are its biggest challenges? What are the roles of landscape architects, designers, ecologists, and plant scientists in accommodating plant life in cities and in areas that are becoming urbanized, and are we beyond botanical xenophobia? Moderated by author Sonja Dümpelmann, associate professor of landscape architecture, with Steven Handel, visiting professor in landscape architecture; Noel Kingsbury, writer and garden designer; Norbert Kühn, TU Berlin; Doug Reed MLA ’81, lecturer in landscape; and Matthew Urbanski MLA ’89, associate professor in practice of landscape architecture.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Tuesday, February 21, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Toward an Urban Ecology

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will host a lecture by Kate Orff in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30.

    Kate Orff, RLA, is the founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in New York City, and author of Toward an Urban Ecology, a book about the practice. SCAPE re-conceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. A range of participatory and science-based strategies will be discussed and shown in the lecture through the lens of the office’s work, featuring projects, collaborators, and design methods that advance urban ecological design.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Wednesday, April 15, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – An Evening with Adriaan Geuze

    As a cofounder of West 8, Adriaan Geuze has established an international reputation based on a unique approach to design, relating contemporary culture, urban identity, architecture, public space, and engineering in the individual project, always taking the context into account. With an international team of 70 architects, urban designers, landscape architects and industrial engineers, West 8 has implemented projects such as Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam, Governor’s Island in New York, Madrid Rio, and Miami Beach SoundScape Park (pictured.) He will speak on Wednesday, April 15, from 6:30 – 8 in the Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge. This Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture is an annual honorific lecture on landscape, free and open to the public. For more information contact events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Tuesday, October 28, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Olmsted Lecture: On the Theoretical and Practical Development of Landscape Architecture

    The Harvard University Graduate School of Design will present its Olmsted Lecture on Tuesday, October 28, from 6:30 – 8 in the Piper Auditorium of Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge.  The speaker will be Joseph Disponzio, and his topic is On the Theoretical and Practical Development of Landscape Architecture.

    Exploring the transformation of the modeling of land from garden-making to landscape architecture, this lecture by Joseph Disponzio will establish the intellectual origins of landscape architecture in relation to the new garden practices that emerged during the 18th century, and the texts that codified these practices, amid Enlightenment-era changes in the understanding of nature. Disponzio is Preservation Landscape Architect for the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation, and Director of the Landscape Design program at Columbia University. He has taught at several institutions, published widely on garden history from the 18th century to the present, and is currently writing introductions for an edition of N. Vergnaud’s L’Art de créer les jardins (1835) and a translation of Jean-Marie Morel’s Théorie des jardins (1776).

    For accessibility issues, please contact the events office two weeks in advance at (617)-496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. Free and open to the public.

  • Thursday, November 14, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Airport Landscape Keynote Lecture

    Adriaan Geuze is founder and principal of West 8, an international urban design and landscape architecture practice whose designs are informed by contemporary culture, urban identity, architecture, public space, and engineering. West 8 has done landscape projects for Schiphol Airport (below) since 1992 and has won international design competitions for the Toronto Waterfront (2006), Governors Island in New York (2007), Playa de Palma in Mallorca (2008), and the master plan for Yongsan Park, Seoul (2012). Among his many awards, Geuze was the 2002 recipient of the Veronica Rudge Green Prize for Urban Design. He was curator of the 2005 International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam. In 2012 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Dutch government. Mr. Geuze will give the Airport Landscape Keynote Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge, on Thursday, November 14 beginning at 6:30 pm. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information email events@gsd.harvard.edu.

    http://www.west8.nl/images/dbase/3053.jpg

  • Thursday, October 3, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Nonlinear Encounters: Emergence in Landscape Architecture

    As emergence theory is invoked and “operationalized” in a wide range of projects and studios, cities are becoming adaptive in ways they never were before. But the concepts mobilized by systems thinking require us to reexamine the very nature of our human encounter with the world, whose complexities are not often considered in landscape architecture. With the aid of key concepts of emergence such as difference, disturbance, and assemblage, this Harvard Graduate School of Design lecture will attempt to situate designers within the systems they intervene in while acknowledging that the systems are within them too. Rod Barnett is a visiting professor of landscape architecture. The Olmsted Lecture is an annual honorific lecture in landscape architecture. It will take place Thursday, October 3, beginning at 6:30 pm in the Piper Auditorium of Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge, and is free and open to the public.  For more information contact events@gsd.harvard.edu.

    http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/images/content/5/5/v3/558884.jpeg

  • Thursday, April 18, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Land vs. Landscape

    “Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.” In this way Oscar Wilde explains in The Decay of Lying that the fogs above the Thames were first seen only when Turner painted them. Similarly, a “land” becomes a “landscape” only through an artistic process. Land can be considered the zero degree state of a landscape that is waiting to be discovered. With a background in civil engineering, architecture and landscape architecture, Bas Smets, Principal of Bureau Bas Smets in Brussels, has developed a specific approach to representation that enables him to reveal an unseen landscape, starting from a very precise reading of the existing land. His projects range from the conception of territorial strategies to the construction of public spaces. In addition to these public missions, he creates one private garden a year.

    This Sylvester Baxter Lecture of the Harvard Graduate School of Design will take place in the Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge on Thursday, April 18 from 6:30 – 8 and is free and open to the public.

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