Past Events

Spring 2006 Colloquium:

1.25 Catherine Szanto, Landscape Architect, School of Landscape Architecture, Budapest
“City and Water Intertwined: A History of the urban form of Budapest”
Ms. Szanto is a French landscape architect, dividing her time between France and Hungary. She studied at Cornell, then she went back to France, where she worked first for a design firm dealing mainly with urban public space, then for a town in the suburbs of Paris. Now she is working for an organization that gives advice to small rural towns and villages about their public spaces. In Hungary, she is working with architects and urbanists on studies on urban public space and she is teaching a design course in the School of Landscape Architecture in Budapest. She came to Berkeley as a visiting scholar in the philosophy department to pursue her interest in the perception of space. Her presentation will address the history of the urban form of Budapest, particularly along its waterfront.

2.15 Tom Steinbach, Executive Director, Greenbelt Alliance
“Protecting the Bay Area's Greenbelt”

Tom Steinbach is Executive Director of Greenbelt Alliance – the San Francisco Bay Area’s land conservation and urban planning non-profit. Since 1958, Greenbelt Alliance has led efforts to protect open space and create livable communities in the Bay Area. He has more than 14 years experience working on land use and environmental protection in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Prior to his position as Executive Director of Greenbelt Alliance, he was Conservation Director of the Appalachian Mountain Club. He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In this presentation, Tom Steinbach will discuss the challenge of protecting the Bay Area's greenbelt and the pressures that the region's lands currently face. Growth and development are the largest threat to a permanently protected greenbelt in the Bay Area. Mr. Steinbach will then explain the work that Greenbelt Alliance does to protect open space and promote livable communities in the Bay Area.

2.22 Hilary Kaplan, Poet and Oral Historian
“Gathering at the River: Valuing Stories in Landscape"
Hilary Kaplan founded and directs Gathering at the River, a project to document oral history of the Los Angeles river from 1920 to the present. Most recently, she hosted the community history storytelling programs at Not A Cornfield, a living artwork on the Cornfield/Los Angeles State Historic Park site in downtown LA. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at SFSU and working on a book of oral histories about the LA River. Her work as a writer, editor, and oral historian has appeared in the Los Angeles Public Library's Central Library, Pond Gallery, Fourteen Hills, and The Next American City. She is Kaufmann Humanities Scholar at SFSU, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry.
Ms. Kaplan will share stories of the LA River and Cornfield—two culturally, environmentally, and historically significant sites currently undergoing massive redesign and re-visioning as public space. Drawing from her interviews and creative collaborations with diverse Angelenos, she will explore the power of stories to transform our relationship with land. What is the importance of passing these stories from person to person? How can designers use storytelling to orchestrate public participation and infuse designs with culturally relevant meanings?

3.15 Bill Thompson, FASLA Editor, Landscape Architecture Magazine
“A View Behind the Pages of Landscape Architecture Magazine”
Editor Bill Thompson will talk about what drives editorial decisions at Landscape Architecture Magazine and what that means for students and for UC Berkeley. He will invite questions and dialogue.

J. William Thompson, FASLA, is the editor of Landscape Architecture magazine. A writer and editor who has been with the magazine since 1988, he became chief editor in 1990. He is coauthor of Sustainable Landscape Construction, published by Island Press. In 2001 he received the Bradford Williams Award for his writing about landscape architecture. An advocate of what he calls “Old Urbanism,” he lives in downtown Washington, DC.

4.5 Lindy Hulton-Larson – Associate, Design Workshop, Tahoe
"The Design Workshop + The Legacy Concept"
Lindy Hulton-Larson will explain the work of the Design Workshop, and its guiding tenet, the Legacy Concept. Design Workshop is an ideologically based firm that originated in academia and was named for the process of collaboration the founders wished to foster. It was formed originally in 1969 at North Carolina State University as an effort to give real-world experience to landscape architecture students but entered the business world a few years later. The firm has evolved as a learning organization and a desire-driven firm, seeking out complex and challenging projects wherever intellectual interests may lead. The goal is to do work that matters, work that makes a difference, work that contributes to the well-being of the planet — to do well by doing good.

Their guiding tenet has been that the work must take the broadest, most comprehensive perspective and use a holistic approach to resolve issues. This Legacy principle is symbolized by four overlapping circles — one each for community, economics, environment and art — which are contained within a fifth circle that represents design and management. The center, where the four elements intersect, is the ideal profile for a project. The outer circle speaks to the importance of synthesis and integration. Legacy recognizes that the few environmental designs that have stood the test of time did so by bringing together elements of environmental sensitivity, economic viability and community values in a manner that raised the executed work to the level of art. Such places represent the noblest strivings of our profession; their very existence forms part of the legacy upon which modern civilization is built.

Lindy Hulton-Larson’s education and subsequent professional experience as a landscape architect in Australia combined with her experience in the United States provides her with the opportunity to bring a unique perspective to her project work. Her specialty is public domain design, incorporating recreational uses, appropriate infrastructure and environmental sustainability. She has been involved in a number of large park and recreation projects both in support and project management roles. Her experience includes working through the master planning process, from community and stakeholder consultation to conceptual design, design development, documentation and construction supervision.

4.12 Leo O'Brian, Vice President, Landscape Architecture, Irvine Community Development Company, an Affiliate of the Irvine Company
“Suburban Transformation: The future of central Orange County”
Orange County is in the midst of a major transformation from a suburban community to more urban development patterns. The role of open space, place making and environmental considerations all influence this evolution. The 120,000 acre Irvine Ranch, occupying 20% of Orange County, is at the convergence of this development. This discussion will overview these county-wide influences and their effect on the urban design and landscape architecture with The Irvine Ranch.
Mr.. O'Brian oversees the landscape architectural design efforts for the Irvine Company. He holds an undergraduate from Texas A&M University and an MLA from Harvard University where he studied landscape architecture with an emphasis on urban design. He currently oversees a wide range of community-wide and site specific projects.

4.19 Bill Walker, Vice President, Environmental Working Group
“Not in My Back Yard -- Or Body”
For decades scientists and environmentalists have focused on toxic chemicals in air, food, water and soil. Now they're looking more closely at chemicals in people, and how Americans' chemical "body burden" is driven by toxins in consumer products from portable classrooms to computers. Three different Environmental Working Group campaigns relate directly to architecture and design: formaldehyde in portable classrooms; arsenic in lumber; and flame retardant pollution.
Bill Walker will discuss the projects of Environmental Working Group, and how this work relates to landscape architecture and environmental planning. Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit research organization that uses the power of information to shape environmental debate and policy. Their team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers pores over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and their own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions. Their research brings to light unsettling facts Americans have a right to know. It shames and shakes up politicians and polluters. It persuades regulators to rethink science and strengthen environmental protection.
Bill Walker spent more than a decade as an investigative journalist and reporter in Texas, Colorado and California before joining the environmental movement as a media strategist for Greenpeace and other organizations. He has trained hundreds of activists nationwide in media skills and strategy, working with groups from Earth First! to the League of Conservation Voters. Since 1997 he has headed EWG's West Coast office in Oakland, where he directs a staff of analysts who study issues including toxins and reproductive health, oil and mineral extraction from public lands, and Western water policy.

4.26 Renee Chow, Professor of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley
“Incremental Change”
Professor Chow teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios as well as classes in design with emphasis on observation, methods and use. Her research focuses on the contemporary suburban condition and on alternatives based upon a view of dwelling as a fabric - as a continuous structure of interrelated spaces in which people reside and through which they move and look. Her publications describe the form of housing in relation to the diverse and temporal nature of dwelling, to ways of building shared environments, and to the production of housing. Renee is Principal of Studio URBIS. The projects of the office include commercial, institutional and residential projects. Professor Chow recently published Suburban Space: The Fabric of Dwelling (2002).

5.3 Dick Cameron, Senior Conservation Planner, The Nature Conservancy
“Planning for Biodiversity Conservation in California”
In this presentation, Dick Cameron will talk about the process of planning for biodiversity conservation at broad scales, with an emphasis on the challenges of integrating design and ecological principles into conservation activity. Representing dynamic ecological phenomena such as migration or wildlife dispersal with limited data is an emerging challenge to conservationists, especially within the context of climate change and land use conversion. He will present some examples of modeling wildlife movement in the Central Coast of California and highlight other planning efforts that integrate biodiversity conservation priorities and the needs of sustainable human
communities.

Dick Cameron is a Senior Conservation Planner for the Nature Conservancy in the California program working on developing spatially-explicit databases to set conservation priorities at the ecoregional and site scales. Before that, Dick worked for GreenInfo Network, a San Francisco-based non-profit GIS consulting firm, where he specialized in using GIS tools and ecological data to help various organizations develop and communicate conservation priorities. His academic background is in Geography with a B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.A. from University of Colorado. From 1994 - 1998, he was the GIS and Mapping coordinator for Forest Guardians in Santa Fe, NM where he co-founded the Southwestern Wildlands Initiative and co-authored the State of Ecosystem Report for the San Juan / Sangre de Cristo bioregion of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Recently, he co-authored the Guide to Wildlands Planning for the Central Coast of California for the California Wilderness Coalition and the Renewable Energy Atlas of the West. He is a past member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Conservation GIS.

Spring 2006 Lecture Series:

February 27, 2006:

Thomas Sieverts

Professor Emeritus, Darmstadt Institute of Technology, Town Planning and City Design

“Soft” Regional Management Strategies: A Collaborative Approach to Regional Design & Planning

Professor Sieverts was the Scientific Director for IBA Emscher Park. He is the author of “Cities without Cities”, and is currently director of an international research project on social, political, spatial, and economic dimensions of city regions, funded by the Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz
Foundation. Tom Sieverts was appointed as UC Regent’s Lecturer in 2005. His talk will address regional design and planning concepts used for the Ruhr District and Region Rhineland in Germany, as well as Vision Bern, Switzerland.

Thomas Sievert’s lecture is jointly sponsored with the Global Metropolitan Studies Center.

March 13, 2006:

Tracy Metz
Journalist, NRC Handelsblad; Member, Independent Advisory Council for the Ministry of Nature and Agriculture

Holland and Water: A Restless Marriage

Tracy Metz, a native of California who now lives in the Netherlands, is a journalist with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. She writes about architecture, urbanism and landscape, and is an international correspondent. She has published books on highways, on manmade ‘new nature’ and in 2002 a book called FUN! Leisure and Landscape. It deals with the influence of leisure on historical city centers, on large-scale developments at the urban edges (‘the pleasure periphery’) and on the transformation of the traditionally agricultural countryside. She is by royal appointment a member of the independent advisory council for the Ministry of Nature and Agriculture and will take up a position this spring as a visiting scholar writer at the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research.

March 16 - 17, 2006:

Symposium

ReEnvisioning the Delta: The Hub of California’s Future

With images of flooding New Orleans fresh in our minds, attention turns to California’s delta, a hub of infrastructure, water supply, and agriculture. A two-day symposium, ReEnvisioning the Delta will consider the future implications of the ongoing urbanization of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and explore alternative futures for the Delta, emphasizing its key role for infrastructure, agriculture, and open space within the San Francisco-Sacramento-Stockton metropolis. The symposium will feature expert presentations and panels on the geomorphic setting of deltas and unique characteristics and functions of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, draw lessons from the flooding of New Orleans, consider the dynamics of urbanization in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and explore alternative futures for this critically important region. In addition, the symposium will draw upon research conducted by graduate students and will present the winning entries in the Tommy Church Design Competition, whose topic this year is The California Delta: a Once and Future Park.
Please see the website at www-laep.ced.berkeley.edu/laep/delta for additional information.

This symposium is sponsored by the Beatrix Farrand Fund.

April 3, 2006:

Jan Gehl
Professor of Urban Design Research, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

Winning Back Public Space

Jan Gehl is internationally known for his research on public life in cities. His much acclaimed book, “Life Between Building” has been translated into many languages, it was followed by “New City Spaces”, both books, plus a large selection of case studies, are used throughout the world as design guides for streets and public spaces. Professor Gehl’s recently completed work in Melbourne places that city on a long list of cities that have increased the pedestrian use of their city centers.

April 10, 2006:

Matthew Potteiger
Professor, Landscape Architecture, College of Environmental Design and Forestry, State University of New York (SUNY), Syracuse, NY

Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories

Professor Potteiger’s book, Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories, offers fascinating ways of knowing and shaping landscapes not typically acknowledged in conventional documentation, mapping, surveys, or even in the formal concerns of design. This book establishes a comprehensive framework for understanding the elements, processes, and forms of landscape narratives. Illustrating specific narrative practices that can be applied across a range of design projects, it bridges the gap between theory and practice by tracing the narratives of specific projects and places, including the restoration of New Jersey’s Meadowlands and the road stories of Highway 61 in Mississippi.

April 17, 2006:

Jane Wolff
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri

What Can We Do? Design, Activism, and the Metropolitan Landscape

Jane Wolff is the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Beatrix Farrand Distinguished Visiting Professor for spring 2006. She is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri and author of Delta Primer, a book and deck of cards designed to educate diverse audiences about the contested landscape of the California Delta.

LAEP Colloquium Fall 2005:

Instructor: Deni Ruggeri
Wednesdays 1-2 pm unless otherwise posted* Room 315a Wurster

Syllabus

The LA253 Colloquium is a lunchtime speaker series of academics and practitioners for the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning. This semester’s colloquium stresses the need for a multi disciplinary approach to environmental design; despite differences in the methodologies used, the speakers share a common interest in our environment.

This course combines Monday evening lectures with Wednesday afternoon lectures. For course credit, students must attend 11 of the combined Monday evening lectures and Wednesday afternoon colloquia and fill out a short speaker evaluation at the end of each class. A complete schedule of the Colloquium speaker is attached to this syllabus. The department’s Monday night lectures will be announced during the first weeks of the semester,

A sign-up sheet will be passed around at each colloquium and posted near the entrance for the Monday evening lectures. In addition, speaker evaluation forms will be distributed in class to allow students to evaluate each speaker. Both sign up sheet and evaluations will be considered proof of attendance.

Office hours will be Wednesdays 12:30-1:00pm in Wurster 315A or by appointment by emailing me at druggeri@berkeley.edu.

Schedule and speakers’ bios

8.31 Class Introduction

9.7 Clark Wilson , Principal, Community Design + Architecture – Oakland, CA
“Going Dense, Going Green”

Clark Wilson is an Associate Principal at the urban design firm Community Design + Architecture in Oakland, and a part-time instructor at CED. He graduated with a joint degree in LA and City Planning in ’98 after coming to Berkeley from Canada where he did his undergrad in fine arts and geography, followed by an architecture degree. While at Berkeley, Clark became interested in how to incorporate natural systems into an urban environment, and did his research in innovative stormwater management. While at CD+A, Clark lead a multi-disciplinary team to create the Breen Streets handbook for the Portland Metro Region in 2002, and is in the process of completely a set of stormwater guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment for the city of Emeryville sponsored by a grant from the EPA.

9.14 Gray Brechin , Historical Geographer – Author
“Revealing the invisible landscape of the New Deal in California”

Gray Brechin is a historical geographer who received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as a journalist and television producer and taught at Berkeley in the Geography Department. His 1999 book, “Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin” has spent sixteen weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle’s best-seller list. He is the coauthor of
“Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream.”
Prof. Brechin will be presenting his most recent research on the New Deal projects in the state of California. For additional information, see: www.newdealproject.org

9.21 Lauri Twitchell , U.C. Botanical Garden – School Gardens Specialist
“School Gardens: Fertile Ground for Community Making”

Lauri Twitchell graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master Degree from the Landscape Architecture Department in 2004. She has been a professional artist, educator and gardener for over 15 years, and currently is working for the UC Botanical Garden Education Department as School Garden Specialist. She works with over 20 elementary and middle schools, 60 teachers and their communities in the East Bay on developing a variety of school garden projects. Using school gardens as outdoor classrooms for hands-on, experiential learning for nutrition, math, science, language and visual arts, social and environmental studies are gaining momentum and popularity across the country.

Lauri’s talk will cover several East Bay school gardens and the process of
incorporating the school community in designing and building of these gardens.

9.28 Todd Hido , Photographer
“Sources, Influences, and Kinships”

Todd Hido is a San Francisco Bay Area-based artist whose work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times Magazine, Doubletake, Metropolis, The Face, I-D, and most recently has appeared in Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as in many other public and private collections. Hido’s work has been featured in solo shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at the Kemper Museum of Art. In 2004, his work was included “Terrain Vague” at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. In 2001 an award winning monograph of his work titled House Hunting, was published by Nazraeli Press and a companion monograph.

10.5 Lawrence Halprin , Landscape architect
“Site Visit to Stern Grove Theatre”*

Lawrence Halprin was born in New York. He received a degree in plant sciences from Cornell and an MLA from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied under Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and landscape architect Christopher Tunnard. Following an apprenticeship with landscape architect Thomas Church working on the Dewey Donnell Garden in Sonoma County and helping to develop the contemporary California Style garden concept, Halprin opened his own office in 1949.

Halprin’s work is marked by his attention to human scale, user experience, and the social impact of his designs. Halprin has written nine books and produced two films. Professional awards include the 2002 Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the AIA Gold Medal, and the 2003 ASLA Design Medal.
* Larry Halprin’s lecture at Stern Grove Theatre will be held on October 5th, 2005. 12:30-2pm. Attendance limited to 45 students. Refreshments will be served.

10.12 Jason Hayter , U.C. Berkeley Ph.D. Student in City Planning
“Somewhere’s Salvation. The “Sense of Place” Explosion in American Popular Culture”

Place isn’t what it used to be. By the end of the twentieth century the concept of “sense of place” had fully moved out of the realm of literary allusion and academic inquiry and morphed into a continental-scale socio-economic force. That which had once been a province of artists and academics has become a term of everyday life. Full of multiple meanings, numerous contradictions, and a buffet line of societal ideals, today “sense of place” is evoked as everything from an economic concept to a lifestyle choice. Those who engage in the shaping of the buildings, neighborhoods, and cities we call home are now forced to recognize the powerful presence of this concept that was once only thought about reflectively. Place isn’t what it used to be, and this could be a very good thing.

Jason Alexander Hayter is a Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley and an editorial assistant for the journal Places. He holds a master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon, a bachelor’s degree in History and Government from the University of Texas at Austin, and has worked around land use issues in New York, Missouri, Oregon, and California.

10.19 Jamie Phillips , Landscape Architect
“Rural Studio: Then Again”

Jamie Phillips is a Landscape Architect with the SWA Group in Sausalito, CA. Prior to joining SWA, Jamie attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where she received a Masters in Landscape Architecture and worked with Landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburg. As an undergraduate student at Auburn University, Jamie worked with architect Sam Mockbee at the Rural Studio, an alternative architectural laboratory founded by Mockbee and D. K. Ruth. Through the studio Auburn students have built a number of innovative houses, civic buildings and churches in rural Alabama.

From the Rural Studio Web-site:
”The mission of the Rural Studio is to enable each participating student to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community. The Rural Studio seeks solutions to the needs of the community within the community's own context, not from outside it. Abstract ideas based upon knowledge and study are transformed into workable solutions forged by real human contact, personal realization, and a gained appreciation for the culture.” (For additional info on the Rural Studio: http://www.ruralstudio.com/mission.htm)

10.26 Bob Scarfo , Washington State University Professor of Landscape Architecture
“Converging Trends: Oil, Aging, and Environmental Designers' Role”

The convergence of two trends, the aging of society and the loss of cheap oil, is about to cause people to call for major changes in the make up of their neighborhoods and the larger communities in which they are located. The trends are global, no region or country will entirely escape the pressure to alter the landscapes and life styles. The trends’ impacts will redefine commerce and politics, regional and local economies, and neighborhood and community character. Reactions to the trends can be found both in the United States and abroad. Literature bearing on the trends, their dynamics, and their outcomes can be traced back 50 years and more. Yet, the age wave, the growing number of Baby Boomer retirees, and the depletion of cheap oil are only now creeping into the general consciousness and that of the environmental design and planning professions.

Bob Scarfo is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Washington State University Spokane campus’ Interdisciplinary Design Institute. His concern for people’s quality of life draws on background experiences that include bachelor and masters degrees in landscape architecture and masters and Ph.D. degrees in social geography. Over the past 30 years he balanced teaching professional landscape architecture programs in Canada and the United States and designing in small and large multidisciplinary offices. He was co-founder of Land Ethics, originally located in Washington, DC. His approach to healthy communities is applied in rural town and urban neighborhood settings. For the past 6 years he and his students have applied a blend of successful and productive aging and smart growth to neighborhood redevelopment projects in the Spokane, WA area. Their strength of their work lies in identifying the spatial qualities of where people live, work, play, and learn that support everyone’s aging well. Until recently he primarily focused on a spatial interpretation of successful and productive aging as applied to the design or multigenerational environments.

11.2 Renee Chow , U.C. Berkeley Professor of Architecture
“Incremental Change”   canceled !

Professor Chow teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios as well as classes in design with emphasis on observation, methods and use. Her research focuses on the contemporary suburban condition and on alternatives based upon a view of dwelling as a fabric - as a continuous structure of interrelated spaces in which people reside and through which they move and look. Her publications describe the form of housing in relation to the diverse and temporal nature of dwelling, to ways of building shared environments, and to the production of housing. Renee is Principal of Studio URBIS. The projects of the office include commercial, institutional and residential projects.

Books/Publications: Suburban Space: The Fabric of Dwelling (2002)

11.9 Patricia Leigh Brown , NY Times Architectural Correspondent
“Lava, Neon and Eco-burial: What the cultural landscape says about the human spirit"

Patti Brown grew up in a suburban ranch house in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She has been writing for The New York Times since 1986, first on staff for the House & Home section in New York and for the past six years, in California, where she has written about everything from Portuguese bloodless bull-fighting in the Central Valley to life in a lava cave in Hawaii. Prior to working at the New York Times Patti was on the staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Metropolis. She holds a BA from Vassar and an MS from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Last semester she was a visiting lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

11.16 Sean O’Malley , Principal, SWA Group – Laguna Beach, CA
“Green Structure. The Fabric of our Cities.”

Blurring the distinction between landscape and architecture, Mr. O’Malley combines his experience with degrees in both Urban Design at Harvard and Landscape Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona to create environments that challenge the conventional fabric of the city. A principal at the SWA Group, Laguna Beach, Mr. O’Malley is interested in a holistic approach to design; the marriage of natural structure with artistic intuition and development potential. Joining SWA in 1987, he has worked on a wide variety of works ranging from large-scale city planning and urban design to residential garden design. His work includes Horizon Paris, Paris, France; Projecto Orla, Brasilia, Brasil; Xian Regional Plan, Xian, China; Shady Canyon, Irvine, California; Qingpu Master Plan, Qingpu, China; Santaluz, Rancho Santa Fe, California, and River Islands New Town Master Plan, Lathrop, California. Mr. O’Malley has been a guest speaker and critic at the University of Melbourne, Australia; the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City; The University of Southern California; St. Louis University; the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles; and the Conference on Urban Space in Mexico City.

11.30 John Kriken , Partner, SOM - Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Presentation Title t.b.a.

John Kriken is an internationally known city planner and urban designer and the founder of SOM's San Francisco-based Planning Studio. His professional experience has ranged from new cities to large districts within existing cities, as well as to projects in open land and downtowns.

Since 1987, John has directed a series of campus plans for the University of California--at Berkeley, Davis, Davis Medical Center, San Diego, and Santa Cruz--and at the University of Cincinnati. Currently he is planning UC's new tenth campus in Merced. He has also planned major office and research campuses for Boeing in Seattle and for Hewlett-Packard in locations from Australia to Western Europe. In San Francisco, John has completed plans for Yerba Buena Center, Fisherman's Wharf, the North Waterfront, Mid-Market Street, and other areas of the City. As a San Francisco arts commissioner and chair of its Civic Design Committee, he guided public architecture in the City during most of the 1990s. For the past fifteen years he has served as chair of the Design Review Board of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. He is a design advisor to the Port of San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

John's work has won twenty national design awards, five Progressive Architecture Honor Awards, three National Urban Design Awards from the AIA, a National Design Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and awards from other organizations. He has taught urban design at the University of California-Berkeley, Rice University, and Washington University, and has served on numerous design review panels and design award juries.

12.7 Sarah Minick , 2005 Scott Travelling Fellowship Recipient
“Examining the Seam between City and River: Case Studies of Urban Mediterranean Rivers”

Mediterranean rivers pose a unique challenge to designers and environmental planners due to extreme changes both in flow and in channel form. In her research, Ms. Minick has compiled field based case studies of six Mediterranean rivers in hope of finding design strategies for reactivating urban river corridors in California. She recorded the structural relationship between the rivers and the cities that she has visited and observed how the river corridor is being used.
Sarah Minich holds a BS in Land Resources Planning from Stanford. After working on community-based environmental planning of squatters settlements in Ecuador she attended Berkeley, where she completed a joint degree in Environmental Planning and City and Regional Planning. She currently works for Community Development by Design in Berkeley.

"Metropolitan Landscape", March 2005

Conference will focus on the constructed landscape of urban regions.

For more information contact Jennifer Brooke: jbrooke@berkeley.edu

click here for more information

Congratulations go to Leor and Gilat Lovinger. They were nominated as finalists for their design in the competition for a memorial in rural Pennsylvania to commemorate the death of passengers and crew on a flight that left New York for San Fancisco in the morning of September 11, 2001.

Blake Garden Competition:

Submissions for the Blake Garden Design/Build Competition are due April 4, 2005. All currently enrolled LAEP students are encouraged to enter. For full competition details, please click on the link below or email Sutter Wehmeier: sutter@berkeley.edu

click here for more information

UC Berkeley Regents' Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning for 2004

Thomas Sieverts has been awarded the title of UC Berkeley Regent’s Lecturer for the 2004-2005 academic year. Mr. Sieverts is a leading environmental planner of international acclaim who was instrumental in the creation of Emscher Park, a large-scale conversion of former industrial sites, steel mills and coal mines into a regional park and cultural facility in Germany's Ruhr District. He is also known for his 1997 book, Zwischenstadt, or the 2003 English translation," Cities without Cities" by Rutledge, New York.

Thomas Sieverts was trained as an architect and urban designer in Stuttgart, Liverpool and Berlin. Sieverts has been in private practice since 1965, first as founder of The Free Planning Group in Berlin, and later as founder of SKAT in Bonn and Cologne. During the Berlin years he taught as Professor of Urban Design at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. He was invited to Harvard, Graduate School of Design as a Visiting Professor in 1970/71 and taught at the Darmstadt University of Technology from 1971 until his retirement in 1999. Throughout his career Sieverts has combined research with creative work and practice.

Thomas Sieverts will be visiting our department from February 27th to March 18th. He will be a keynote speaker for the Metropolitan Landscape Conference to be held on March 10-12, 2005. He will be available to meet and lecture during his stay.

Monday, February 28: “Before the Memorial”

Peter Walker, FASLA, Principal Peter Walker and Partners

Peter Walker has exerted a significant impact on the field of landscape architecture over a four-decade career, crystallizing what is known as the American corporate multidisciplinary office. Educated at Berkeley and the Harvard Design School, Walker has taught, lectured, written, and served as an advisor to numerous public agencies, while exerting tight control over the design of his own projects. The scope of his landscape inquiries is expansive as well as deep. Projects range from small gardens to new cities, from urban plazas to corporate headquarters and academic campuses. With a dedicated concern for urban and environmental issues, his designs shape the landscape in a variety of geographic and cultural contexts, from the United States to Japan, China, Australia, and Europe. Walker is also the founder of Spacemaker Press and his work has been extensively published in Europe and Asia as well as the United States. Over the years he and his firm, Peter Walker and Partners, have received many honors and awards and won numerous design competitions, including the World Trade Center Memorial in New York, New York (with Architect Michael Arad).

Friday, March 11 and Saturday, March 12
“The Future Metropolitan Landscape” Conference

Thomas Sieverts, Regent's Lecturer, Former Director of the International Building Exhibition, “Emscher Park”, Germany.

Keynote address, Metropolitan Landscape Conference with 21 speakers from various countries including Japan, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and the United States. The conference exams four themes: Reclaimed Land, Wasted Land, Landscape of Capital and Metropolitan Ecological Structure. For detailed program visit:
http://www-laep.ced.berkeley.edu/laep/news/metrolandconf.html

2005 Lecture Series:

October 24, 2005:

Robert Thayer

Professor Emeritus Landscape Architecture, UC Davis

Beatrix Farrand Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley

The World Shrinks, the World Expands: Information, Energy and Globalization

Rob Thayer is the author of “LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice” and “Gray World, Green Heart”. For more than three decades, he has studied and practiced at the intersection of the following: resource conservation, alternative energy, sustainable design and environmental perception.

__________________________

October 31, 2005:

Andrew Hudson-Smith

Virtual Reality: Urban Planning on the Web

Andrew Hudson-Smith is currently working on the Virtual London project having completed his PhD in Internet Based Communications: The Impact on Town Planning at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. He has worked on a range of Internet related projects at CASA including the recent award winning Hackney Building Exploratory Interactive.

He has a Bachelors Degree in Geography from Plymouth University and a Masters Degree in City and Regional Planning from University of Wales, Cardiff. His research interests are concentrated in the field of World Wide Web based Virtual Reality in relation to the urban form. He is also the author of the Online Planning site at CASA and Editor in charge of Online Planning.

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November 7, 2005:

Ken Greenberg

Principal, Greenberg Consultants, Inc.

Shaping the City: Strategic Interventions

Architect and Urban Designer Ken Greenberg has played a leading role on a broad range of assignments in highly diverse urban settings in North America and Europe. Much of his work focuses on the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods, and campus master planning. In each city, with each project, his strategic, consensus-building approach has led to coordinated planning and a renewed focus on urban design. Current efforts include an interim role as Chief Planner at the BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority) for the City of Boston. Ken Greenberg continues to play a role as strategic advisor to Saint Paul, Hartford and Columbus, Ohio.

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November 28, 2005:

Georges Descombes

Landscape Architect, Geneva, SwitzerlandProfessor, University of Geneva

TBA

Georges Descombes is an architect and landscape architect living in Geneva, Switzerland. His designs focus on public spaces. Descombes' work includes a public park in Lancy near Geneva for which he won the Interassar Prize in 1993; the Geneva section of the Swiss path between Morschach and Brunnen; and the design of a public square for the Westwijk housing complex in Amstelveen, The Netherlands. He was also selected for the "David Skinner Memorial Lectureship and Residency in Edinburgh, School of Landscape Architecture in 1998. Descombes teaches at the Institute of Architecture, University of Geneva and in Versailles. He has also taught at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and lectured all over Europe.

2004 Colloquium:

December 8, 2004:

"Recovering From War:

The Urban Forests of Tokyo and Hiroshima"

Speaker: Professor Joe McBride

The urban forests of Tokyo and Hiroshima were devastated in World War II by the American firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Joe McBride will report on his research, conducted in the summer of 2004, on the different approaches used in the two cities to reconstruct their urban forests. Lessons learned from this study may have applications for the restoration of urban forests in Californian cities which have been destroyed in recent fires.

December 1, 2004:

"A Metropolitan Development Strategy for Arriyadh (MEDSTAR)"

Speaker: Dr. Abdulrahman Qhtani, Visiting Scholar,

Geographic Information Science Center

November 3, 2004:

"The preservation of memory in the landscape after political or social change - case studies: Berlin, Warsaw, Prague"

Speakers: Stephanie Stillman & Danielle Ziolkowski
Scott fellowship recipients

October 27, 2004:

"From Post to Park: Making a National Park at the Presidio"

Speaker: Michael Boland,
Associate Director for Planning and Philanthropic Projects, Presidio Trust

Landscape architects are playing a lead role in the transformation of the Presidio of San Francisco, America's longest continuously operated military site, into a national park. The challenges of this transformation will be illustrated using several recent and upcoming Presidio landscape projects.

October 13, 2004:

"Geoinformatic Applications for Archaeological Studies in Thailand"

Speaker: Lertlum Surat, Fullbright Visiting Fellow

Summary:
This colloquium will present a series of case studies of the use of GIS in Thailand. The first case will demonstrate the application of remote sensing and GIS at the Sukhothai world heritage site in the lower part of the northern region of Thailand. This case study will demonstrate how integrated technologies can be used as tools for world heritage management and for the study of historical periods. In the second case study, information extracted from ancient maps of Ayutthaya period was compared with current information extracted from satellite data, topographic map, and other related information. In the third case study, the application of remote sensing and GIS for the identification of the royal road from Angkor to Phimai, which is a part of GMS e-culture research studies, will be presented.
By utilizing geoinformatics technologies for archaeological studies, we can have a better vision of the relationship between cultures and people and between civilizations. This understanding will be important to the region and to the people in the region.

October 6, 2004:

"System for Monitoring Urban Functionalities (SMURF): An Application of Participatory GIS"

Speaker: Alexandre Repetti, Visiting Scholar in the Geographic Information Science Center

Summary:
The System for Monitoring Urban Functionalities (SMURF) is a GIS software application designed for participatory contexts. In a strategic land-use or urban management approach, SMURF offers a database platform for collecting and sharing spatial and non-spatial information on land-use and projects, for monitoring and controlling the local development and for comparison with other communities.
The talk will start with a brief introduction of the context and limits of GIS
applications for land-use and urban planning and management, It will then
present the SMURF instrument and its data management components, as well as the participatory data collection approach. It will introduce an application case, the city of Thies, Senegal, where SMURF supports the local management for four years. It will end with prospects for adapting the instruments to the Internet and conclusion.

Biography:
Alexandre Repetti (1973) is a postdoc visiting scholar in the Geographic
Information Science Center (UC Berkeley). He finished his PhD last January in the Environmental Science and Technology Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. He is an environmental engineer specialist on urban and regional planning, involving collaborative GIS and decision support systems. He gives lectures on land-use and urban management for developing countries and is a fellow of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research Partnerships for Mitigating Syndromes of Global Change. Working on the theme of improving urban governance, Thies, Senegal, has been a relevant field for testing his theoretical propositions and for his PhD that received the 2004 Lausanne Research and Innovation Award.

September 29, 2004:

"Returning the Tides--Restoring the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds"

Speaker: Briggs Nisbet, Save The Bay

Over 15,000 acres of commercial salt ponds in South San Francisco Bay are being restored to natural marshes in the biggest wetland restoration project on the West Coast. A partnership between the state's Department of Fish and Game, Coastal Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and private foundations is working with scientists, local agencies, and the public to plan the project which involves complex issues of biology, hydrology, toxicology as well as flood control, public access and recreation. Learn about the progress to date and how the project will transform the South Bay.

Briggs Nisbet is the Restoration Campaigns Manager for Save The Bay, the Bay Area's oldest environmental organization working to protect and restore San Francisco Bay. Ms. Nisbet has worked on environmental and land use issues in the Bay Area since 1986. She has an MA in urban geography from UC Berkeley.

September 22, 2004:

"Prince Memorial Greenway - Santa Rosa Urban Open Space and Creek Restoration"

Speaker: Dick Carlile, Principal, Carlile-Macy

Mr. Carlile will discuss the creation of urban open space and restoration of natural creeks removed during "urban renewal" in the '60s and '70s.

The discussion will include the design and construction of design solutions that fulfill multiple objectives.

September 15, 2004:

"Planning in Iceland - A Model to Follow??"

Trausti Valsson PhD, professor of planning, at the University of Iceland.

There are two main reasons why Iceland fits well as a model for studying
planning. First: How small, isolated and well documented it is, and second: Its clear procedural evolving and how clear the interactions between environmental factors and human habitations are. The lecture describes this with pictures from professor Valsson's latest book "Planning in Iceland - From the Settlement to Present Times".

Trausti Valsson PhD, professor of planning, at the University of Iceland. Born 1946. Dipl. Ing. Architect in the City Planning Line, University of Technology, West Berlin, 1972. PhD in Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 1987. Valsson has written about 80 articles and eleven books, two of which are in English. (Planning in Iceland and City and Nature). He has received many honours and awards. Valsson is currently a visiting professor at UC Berkeley.

T. Valsson's Home Page: www.hi.is/~tv

2004 LECTURE SERIES
Sponsored by the Geraldine Scott History Endowment in Landscape Architecture

All lectures are at 112 Wurster Hall 7:00 - 8:30 PM and are open to the public and free of charge . Map to Wurster Hall

For lecture information contact:
For more information about the lecture series, contact Mary Anne Clark (email: maclark@berkeley.edu).

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Monday, November 15, 2004: "Building Commons and Communities: Community Design-and-Build Service Learning"

Karl Linn, FASLA

Karl is a landscape architect, and psychologist. During the 1950s he developed a successful private landscape architecture practice in New York City. Since 1959 when he started to teach at the University of Pennsylvania, he has created participatory design service education programs at colleges and universities across the USA and abroad. He has established pioneering community design centers, the Neighborhood Commons Non-profit Corporations, in various U.S. cities. Karl Linn is cofounder of the national Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), and co-founded the Urban Habitat Program with Carl Anthony to develop multicultural environmental leadership. He currently serves as president of Berkeley Eco House and on the board of Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative. Since 1993 he has spearheaded the creation of the Peralta, Northside, and Karl Linn Community Garden Commons, and the Ohlone Natural and Cultural History Interpretive Exhibit north Berkeley.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Bancroft Library and the College of Environmental Design Archives

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Monday, October 18, 2004: "Making Conversation: Delta Primer"

Jane Wolff
Assistant Professor
Washington University School of Architecture

Jane Wolff received an A.B. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and an M.L.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She has practiced landscape and urban design in the Bay Area, and before her appointment at Washington University, she taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the Ohio State University. She is the author of Delta Primer, a book designed to educate diverse audiences about the contested landscape of the California Delta. Her research interests deal with the hybrid landscapes produced by natural process and cultural intervention. Her study topics have included the architecture of the Finnish railway system, the history of land reclamation in the Netherlands, and the cultural landscapes of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and her work has been supported by two Fulbright Scholarships, a Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship, and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

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Monday, October 11, 2004: "Is this Landscape Architecture?"

Mark Rios, FAIA, ASLA
Rios Clementi Hale Studios

As Founding Principal, Mark Rios, FAIA, ASLA, has been the leader of both the design and business direction of Rios Clementi Hale Studios since first establishing the firm Rios Associates in 1985. Though formally trained in both architecture and landscape architecture, Mark’s eclectic interests and innate curiosity have propelled his creative explorations beyond traditional professional borders. “The exciting challenge of design is to blend and balance a variety of elements, from an overall vision of architecture, landscape, interior, and furniture to budget, context, and environmental impact.” His work is both playful and elegant in spirit, reflecting the personalities of each client as well as his own wide range of creative interests and artistic passions. Under Mark’s leadership, the firm has received more than 30 significant design awards, including national, state, and local design awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

Since 2001, Mark has served as the Chairman of the Landscape Architecture Program at the USC School of Architecture. He has also been on the faculty at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Currently, Mark is a member of the LAUSD Design Advisory Council, and has previously served on the AIA Los Angeles Chapter Board of Directors. He has been a member of the Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles since 1994, serving as president for 1996/1997. He was granted Fellowship of the AIA in 1999. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from USC in 1978. He earned both Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees from Harvard University in 1982.

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February 23, 2004: "Positions for Urban Landscapes"
Stefan Tischer, Director of the School of Landscape Architecture at the Universite de Montreal, Canada

March 1, 2004: "Re-use of Former Industrial Land"
Peter Latz, Professor of Landscape Architecture , Weihenstephan, Germany
Professor of Landscape Architecture , Weihenstephan, Germany. Along with his wife he founded the innovative landscape architecture and planning firm Latz + Partner in 1968. His works focus largely in neglected European industrial areas. Peter Latz celebrates humankind's impact on the landscape: "The seemingly chance results of human interference, which are generally judged to be negative, also have immensely exciting, positive aspects and are on closer inspection, ultimately even a contribution to nature conservation." In the United States, he has taught at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania.

March 15, 2004: "From Place to Place"
Tony Hiss, Author, New York
Tony Hiss, an independent author, lecturer, and consultant about restoring America's cities and landscapes, became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1963, and since 1994 has been a Visiting Scholar at New York University, first at the Taub Urban Research Center, and now at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service Hiss is known for his book "The Experience of Place." He is currently working on a book manuscript on people, movement, and landscapes.

March 29, 2004: "Re-wilding our Urban Parks"
Paul Gobster Distinguished Visiting Farrand Professor
Paul Gobster is a Research Social Scientist with the USDA Forest Service's North Central Research Station in Chicago. Paul holds degrees in regional planning, landscape architecture, and environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin. His personal research interests focus on people's perceptions natural areas restoration and management, landscape aesthetics, and access and equity issues in urban parks.

April 5, 2004: "Reclaiming the American West"
Allan Berger, Harvard School of Design
Alan Berger's research and teaching focus on urbanization, large-scale landscape reclamation, theory & criticism, and representation. His publications include Reclaiming the American West (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), which received the 2003 Research Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA/Places) and 'Best Landscape Book of The Year' from Colorado Center For The Book. An exhibition of the book's work is currently traveling internationally through 2004. Berger earned his Masters of Landscape Architecture in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Design, where he received its highest awards for design excellence and research: the Faculty Medal and Van Alen Fellowship.