Mendelova univerzita v Brně, Zahradnická fakulta (Valtická 337, 691 44 Lednice) invites you cordially to the lecture by Martin Barry, ASLA, MLA: “BREATHING CITIES: Landscape as Infrastructure”
Martin Joseph Barry, ASLA, Fulbright Scholar, Visiting Professor / CVUT, Prague / W Architecture, NYC
Contemporary education and practice of landscape architecture in Central Europe is largely limited to garden and park design with strong roots in Beaux Arts tradition. Landscape architects are rarely included on design teams for large urban projects while planners, architects, engineers and clients typically define a mini¬mal role for them when included. On the other hand, in cities across the world from the United States to northern Europe, Asia and Africa to the Middle East, governments and the private sector are increasingly turning to landscape architects first to transform their waterfronts, brownfields and city centers. Landscape architects are now filling leadership roles on diverse teams of architects, engineers, market specialists, ecologists and urban designers. Across the globe, such collaborative efforts are moving cities toward a better, more sustainable future. Landscape architects are particularly suited to lead – what is now being called landscape or ecological urbanism – because they hold the sensitivity, skills and knowledge to address the complicated, multifari¬ous task of remaking and newly shaping the urban landscape.
This lecture will focus particularly on the work of New York firm W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, a visionary firm that is breathing new life into our cities. W Architecture is doing this by collaborating with a broad range of experts from economists to ecologists, artists to engineers while straying from top-down design processes, which are limiting and static. It will provide a platform where we can discuss the future of Central European cities and the role landscape architects should play in that future.
http://www.zf.mendelu.cz/
