martin joseph barry

reTHINK your city. reSITE 2012

martinbarry — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:03:43 +0000

I haven’t updated posts on this page in some time because I’ve been working overtime on organizing and launching a major international event in Prague. It’s called reSITE.

We will launch our website next week but for now you can check our various social media channels for more information about reSITE Festival 2012 in Prague.

www.resite.cz

http://resite-festival.tumblr.com/

http://vimeo.com/resite

Lecture tonight / Bratislava

martinbarry — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:50:08 +0000

Hear Martin give a talk about BREATHING CITIES / LANDSCAPE AS INFRASTRUCTURE, followed by Milota Sidorova‘s talk about reSITE Festival and Kata Vondrova / Cyril Pavlu end with a presentation about the urbanACT and reSITE collaboration! Exciting night in Central Europe : )

Slovak Technical University / Bratislava

20:00-22:00

MORE INFORMATION: http://www.facebook.com/events/167560330016778/

Paseo Tabasco . Villahermosa, MX . W Architecture/Enrique Norten TEN Arquitectos

Architecture + Landscape Architecture in Rome/ University of Washington Final Studio Review

martinbarry — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:33:41 +0000

Image courtesy of University of Washington Rome Center

The University of Washington Rome Center invited me to be on their Advanced Architectural Review Jury for the students’ final presentations. Here is the project brief from their site:

Challenge: Museo del Tevere

“How do you design a museum dedicated to a subject that is constantly in flux? – a living, flowing, dynamic system? This is the challenge of the “Museo del Tevere,” a new foundation proposed for the site of a former Papal Arsenal on the banks of the Tiber river, just beyond the city walls at Porta Portese. For two decades there has been discussion of creating such a museum, but so far little progress has been made. Perhaps this is because the museum is difficult to define, lacking precedent. Or perhaps it is because the Tiber has become a forgotten river, flowing silently (most of the time) through Rome. Formerly the commercial life- blood of trade, the source of water, sanitation and power for grain mills, it is now bounded by high embank- ments and pathways for high speed automotive traffic. It has been reduced to a picturesque foreground for tourist photographs, a semi-developed bicycle path, a home for the homeless, a shadow of its former self. Or is it? Your challenge is to re-interpret the river, its place in the city, and its future by making proposals for a museum that seeks to serve as a lens to re-focus attention on the Tiber.”

The architecture and landscape architecture students had 10 weeks to research, analyze and design a museum of the Tiber River. I was impressed with the depth of some of the proposals and the amount of collaboration that UW encourages. Several professionals and academics from around Europe and Rome were on the jury with me. It was a rewarding day of presentations and great conversation.

martinbarry — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:52:15 +0000

W Architecture’s award winning proposal is now featured in the new Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park book published by the Princeton Architectural Press. The book highlights a series of design strategies to reimagine the underutilized Gateway National Recreation Area and its role as an urban national park.

W Architecture Team: Barbara Wilks, Tatiana Choulika, Martin Barry, Ricardo Romo-Leroux.

The book is available for purchase at Princeton Architectural Press or Amazon.com

Lecture at Mendell University, Lednice

martinbarry — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:30:55 +0000

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/

Landscape as Infrastructure @ARCHIP

martinbarry — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:12:43 +0000

CVUT . Faculty of Architecture

Outside of design studio at CVUT I’ve been doing as much as I can to raise awareness of contemporary landscape architecture here. I’ve been collaborating on a few projects with a new, private school of architecture in their inaugural year : ARCHIP. This college is run by a young, forward thinking group of architects and landscape architects. I was invited to give a public lecture there last week, which was well attended even though it took place the night before a national holiday when EVERYONE leaves the city [I’ll write more about this urban flight in a future post]. The lecture, about contemporary theory, process and my work was about one hour and there were lots of questions after, which leads me to think that people were intrigued by the talk. Well, as Mike Birbiglia says: It’s better to just pretend that they liked me.

lecture @ARCHIP

Moving Czech Landscape

martinbarry — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:11:24 +0000

I wanted to give you a preview of a short article I am writing for ’Scape Magazine: the new international magazine for landscape architecture and urbanism. It will appear in the November issue. Stay tuned for images and graphics, which I’ll be adding for the final draft:

Contemporary education and practice of landscape architecture in the Czech Republic is largely limited to garden and park design with strong roots in the Beaux Arts garden tradition. Landscape architects are rarely integrated on design teams for large urban projects while planners, architects, engineers and clients typically define a minimal role for them when included. On the other hand, in cities across the world, governments and the private sector are increasingly turning to landscape architects to lead large collaborative teams to transform their waterfronts, brownfields and city centers in new movements of landscape urbanism moving cities toward a better, more breathable future.

As a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Czech Technical University in Prague (CVUT), observing the state-of-the-art as an outsider, the problems are easy to spot. First of all, there is only one academic program in the country at Mendel University in Brno where the main focus is landscape gardening. No one seems to know what landscape architects do. Prominent architects reveal that they have a desire to integrate landscape architects on their teams, but the local talent pool is ill-trained and uninterested in large urban works. “Landscape architects are weird, different. They are gardeners, right?” Wrong. Though, this perception is not unwarranted given the lack of Czech engagement in the contemporary praxis.

There is an alternative and several emerging students, designers and academics are it, engaging urban landscape issues that are driving design discourse in other cities like Hamburg, New York, Amsterdam and Beijing. The only landscape architecture studio at CVUT is in the Faculty of Spatial Planning. Taught by Henry Hanson, an American, it is four years old. Henry is an ardent pioneer, though his challenge is not small. Still, Henry’s studio is overflowing with eager students. Furthermore, sustainable urbanism is just beginning to seep into political and academic circles at conferences such as Forum 2000, Veřejné prostory – živá místa (Public Spaces –Living Spaces), and Inventura Urbanismu 2011.

The newest light shines on ARCHIP, a new architecture college in Prague who is in the midst of their inaugural semester. ARCHIP’s interest lies at the intersection of architecture and landscape. The institute is poised to be at the center of global contemporary discourse. This semester ARCHIP is hosting a lecture series that will focus on urbanism. Collaborating with this author, they are planning to host an international conference on Landscape Urbanism in Spring 2012. This will be the first conference of its kind in the Czech Republic. It is envisioned to be the start of a new movement here; one that will energize and catalyze students, the public, academics and politicians. This is the beginning of a moving landscape — a shift — and those involved like the new future.

Confirmed lecture dates:

27/10/11 @ARCHIP // Veletržní palace // Dukelských hrdinů 47 // 170 00 Prague 7 // Czech Republic

21/11/11 @SLOVAK AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY, NITRA // Tr. A. Hinku 2 // 949 76 // Nitra // Slovakia

30/11/11 @MENDEL UNIVERSITY, BRNO

15/12/11@Lycée Français de Prague

ARCHIP Lecture

martinbarry — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:08:56 +0000

The lecture @ARCHIP on Thursday night drew a good crowd considering it was the night before a national holiday and lots of people fled Prague. We had a good discusion after the lecture and I was happy to see people stick around for the talk and ask good questions.

Public Lecture at Nitra, Slovakia

martinbarry — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:57:27 +0000

On 21 November I’ll be giving a public lecture at the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, Slovakia.

See advertisement for details:

Paseo Tabasco

martinbarry — Sun, 15 May 2011 17:14:43 +0000

Construction on our project in Villahermosa, Mexico is nearly complete! I was in Villahermosa last week, checking on the construction progress and coordinating some changes. There are a lot of changes.

Here are some photos from the site:

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