KINGSTON, R.I. – September 3, 2014 — The first speaker in the University of Rhode Island’s 2014-15 Landscape Architecture Lecture Series will be Charles Waldheim, the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, who will speak on the topic of “Landscape as Urbanism.”

His presentation will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18 in Weaver Auditorium in the Coastal Institute building on URI’s Kingston campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Waldheim’s research focuses on landscape architecture in relation to contemporary urbanism. He coined the term “landscape urbanism” to describe emerging landscape design practices in the context of North American urbanism. He has written extensively on the topic and edited The Landscape Urbanism Reader and several books about urbanism and landscape architecture in Chicago and Detroit, which he cites as the most legible example of urban industrial economy in North America.

He previously was associate professor and director of the landscape architecture program at the University of Toronto and lectured on landscape and contemporary urbanism across North America, Europe, and Australasia. In 2006 he was recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

The other speakers this fall are Jamie Maslyn Larson, principal of West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture (Oct. 9), Kate Orff, partner in Scape Landscape Architecture (Oct. 30), and Richard Roark, partner in The OLIN Studio (Nov. 13), all of whom have been successful in the Rebuild by Design Competition for Hurricane Sandy, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Speaking this spring will be URI alumni Nathan Socha of Beta Group and Cheryl Russ of Glen Gate Co. (Feb. 12); Robert Golde, partner in Towers/Golde (Feb. 26); Peter Trowbridge of Trowbridge, Wolf, Michael (Mar. 12); MIT Landscape Architecture Professor Anne Whiston Spirn (Apr. 9); and Kaki Martin of Klopfer Martin Design Group (Apr. 23).

All talks are free, open to the public and begin at 7 p.m. in Weaver Auditorium of the URI Coastal Institute in Kingston.

The URI Landscape Architecture series is co-sponsored by the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences, the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, the URI College of Arts and Sciences, and Landscape Forms. The Kate Orff lecture is co-sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant, and Ann Spirn’s lecture is co-sponsored by the URI Art Department. For more information about the series, contact the URI Department of Landscape Architecture at 874-2983 or Professor Will Green at wagre@uri.edu.