KINGSTON, R.I. – Sept. 18, 2024 – The University of Rhode Island’s 32nd annual Landscape Architecture Lecture Series returns this fall with a focus on the many ways we think about landscape architecture.
Speakers – Gareth Doherty of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Gena Wirth of SCAPE Landscape Architecture, and URI President Marc Parlange – will cover a wide range of topics, from landscape architecture in Africa to using sediment and dredging for coastal resilience to the complexity of airflow and trees in cities.
The series, which opens Sept. 25, will be held Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. in the Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences. The lectures – free and open to the public – will be held in-person only.
“This lecture series focuses on different approaches to practicing landscape architecture through the continuous thread of fieldwork,” said Gavin Zeitz, assistant teaching professor of landscape architecture. “Fieldwork is key for all aspects of landscape architecture and varies from research into ways of practicing landscape architecture, data collection or community engagement.”
Zeitz is overseeing the series this fall with the retirement of long-time landscape architecture professor and lecture series William Green. Green, who joined URI in 1992, organized the lecture series from its start into his first year of retirement.
“Will did a wonderful job curating this lecture series for a long time,” Zeitz said. “With his retirement, we hope to keep the tradition alive.”
Doherty, associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard, opens the series Sept. 25 with a talk on “Landscape Fieldwork in Africa: Alternative Future for the Field.”
Doherty received a Doctor of Design degree from the Havard Graduate School of Design and his Master of Landscape Design and Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of professional associations in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the U.S. He is the author of “Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City State,” and editor of numerous other works.
On Oct. 16, Wirth, a design principal and partner at SCAPE, will discuss “Adaptive Landscapes and Designing with Sediment.”
At SCAPE, Wirth works with cities, community advocates and landowners to discover the ecological and cultural potential of public landscapes. She is also an advocate for ecological systems design as a member of the non-profit Dredge Research Collaborative and through teaching positions at Harvard, Columbia, Syracuse and Rutgers. She holds master’s degrees in landscape architecture and urban planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
President Parlange wraps up the fall lectures on Nov. 6 with a look at the “Role of Trees on Airflow in Cities: Vancouver, Canada, and Basel, Switzerland.”
Parlange, who joined URI in 2021 as its 12th president, is a distinguished researcher as well as a global higher education leader. He is internationally known for his expertise in environmental fluid mechanics and has conducted research in hydrology and climate change that addresses critical issues such as heat transfer in cities, energy dynamics in hurricanes, and water resources challenges in remote communities.
He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer, and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union. He is a recipient of the John Dalton Medal of the European Geosciences Union and the Hydrologic Sciences Award of the American Geophysical Union. He was also awarded an early career James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union, and the 2020 American Meteorological Society’s Hydrologic Sciences Medal, the society’s highest award for outstanding contributions to scientific knowledge in hydrology.
If you have questions, contact Zeitz at gavin.zeitz@uri.edu.
The series is sponsored by the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Landscape Forms, Unilock, URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences, University Libraries, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the Faella, Gaetano, and Pasqualina Memorial Endowment.