Back to School with NYBG: Urban Transformations Landscape Design Portfolios Lecture Series
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| Urban Landscape (Photo courtesy NYBG) |
Now in
its 15th year, The New York Botanical Garden’s (NYBG) popular evening lecture
series invites outstanding designers from around the world to discuss their favorite
and signature landscape projects, providing insight into their working methods
and design philosophies.
This year’s
speakers, Christine Ten Eyck, Gilles Clément, and Mary Margaret Jones,
share a focus on reclaiming and regenerating urban landscapes—both vast
and intimate—from parking lots to public spaces to industrial waterfronts.
I have attended the
Lectures almost since the series was
launched and before I ever walked through the golden door to a career in
horticulture.
Back then, the
Lectures were a transporting passport – a way to experience and learn about the
ephemeral art of landscape design.
Guess what? The Lectures are still transporting and
educational!
If anything, they’ve
gotten better.
And now, many attend
to also catch up with their Hort Tribe – cocktails or light supper bookending
the Lecture as a way to chat about the past season’s designs, network and plant
chat.
This year’s theme,
Urban Transformations is particularly topical.
While we all can’t
work on the next High Line – we have to face it. We are living in a world that is increasingly
urban.
I know that sounds
like nails on a blackboard to gardeners and horticulturists but it’s true. And in a good way.
So just as urban
farming has captivated farmers and artisanal food makers, landscape architects
and designers must lead the way and show how we can live in harmony with nature
in a sustainable way, side by side with the urban landscape we’ve all had a
hand in creating in one way or antoher.
We just face new
and/or different challenges. The Lecture Series will give you a jump start to
creative design solutions.
(No need for that Magic 8 ball...)
When: Monday, Sept.
23, Tuesday, Oct. 22, Monday, Nov. 4
Monday, September 23rd
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| Christine Ten Eyck |
Christine Ten Eyck: Harsh Beauty— Designing the Urban
Southwest
Based in Austin, Texas, Christine Ten Eyck works in the spirit of the
Southwest to connect urban dwellers with nature through award–winning,
transformative landscapes that celebrate regional culture, local species, and
the ephemeral paths of water. In addition to her sustainable designs for
corporate, university, botanical and private gardens, she will discuss The
Capri Lounge in Marfa, Texas, where she converted a former parking lot into a
garden, gathering place, and wildlife habitat, incorporating native grasslands
and local materials from oil field pipes to farm fencing.
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| Gilles Clement |
Tuesday, October 22nd
Gilles Clément: The Planetary Garden: Paris and Beyond
Raised in the French countryside, Gilles Clément is a
gardener, designer, botanist, ecologist, professor at the Versailles National
School of Landscape Architecture, and provocative writer/philosopher. He
creates gardens all over the world, most notably his landscapes along the Seine
for the Parc André Citroën and Musée du Quai Branly. He has gained international
attention for his innovative ideas on "Gardens in Movement"—fluid
spaces where the designer aids nature rather than enacting rigid plans,
"The Third Landscape"—gardens inspired by unlikely abandoned habitats
where biodiversity thrives, and "The Planetary Garden"—where the
gardener is nature's advocate, welcoming vagabond species from around the
world.
Monday,
November 4th
Mary
Margaret Jones: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park— Sustainable Renewal for the 21st
Century
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| Mary Margaret Jones |
President of
Hargreaves Associates, Mary Margaret Jones has served as senior principal on
award–winning projects in the U.S. and abroad. The firm's work for the 2012
Olympic Park transformed a neglected post–industrial district in London's East
End into Europe's largest urban park in 150 years. This innovative blueprint
for sustainable city development combined traditional British park
design—specifically Victorian and post–war pleasure gardens—with groundbreaking
green technologies. Providing a stunning site for the Summer Games as well as
an environmental legacy, including the largest wildflower ever planted in the
U.K., the 247–acre project also restored the canalized River Lea into an
attractive waterway. Jones will also discuss projects in New York City, Dallas,
Houston, and Oklahoma City.
Where: The series takes place at the New
York Botanical Garden’s (NYBG) Midtown Education Center in Manhattan (20 West
44th Street) – 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Here’s a
bonus:
CEUs are available through AIA, APLD, and LA CES.
Or call 800.322.NYBG
(6924).
Each lecture: $25/$22
The
series (142LAN801D): $68/$61 (Non-Member/Member)
Seating is limited, so
please register early. Registration will be accepted at the door only if
seating is available.
