The BSA Urban Design Committee sponsors a lecture or panel discussion on usually the third Thursday of every month. Along with co-chairs Meera Deean of Utile, Inc., and Patrick Tedesco of NBBJ, it is a real privilege for me to help organize these monthly events, to which we invite talented, inspired speakers to raise thought-provoking issues about urban design and related topics. The presentations and follow-up conversations are always lively, and the wine and refreshments are complimentary. We invite you to attend and participate in this ongoing series. Please refer to the BSA Urban Design Committee’s website for the full schedule of events: http://www.architects.org/committees/urban-design-committee
-Paul Lukez, FAIA, LEED AP
BSA Urban Design Committee Co-Chair
“With special thanks to my co-chairs Meera Deean (Utile) and Patrick Tedesco (NBBJ.)”
BSA Urban Design Committee (Open to the Public)
“Humanism for Landscape Urbanism” with Eric Kramer
Date: Thursday, July 24
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: BSA Space, 290 Congress Street, Boston, MA
Eric Kramer, ASLA, principal of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will demonstrate how landscape urbanism asserts the ever-present importance of landscape architecture in today’s world. He will delineate the complex approach of reconciling environmental engineering and open space planning with immense urban structure development. Through such topics as mapping, dynamic modeling and metrics, he will discuss landscape urbanism as a tenet of scientific certainty in the design process. Kramer will also elaborate on the intersection of nature and culture, its extreme value to certain human behavioral systems that elude societal awareness, and the application of ecological and tactical urbanism to landscape and cityscape design.
Panel discussions will explore the humanistic link between the physical development of our environment and the intellectual process involved in that development, with the intent to stimulate urban designers and dwellers to ponder and discuss the matrices that shape their surroundings. Moreover, what are the primary environmental stimuli in today’s world that can enable creative design processes to flow and take shape?
This presentation and panel discussion aims to set the stage for vibrant discourse on how today’s design of the public realm can engage cultural values on an even footing with the more easily identified environmental and economic assets.
The panel includes:
David Grissino, AIA, Senior Architect and Urban Designer, Boston Redevelopment Authority
Elizabeth Sisam, Associate Vice President for Planning, Harvard University
Patrick Tedesco, AIA, Principal, NBBJ
Meera Deean, LEED AP, Urban Designer, Utile, Inc.
A number of Boston-area landscape projects will serve as a basis for this discussion and may be previewed here:
About Eric Kramer, ASLA
A principal at Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kramer has overseen the design and implementation of significant landscapes that employ rigorous technical and horticultural systems to accommodate intensive programmatic requirements. Recent projects include the Clark Art Institute, Central Wharf Plaza, the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion and Greenway Carousel, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO, Harvard’s Institutional Master Plan for Allston, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Master Plan in Lincoln. Kramer received his M.L.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and his B.A. from Amherst College. He currently teaches landscape architecture at Rhode Island School of Design.
(Images and some text shared From the Boston Society of Architects Website.
Text By: BSA/Paul Lukez/Todd Larson/Cameron King
