Lectures and Events

The Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Lecture Series exposes students, faculty, alumni, practitioners and the public to the breadth of players, ideas, situations, issues, challenges, technologies and methods, controversies, collaborations, and achievements related to the profession. The lectures are held in the Burns Auditorium in Kamphoefner; they are typically scheduled for Wednesday evenings, 6:00 pm right after studio. Each lecture typically lasts for an hour, followed by Q + A and a brief discussion. Many speakers will extend their visits to campus in order to participate in design studio reviews and brown bag lunch sessions with students and faculty.

Spring 2023 Lectures

Jan. 18 | 6 pm
Brad Howe, RLA, SCAPE

Brad Howe, RLA, leads design teams for a number of large-scale waterfront and resilience planning projects across the firm. His work focuses on creating ecologically vibrant waterfronts and public spaces, from complex, large-scale planning projects with extensive engagement to detailed site design.

His lecture, “Adapting to Change” will present projects undertaken by SCAPE to integrate natural cycles and systems into urban landscapes and environments across all scales, from the urban plaza to a regional ecological plan. A range of research, participatory, and science-based strategies will be shown through SCAPE’s work, featuring projects and design approaches that advance landscape design with the ultimate goal of connecting people to their immediate environment and creating dynamic and adaptive landscapes of the future.

Brad holds a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s in Science with Distinction from the University of Nebraska. He is an adjunct Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the City College of New York.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the College’s Doctor of Design (DDES) program.

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Feb. 8 | 6 pm
Ernie Wong, FASLA, Site Design Group

“Named “Chicagoan of the Year” for 2010 by The Chicago Tribune, Ernie Wong said recently his mission is to create greenspace for urban areas and bring beauty to city living. In 1990, he founded his firm, Site Design Group, in order to “brighten the cityscape” of his native Chicago.

Some of Wong’s most notable projects include Henry Palmisano Park, Mary Bartelme Park, and Ping Tom Memorial Park. For Memorial Park, built next to Chicago’s Chinatown, he worked side-by-side with community members to be sure the park reflected Chinese culture, creating a bamboo garden, a pagoda, and walking trails lined with rocks shipped from China.

A graduate of Michigan State’s Landscape Architecture Program has been both a leader in the field as well as his community service as commissioner of the City of Chicago Commission on Cultural Affairs and Mayor Rahm Emanuel Ad-Hoc Committee on Design and Planning, among other city organizations. Ernie’s other community service activities include serving as chair for the Chinese American Service League and other non-profits, including the Museum of Science and Industry, the Student Conservation Association, and the YMCA.”

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Apr. 12 | 6 pm
Billy Fleming, Ian L. McHarg Center

Billy Fleming is a senior fellow with Data for Progress, and co-director of the “climate + community project.” His fellowship has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change, and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019. In his role at the McHarg Center, Billy is co-editor of the forthcoming book An Adaptation Blueprint (Island Press, 2020), co-editor and co-curator of the book and now internationally traveling exhibit Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and author of the forthcoming Drowning America: The Nature and Politics of Adaptation (Penn Press, expected 2021). Billy is also the lead author of the recently published and widely acclaimed “The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal.” He is also a co-author of the Indivisible Guide (2016).

Along with Daniel Aldana Cohen, Billy co-directs the climate + community project (ccp), which works to connect the demands of the climate justice movement to the policy development process. CCP aims to do this by developing new, investment-forward public policy proposals under the framework of the Decade of the Green New Deal that target the intersection of climate justice and the built environment. Its focus has been on foregrounding the role of public housing, public schools, public transportation, public power, public land, and public works in local, state, national, and international climate policy discourse. This work has already resulted in applied policy research and model legislation in the housing, schools, transportation, and electricity sectors, filling a critical gap between the demands of the climate justice movement, the appetite for substantial new policy content from sitting legislators, and the desire of a rising generation of scholars to contribute to their work (including Olufemi Taiwo, Akira Drake Rodriguez, Yonah Freemark, Thea Riofrancos, and Shalanda Baker).

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Recent Lectures

2022 lectures

NCSU ASLA Student Award Winners

NC State Students
November 16, 2022

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The Nature Effect: How Parks and the Public Realm Contribute to Healthy Communities

Cody Klein
October 19, 2022

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Luck, Glamour, Passion, and Prestige (and why they’re all a fallacy)

Michael Grove
September 21, 2022

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Design as an Act of Seeing and Creating

Art Rice
April 6, 2022

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Regional and Specific: Experiments in Scale and Time

Roberto Rovira
March 23, 2022

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Landscapes and Memory

Sierra Bainbridge
February 9, 2022

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2021 lectures

From What to Why

Kristen Haaf
November 4, 2021

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Reconnecting with Overlooked Legacies

Gina Ford and Brie Hensold
October 20, 2021

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Updating Arcadia in Landscape Planning

Anne Katrine Geelmuyden
October 6, 2021

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Finding the Missing Landscape

Mark Johnson
September 22, 2021

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Envisioning the Planetary

Jose Alfredo Ramirez
April 14, 2021

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Climate Positive Design: Going Beyond Neutral

Pamela Conrad
March 31, 2021

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Challenging Lawn Order: Barriers, Bylaws and the Biophilic City

LA+EP and NCSU Doctor of Design Program Lecture Nina-Marie Lister
March 10, 2021

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Return to Community: Designing for Community Wealth Building

Debra Guenther
February 24, 2021

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2020 Lectures

Just Sustainabilities in Policy, Planning and Practice

Julian Agyeman
November 12, 2020

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Sponge City and Nature Based Solutions

Kongjian Yu, Founder of Turenscape
October 23, 2020

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Porous Landscape and Water Resilient City

International ASLA Lecture: Kotchakorn Voraakhom, Founder of Landprocess and Porous City Network
September 18, 2020

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The Greenway Imperative: Connecting Communities and Landscapes for a Sustainable Future

NSCU LAR Lecture: Chuck Flink, FASLA, Professor of Practice at NCSU College of Design
April 15, 2020

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20 + 20

Charles Burger Lecture: Jennifer Guthrie, FASLA, RLA, Gustafson, Guthrie + Nichol
February 26, 2020

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2019 lectures

Ecologies of Memory

The Annual Lewis Clarke Lecture: Sara Zewde, Studio Zewde
October 16, 2019

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Immersive Landscapes

The Women in Landscape Architecture Lecture: Andrea Cochran, FASLA FLA, Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture
September 25, 2019

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Living with Climate Change

DesignSprint 2019: Ignacio Bunster Ossa, FASLA, AECOM, and Ryan Hargrove, ASLA, University of Kentucky
March 19, 2019

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Toward an Ecology of the City

The Annual Richard Bell Lecture: Kurt Culbertson, FASLA, Design Workshop
April 2, 2019

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The Memory of Water

Charles Burger Lecture: Christine TenEyck, FASLA, TenEyck Landscape Architects
February 27, 2019

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2018 lectures

Design as Democracy

The Annual Lewis Clarke Lecture: Randolph Hester, Marcia McNally, and Kofi Boone
September 26, 2018

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Re-Thinking Sustainability + Resiliency for Urban Landscapes

The Women in Landscape Architecture Lecture: Laura Solano, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
October 10, 2018

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Urban Design, Campus Design, + Innovation Districts

The Annual Victor Stanley Lecture: David Vasini, West 8
November 28, 2018

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Previous Lecture Events

• DesignWeek [2018]: Opening Panel, Mark Johnson, CEO Civitas
• The Annual Victor Stanley Lecture: Friday, 9/22 + Saturday event morning event at JC Raulston Dr. James Hitchmough
• The Annual Richard Bell Lecture: Wednesday, October 11 | James Burnett, FASLA
• The First Annual Lewis Clarke Lecture: Wednesday, November, 17 | Linda Jewell, FASLA
• Thomas Woltz, FASLA, Nelson Byrd Woltz, “Master Planning Urban Parks in the 21st Century”
• Michelle Delk, ASLA, “Snøhetta Habitations”
• Gina Ford, ASLA, Sasaki Associates, “Micro, Macro, Mega, and Moore Square:  Designing Landscapes of Urban Change.”
• Paul Morris, FASLA, President and CEO of the Atlanta Beltline, “The Atlanta Beltline: Changing the Landscape for the Metro Atlanta Region.”
• Justin Martin, author, “Fredrick Law Olmsted: the Accidental Renaissance Man.”
• Daniel Winterbottom, University of Washington, FASLA, Professor of Landscape Architecture, “Sticks and Stones May Heal our Bones: Rebuilding Community.”
• Annette Wilkus, FASLA, RLA, LEED, AP, SiteWorks, SiteWorks, “Building New York’s Next of Parks.”
• Kenny Helphand, FASLA, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon, “Larry Halprin: Performance Artist.”
• Gary Findell, FiNe Construction Solution, “A Landscape Architect in Haiti – Cultural Challenges in Building Community … or Anything Else.”
• Robin Moore and Nilda Cosco, NCSU, Natural Learning Initiative, “Landscape Design as a Health Intervention.”
• Jeff Carney, Director LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, “Delta Building: Design in an Indeterminate Landscape.”
• Gary Hilderbrand, FASLA, Reed Hilderbrand, “Visible Invisible.”
• Matthew Urbanski, MVVA, FASLA, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, “New Parks for the Reinvented City.”
• Charles A. Flink, FASLA, “WalkBikeNC:  The Evolution of North Carolina Transportation.”
• Matthew Tomasulo, CityFabric, “Entrpreneurial Urbanism.”
• Warren T. Byrd, Jr., Nelson Byrd Woltz, “Meandering with Purpose: Research, Practice.”

Annual Landscape Architecture Conferences and Events

• ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo
• NCASLA Annual Meeting