Work in Progress - Landscape Architecture Lecture Series

About

Landscapes are always a work in progress and a collective work over time. The spring term ‘Work In Progress’ lecture series is a series of informal talks involving practitioners and thinkers from a range of disciplines, speaking about work in progress, working methods, and the process of working with landscape. 

This series is presented by the Landscape Architecture MA and MLA programmes and is open to the public.

Schedule

24 February | 13:00 | Meaghan Kombol

Meaghan Kombol will speak about her role as a landscape architect working in local authority and her recent projects with Croydon Council. In the early 2000s, Croydon Council created a Spatial Planning Team. Over the last 15 years and more, they have managed to ensure high-quality design at all levels. Their team sits alongside plan-making, design and policy development, as part of an integrated Spatial Planning Service, which is rare for local authorities. In this way their team, made up of architects, urban designers, landscape architects, cultural practitioners and conservationists, isable to challenge the traditional boundaries of landscape architecture, architecture and design from a local government perspective.

Biography

Meaghan was born in Seattle, Washington, and worked for M&Co in New York before moving to London in 2002. After working at the Design Museum, she received a Master's in Landscape Architecture at the University of Greenwich. Meaghan has worked with some of the most exciting names in the field, including Martha Schwartz and Kathryn Gustafson – with whom she worked on the celebrated design for the ‘Towards Paradise’ garden at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale. In addition to practising landscape architecture in London as a Chartered Landscape Architect, Meaghan has edited and written numerous books for Phaidon Press including her latest book, 30|30 Landscape Architecture (2015). Meaghan is currently an adjunct professor of landscape architecture at the University of Greenwich.

Register on Zoom

03 March | 13:00 | Ceylan Belek Ombregt

Linking systems and infrastructure with people and place occurs at all projects scales and geographies. This talk, titled 'Small to Large: Connecting People, Place, Resource, and Infrastructure', will explore some opportunities that landscape architecture creates to regenerate our planet - and therefore our health and wellbeing - by displaying concepts, tools, and representations landscape architects use in their daily practice. 

Biography

Ceylan Belek Ombregt is a practising registered landscape architect, researcher and lecturer. Based in London, she is a partner and practice manager at Martha Schwartz Partners' London office. There she has led internationally-published projects such as the Beiqijia Technology Business District in Beijing and the Moscow Children’s Route. She previously worked at OLIN in Philadelphia and as a consultant landscape architect in Istanbul.

Ceylan is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Istanbul Technical University, and University of Istanbul. Her main academic focus is on ecological issues in regard to urban landscapes. Her research interests are sensory experience of space, smart materials and design collaboration among artists and varying disciplines. She is a Visiting Lecturer at ITU and the Writtle School of Design, where she has also taught.

Register on Zoom

10 March | 13:00 | Devin Dobrowolski

In an era of unprecedented ecological and social challenge, an ever-growing archive of spatial data has become a ubiquitous resource in the work of landscape architects, architects, and urban designers. Yet, it is no longer sufficient to uncritically represent or reproduce the data at hand. Far from simply visualizing data, designers should be on the front end of data production, generating new forms of speculative knowledge through the graphic and representational tools of our discipline. This lecture, 'Ways of Looking', will document three recent projects that question the generative role of graphic and visual systems in the production of spatial ideas at multiple scales.

Biography

Devin Dobrowolski is a landscape architect and architect. A graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Design and Princeton University, he has worked at Barkow Leibinger Architekten in Berlin. He is currently the Director of Applied Research Projects with Somatic Collaborative, a research-based design practice that focuses on a speculative approach to architecture, landscape, and urbanism. There, Devin has directed the development of several applied research projects that address the role of design in relation to urban, economic, and ecological systems. Recent venues for this work include the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, and the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
 
Devin joined the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2019 as an Assistant Professor. His research investigates the relationship between media, technology, and aesthetics in the arts and applied sciences.

Register on Zoom

27 April | 13:30 | Johanna Gibbons

Biography

Johanna Gibbons is a landscape architect and Fellow of the Landscape Institute. Jo was named a Royal Designer for Industry for her pioneering and influential work combining design with activism, education and professional practice. She is founding Partner of J & L Gibbons and founding Director of social enterprise Landscape Learn. Jo is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, a research partner of Urban Mind, panel advisor to Historic England and the Forestry Commission and a Trustee of Open City. She publishes and lectures widely.

Abstract

What Matters

Johanna will discuss projects complete and maturing from the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, rewilding the High Weald and a provocation of nature in the city in Oslo at the Munch Museum. She will touch on J & L Gibbons' work at the British Library Yorkshire, Natural History Museum and Museum of London. Jo will also reflect ongoing research, her social enterprise Landscape Learn and recent competition short-listings for the Camden Highline and Highgate Cemetery, which is live.
 
Jo will provide a reflection of what is 'on the board' and the practice's creative process at this most poignant time of converging emergencies - climate, biodiversity and health.

Register on Zoom

Image: Design With Nature by Johanna Gibbons

25 May | 13:30 | Dr Phil Askew

Biography

Dr Phil Askew is Director of Landscape & Placemaking at Peabody leading on Thamesmead, London’s New Town and one of London’s largest regeneration and development projects. He has a background in urban design, landscape architecture and horticulture, leading on major regeneration and green infrastructure projects. Prior to this, he led the design and delivery of the London 2012 Olympic Park at the Olympic Delivery Authority and its transformation into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the UK's largest new urban park in over a century.  At Peabody a landscape led approach to the unique green and blue landscape assets of Thamesmead is ensuring they are central to the regeneration process and their potential as green infrastructure is realised. The green infrastructure strategy ‘Living in the Landscape’ has been developed to underpin this work in Thamesmead.

Register on Zoom

Image credit: Peabody

More information

• Landscape Architecture MA/MLA at The Bartlett School of Architecture
• Image: Aerial view of fieldwork by students at the Cretto di Burri, Gibellina. Image by Design Studio 2, The Bartlett School of Architecture