Pete North, landscape architect and co-founder of North Design Bureau will give a lecture on new design approaches and strategies employed to achieve resilient landscapes. By focusing on the creative and innovative use of new technologies, materials and processes the lecture will highlight the new trajectory for large scale landscape projects, in the form of urban parks and waterfronts, speculating that the quality and dynamic inter-dependency of their ecological systems is an essential component of their success.
It is clear that the impact of climate change on our cities, and coastal areas, has been immense. Natural disasters, with unprecedented power and greater frequency, have become regular global occurrences and are often attributed to our rapidly changing climate and warming global temperatures. Many cities have been forced to spend billions of dollars recovering and rebuilding after severe storm events, or protecting themselves against the possibility of future ones. Landscape design that fortifies and is heavily engineered to protect against the ferocity and unpredictability of future weather has, on the whole, become an accepted approach to modern day city planning and building. However, fortifying and bracing for the inevitable storm event has proven costly and is more often ineffectual. New concepts of resilience are pointing to alternative approaches for landscape design based on frameworks that are adaptive, resilient, and able to withstand change rather than brace against it.
Through analysis of a series of exemplary case studies of, large scale, landscape projects, this presentation will focus on the design strategies employed to achieve resilient landscapes from the perspective of a landscape architect. By focusing on the creative and innovative use of new technologies, materials and processes this presentation aims to highlight the new trajectory for large scale landscape projects, in the form of urban parks and waterfronts, speculating that the quality and dynamic inter-dependency of their ecological systems is an essential component of their success. The presentation aims to uncover that facilitating stronger ecological flows in our designed landscapes will ultimately enhance opportunities for greater ecological resiliency and long term stability of our cities and urban environments.
Pete North, OALA, CSLA, is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and co-founder of North Design Office. His research, teaching and professional practice focus on landscape ecology, urbanism and design. As Assistant Professor he has taught graduate design studio, urban ecology, site technologies, brownfield remediation and landscape representation courses. He graduated from the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto in 1997 and received the Master in Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2001. Pete has worked on many award winning projects throughout Canada and the USA and has lectured internationally. He has taught as a visiting faculty member at the Louisiana State University, Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture and the Harvard University, Graduate School of Design.
North Design Office is a landscape architecture, urbanism, and design firm, established 2005 and is based in Toronto. The office’s process based work ranges in scale from site specific art installations to architecture and urban design, with an emphasis on landscape architecture. North Design Office has received recognition for entries in numerous international design competitions and their work has been widely published.
www.northdesignoffice.ca
www.daniels.utoronto.ca