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Of Bird’s Nests and Beaver Dams: Landscape Architecture and Resilience in the Anthropocene

Friday, May 29 | 2:00 - 2:50pm
Location: Gala Rooms 3-4

Speaker: Steven Austin, School of Design and Construction, Washington State University 

Description:

This session will explore the importance of designing for resilience in the Anthropocene.  Cascading environmental destruction and resource depletion mark this emerging geological era.  Coincident with this, our society is witnessing massive social and economic inequality, which will be exacerbated by the era’s physical impacts.

Helping our society achieve resilience in the Anthropocene will require that landscape architects immerse themselves in systems understanding, eliminate the harmful fiction of site boundaries, and become advocates for a new vision of humanity’s relationship to our one planet and its life support networks. Nature provides us with two metaphors of how to approach design in the Anthropocene: bird nests and beaver dams

After illuminating our challenges, this session will explore contemporary work that emphasizes Landscape Architecture’s role in creating a new definition of beauty for this age: design that protects vulnerable places and people, renews ecological balance, and fosters community.

Learning Objectives:
  • Understand the idea of resilience;
  • Comprehend the reality and the impacts of the Anthropocene;
  • Connect the Anthropocene and Landscape Architecture;
  • Discover positive examples of Landscape Architecture in the Anthropocene;
  • Consider new roles for Landscape Architecture

Speaker Bio: Steve Austin, JD/ASLA, School of Design and Construction, Washington State University

Steve Austin, JD/ASLA, serves on the Landscape Architecture faculty in the School of Design and Construction at WSU. Steve’s professional experience spans 25 years as an award-winning designer, town and regional planner, teacher, land use attorney, and community organizer. Steve has dedicated himself to research and writing on design and resilience issues, including a year studying low carbon bioregions in Europe in 2012-13.