Fun with Shrubs

URI Landscape Architecture Lecture Series concludes with presentations April 3 and 17

Todd McLeish, URI

KINGSTON, R.I. – The University of Rhode Island’s 2014 Landscape Architecture Lecture Series will conclude in April with two lectures by Cambridge-based landscape architects. Gary Hilderbrand, partner in the firm of Reed Hilderbrand LLC, will present a talk entitled “Telescopic” on April 3, while Marion Pressley, principle of Pressley Associates, will talk about her master plan for Pittsburgh’s Point State Park on April 17.

Both speakers are national figures in the profession of landscape architecture. Their presentations begin at 7 p.m. in Weaver Auditorium in the Coastal Institute building on URI’s Kingston campus. The events are free and open to the public.

Hilderbrand is a professor of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he has taught design studios, landscape technology and the use of plants as a sustainable medium in design since 1990. 

He is an author of two widely acclaimed books, a critic of 20th century landscape architecture practice, and winner of the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture. His firm, Reed Hilderbrand, was recognized in 2013 with the Landscape Architecture Firm Award, the highest award bestowed by the American Society of Landscape Architects.

He will speak about telescopic scales of inquiry in his firm’s work, from the larger scale of urban recovery, to the scale of campus infrastructure, to investigations of material detail and tectonic expression. 

Pressley has particular expertise in historic master planning, cultural landscape reports, and the preservation, restoration, and rehabilitation of public parks and private historical properties. She teaches landscape history for the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard and serves as chair of the Board of Landscape Architectural Registration in Massachusetts. 

Her presentation, entitled “Respecting the Continuum: Designing for the Past, Present, and Future,” will examine her work at Point State Park in Pittsburgh, where she incorporated an extensive archaeological inventory and interpretive themes to guide the park’s future evolution and protect its historic integrity.

The URI Landscape Architecture series is co-sponsored by Bartlett Tree Experts, the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences, and the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. For more information about the series, contact the URI Department of Landscape Architecture at 874-2983 or Professor Will Green atwagre@uri.edu.