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Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Bring me a shrubbery

Landscape Architecture Lecture Series continues March 8 at URI
The University of Rhode Island’s Landscape Architecture Lecture Series continues next month with a talk March 8 by Peter Trowbridge, principal of Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects in Ithaca, N.Y. and professor emeritus at Cornell University.

Trowbridge’s talk and three others scheduled for later this spring will begin at 7 p.m. in Room 105 of the Richard E. Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences, 140 Flagg Road, on the Kingston campus. The talks are free and open to the public.

Trowbridge will discuss “Affordable Housing and the Consequences of Public Engagement.”


Trowbridge is the founding principal at Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects. With more than 35 years of professional practice, Trowbridge has a range of experience in the design of public parks, recreation facilities, streetscapes, campus planning and site design. 

Highly regarded for his extensive knowledge of plants and soils, he leads much of the firm’s higher education design work. His work has been widely recognized and has inspired a generation of designers.

A professor emeritus of landscape architecture at Cornell University and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture for many years, Trowbridge has a master of landscape architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and a bachelor of landscape architecture, environmental science and forestry from Syracuse University.

Other talks will be:

April 5, Signe Nielsen, principal of Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, on “Waterproofing New York.” Nielsen is a founding principal of the firm and has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978. She is the recipient of more than 100 national and local design awards for public open space projects and is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt Institute in the graduate and undergraduate Schools of Architecture. She also is president of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Born in Paris, Nielsen received a bachelor of arts in urban planning from Smith College; a bachelor of arts in landscape architecture from City College of New York; and a bachelor of science in construction management from Pratt Institute.

April 19, Mario Schjetnan, principal, Grupo Urbano, Mexico City, on “World Trends and Landscape Architecture.”

Born in Mexico City, Schjetnan is considered one of the foremost landscape architects today whose work through his firm, Grupo de Diseno Urbano, has elevated the stature of Mexican landscape architecture. Schjetnan is winner of numerous awards, including the 2008 American Society of Landscape Architects General Design Honor Award and the Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard University. 

Schjetnan has lectured at Harvard University, among other colleges, and was director of the School of Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1999 to 2001. In 2015, he received the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award from the International Federation of Landscape Architects—the highest award of landscape architecture worldwide. He is the first Latin American to receive the recognition.

April 26, Jamie Maslyn Larson, principal, Wagner Hodgson, Burlington/Hudson, N.Y., on “Second Act.”

Larson’s work spans the country with a range of public and private clients including federal and city agencies, universities, cultural institutions and private developers. Before joining Wagner Hodgson, Larson was a principal at West 8’s New York office with a nationwide, diverse portfolio that garnered many design awards and national and international press. 

She was principal-in-charge of the firm’s American portfolio, which includes the Governors Island Park and Public Space project, Longwood Gardens Master Plan, and Soundscape in Miami Beach, Fla. Larson lectures at national conferences and universities and has been published in “Landscape Journal.” She received her master in landscape architecture degree from Utah State University.

The series is co-sponsored by Bartlett Tree Experts, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Gaetano and Pasqualina Faella Endowment, URI College of Arts and Sciences, URI College of Business Administration, and URI’s Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design.

For more information about the series, contact the URI Department of Landscape Architecture at 401-874-2142 or Professor William Green at wagre@uri.edu