What is the role of design in the construction of racial identity, lived experience, and cultural memory? Black Landscapes Matter convenes conversation on the role of architects, landscape architects, and urban planners in the construction of structural racism in the built environment. This conversation convenes landscape architects Kofi Boone, Walter Hood, Sara Zewde, and is hosted by the Gardner's Ruettgers Curator of Landscape Charles Waldheim.
Charles Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where he convenes The Larger (Landscape) Conversation series.
Kofi Boone is a landscape architect and professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at North Carolina State University. Boone’s research sits in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice with specializations in democratic design and interpreting cultural landscapes. He is an advocate for rewriting the histories and theories of landscape architecture to acknowledge African American lived experience through landscape. Boone is author of “Black Landscapes Matter” in GroundUp Journal and his work has appeared in the Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture Magazine.
Walter Hood is the Creative Director and Founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. Hood Design Studio is a cultural practice, working across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research and urbanism. He is also the David K. Woo Chair and the Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectures on and exhibits professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. Walter Hood is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and most recently, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship. Hood is also a Fellow at the American Academy of Rome and one of the 2021 elected members of the Academy of Arts and Letters.
Sara Zewde is principal of Studio Zewde, a design firm in New York City practicing landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art. Named a 2021 Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York, the studio is lauded for its design methodology syncing culture, ecology, and craft. In parallel with practice, Sara serves as Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University. Sara holds a master’s of landscape architecture from Harvard, a master’s of city planning from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University.
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