Kongjian Yu
President, Turenscape; Dean and Professor, Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing, China
"The Art of Survival: Recovering Landscape Architecture"

Lecture description:
Time Magazine called Kongjian Yu as "The Force of Nature," and Yu defined landscape architecture as the art of survival. In this lecture, Dr. Yu uses multiple projects to demonstrate landscape architecture as a powerful tool to achieve sustainability and green urbanism, and define a new and poetic vernacular landscape in contemporary China, while addressing issues of survival, such as flood control, food production, ecological recovery.

Brief bio:
Kongjian Yu received his Doctor of Design Degree at The Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995. He is the founder and dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Peking University, and the founder and president of Turenscape, which is an internationally awarded firm with more than 300 professionals and is one of the first and largest private landscape architecture and architecture firms in China.

Dr. Yu is a five-time winner of ASLA Honor Awards (The American Society of Landscape Architects) in the past five years for his ecologically and culturally sensitive projects, two-time winner of the Architectural Review Award (Commended, Architectural Review, UK). Dr. Yu is the winner of the National Gold Medal of Fine Arts (2004, China). In 2004, Dr. Yu was awarded the Oversea Chinese Pioneer Achievement Medal by the Chinese central government for his overall contribution to the nation. Dr. Yu was the keynote speaker for the 40th and 43rd IFLA World Congress, and the 2006 ASLA annual conference. In October, he will also keynote at the 2008 ASLA annual conference.

Dr. Yu publishes widely, including more than 200 papers and 15 books. His current book is: The Art Of Survival: Recovering Landscape Architecture. His major research interests include: the theory and method of landscape architecture and urban planning; the cultural aspect of the landscape; landscape security patterns and ecological infrastructure.

For more information visit: Turenscape website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Lewis S. Ranieri
Prime Originator and Founder, Hyperion
"Revolution in Mortgage Finance"

Lewis S. Ranieri, is the prime originator and founder of the Hyperion private equity funds ("Hyperion") and chairman and/or director of various other non-operating entities owned directly and indirectly by Hyperion. Mr. Ranieri also serves as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Ranieri & Co., Inc., a private investment advisor and management corporation, and he is founder of Ranieri Partners, LLC, an investment company focused on financial service opportunities. He is also Chairman of Franklin Bank Corp. and Root Markets, Inc., an internet-based mortgage leads company. Prior to forming Hyperion, Mr. Ranieri had been Vice Chairman of Salomon Brothers, Inc. ("Salomon"). He is generally considered to be the "father" of the securitized mortgage market. Mr. Ranieri helped develop the capital markets as a source of funds for housing and commercial real estate, established Salomon's leadership position in the mortgage-backed securities area, and also led the effort to obtain federal legislation to support and build the market. At Salomon, Mr. Ranieri had responsibility for the firm's activities in the mortgage, real estate and government-guaranteed areas.

Regarded as an expert and innovator in both the mortgage and capital markets, Mr. Ranieri has served on the National Association of Home Builders Mortgage Roundtable continuously since 1989. In recognition of his dedication and lifelong achievements in the housing industry, Mr. Ranieri was inducted into the National Housing Hall of Fame. He is also a recipient of the lifetime achievement award given by the Fixed Income Analysts Society, Inc. and was subsequently inducted into the FIASI Hall of Fame for outstanding practitioners in the advancement of the analysis of fixed-income securities and portfolios. In November 2004, BusinessWeek magazine named him one of "the greatest innovators of the past 75 years," and in 2005, he received the Distinguished Industry Service Award from the American
Securitization Forum.

Mr. Ranieri serves as a trustee or director of Environmental Defense and The Metropolitan Opera Association and is also on the Board of the American Ballet Theatre.


HISTORY OF THE JOHN T. DUNLOP LECTURE

The John T. Dunlop Lecture commemorates the life and work of the late John T. Dunlop, Lamont University Professor Emeritus of Harvard University from 1985 to 2003 and United States Secretary of Labor during the Ford administration. In a lifetime career dedicated to improving labor-management relations, Professor Dunlop's skillful arbitration and negotiation led to celebrated dispute resolutions in academia, industry, and government.

In 1999, the Joint Center for Housing Studies partnered with the National Housing Endowment and the Graduate School of Design to create a named lecture that would serve as a lasting tribute to Professor Dunlop and his many contributions to the national housing community.

For event details contact: Elizabeth England (elizabeth_england@harvard.edu)

Jinnai Hidenobu: "Reading the Urban Landscape of Tokyo: Ecology and History"

The lecture is the first of our GSD PhD Talks series, and will be held in Piper, 2 October, 6 pm.

Jinnai is a professor of architecture at Tokyo's H??sei University, where he teaches architectural and urban history, and continues to conduct research abroad. He earned his doctorate at Tokyo University, upon which he studied at the Unesco International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property and the University Institute of Architecture of Venice.

His research has been centered on waterfront cities and their relationship with their natural environment. Jinnai has published extensively on the cities of the Mediterranean with a special interest on Italy, and has gained international recognition for his groundbreaking study on Tokyo, A Spatial Anthropology, in which he traced in the modern city twice destroyed and rebuilt in the course of a few decades the patterns of seventeenth-century Edo life retained despite a radically different urban landscape.

This lecture is sponsored by the GSD PhD Program, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and the Department of History of Art & Architecture's Rockefeller Fund for East Asian Art, and is supported by AsiaGSD. For questions, please contact Alex Bueno at bueno@fas.harvard.edu.

For more information visit: GSD PhD Talks

For event details contact: Alex Bueno (bueno@fas.harvard.edu)

Mark Rakatansky
Principal, Mark Rakatansky Studio
Adjunct Associate Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
"Double Agency: Tafuri / Piranesi - The Remix"

For more information visit: Mark Rakatansky Studio website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Film screening and conversation with co-directors Coan "Buddy" Nichols and Rick Charnoski
Moderated by Jerold Kayden, Co-Chair, Department of Urban Planning and Design, and Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design

"Deathbowl to Downtown" chronicles four decades of life in New York City and showcases the emergence and influence of the urban skateboarding scene as it evolved in the gritty streets of the five boroughs. With narration by Chloe Sevigny and musical tracks provided by the Beastie Boys, Drunk Injuns, Minor Threat, Eric B. & Rakim, Wu-Tang Clan and the Talking Heads, among others, "Deathbowl to Downtown" is the first feature length film to show the rise of skateboarding from a New Yorker's perspective.

Scripted by Jocko Weyland (author of The Answer is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World), "Deathbowl to Downtown" traces the untold and historically rich story of how skateboarding evolved in New York City, beginning in the mid 1970's with a group of skaters known as the Zoo York Crew and then developed into its present day form. "Deathbowl to Downtown" shows how New York skaters made due with the harsh realities of the city's urban landscape and unintentionally helped shape the face of modern skateboarding.

In addition to candid interviews with dozens of prominent and influential skaters, "Deathbowl to Downtown" also features architects and scholars, who shed light on how the city's urban planning unknowingly led to the development of terrain that was quickly adapted by skateboarders looking for their own version of the California dream.

"When we first showed the film in New York, the reception we received was overwhelming. The cultural aspects of skateboarding we explore in the film make it something that you don't have to be a skater to enjoy," noted Buddy Nichols, co-director of the film. "We've made some minor tweaks and can't wait to take it on the road to show it and skate in other cities."

The film features interviews with:

- Chris Pastras
- Lance Mountain
- Mike Vallely
- Puppethead
- Keith Hufnagel
- Steve Rodriguez
- Jeff Pang
- Bruno Musso
- Bill Thomas
- Jerold Kayden (Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design)
- M. Paul Friedberg (designer of the Brooklyn Banks)

For more information visit: "Deathbowl to Downtown" official website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Discussions in Architecture:
Wes Jones with Preston Scott Cohen

Wes Jones is a partner in Jones, Partners: Architecture, a California-based architectural practice founded in 1993. Previously Jones had been the Design Partner at HHPJ, where his technologically inspired designs for completed buildings and theoretical projects received acclaim for their critical engagement with the contemporary cultural scene and their disciplinary sophistication. His eight Progressive Architecture Design Awards include recognition for the Astronauts' Memorial at Kennedy Space Center and the $180M South Campus Chiller Plant for UCLA. The work of J,P:A and HHPJ has been featured in many publications and exhibited widely. A recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture, Jones has lectured internationally on technology and the work of the firm, and has taught in the schools of Architecture at Harvard, Princeton, IIT, Columbia, UCLA, UC Berkeley, the Ohio State University, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Jones received the AB with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley in 1980, and the MArch with Distinction from the HGSD in 1983. In the fall of 2007 Princeton Architectural Press published their second monograph of his work, covering the period from 1998 to date, titled El Segundo.

For more information visit: Jones, Partners: Architecture website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Scott Lash
Director and Professor, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London
"Global Space in Mutation"

For more information visit: Professor Lash's faculty profile at the University of London

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Bent Flyvbjerg
Professor of Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark
"Follies of Infrastructure: Why the Worst Projects Get Built, and How to Avoid It"

Bent Flyvbjerg is Professor of Planning at the Department of Development and Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is Doctor of Technology and Engineering (Dr.Techn.) and Doctor of Science (Dr. Scient.) from Aalborg University and holds the Ph.D. in Urban Geography and Planning from Aarhus University, Denmark. He was twice a Visiting Fulbright Scholar to the USA, where he did research at the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley and at Harvard University. He has been a Visiting Fellow with the European University Institute in Florence. Bent Flyvbjerg holds a concurrent position as Chair in Infrastructure Policy and Planning at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Bent Flyvbjerg's most recent books in English are Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (The University of Chicago Press, 1998). His books and articles have been translated into 18 languages. His main research interest is urban policy and planning. He is currently conducting research on megaprojects, phronetic planning research, and the relationship between truth and lying in policy and planning. Flyvbjerg's research has been covered by Science, The Economist, The New York Times, the BBC, and other media.

Bent Flyvbjerg has two decades of practical experience from working as a policy and planning adviser to more than 40 public and private organizations, including the EU Commission, the United Nations, national and local government, auditors general, banks, and private companies. His work covers both developed and developing nations. He has been adviser to the government of Denmark in formulating national policies for transportation, infrastructure, environment, and science.

Bent Flyvbjerg is founding chairman of the Geography Program at Aalborg University, established in 2001. He is co-founder of the university's Program in Planning and Environment and founding director of the university's Research Program on Megaprojects. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Danish National Science Council Distinguished Research Scholarship (equivalent to the MacArthur Fellowship). In 2002, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark conferred upon Bent Flyvbjerg the Knighthood of the Order of the Dannebrog for his professional accomplishments.

For more information visit: Professor Flyvbjerg's faculty page at Aalborg University

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Benjamin Hossbach
Architect, [phase eins], Berlin, Germany
"The Architecture of Competitions"

For more information visit: [phase eins] firm website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Frederick Law Olmsted lecture: Anita Berrizbeitia
Landscape Architect, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
"Recent Works"

Anita Berrizbeitia is Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar, received a BA from Wellesley College and an MLA from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Berrizbeitia is the author of Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas: Parque del Este 1956- 1961 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), for which she received the J.B. Jackson Book Prize in 2007. She is co-author, with architect Linda Pollak, of INSIDE/OUTSIDE: Between Architecture and Landscape (Rockport 1999), for which they won an ASLA Merit Award in 2002. She has published extensively on the theory of modern and contemporary landscape architecture.

Berrizbeitia maintains a consulting practice, and has collaborated with several firms including Child Associates, DIRT Studio, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, and Arquitecturas Torres Nadal. She was the recipient of a Rome Prize Fellowship in 2006.

For more information visit: Anita Berrizbeitia's faculty profile at the University of Pennsylvania website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

THE EUROPEAN LANDSCAPE CONVENTION:
A CONFERENCE ON ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION AND PRACTICE
Graduate School of Design
Harvard University

Organized by Carl Steinitz Alexander and Victoria Wiley Research Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning

Adoption of the European Landscape Convention is causing a quiet revolution in how most European nations view, legislate, plan and manage their landscapes. Instigated by the Council of Europe, this international treaty has been signed by 35 countries and ratified by 29. It is also being seen as a model for non-European countries, especially in Asia and South and Central America. The treaty has caused major reassessment of planning practices relating to the landscape, and has focused attention on the need for the education and provision of professionals to deal with landscape issues at urban, regional, national and international scales. A significant and parallel development is the Le Notre program, funded by the European Union to improve European (and worldwide) integration of education and practice in landscape architecture. Many in the next generation of academics and practitioners will be directly influenced by the principles, policies and guidelines derived from the European Landscape Convention.

For further information on the Convention, see http://www.coe.int/EuropeanLandscapeConvention
and especially Section 6.

I am very pleased to announce a one-day conference at Harvard Graduate School of Design on the European Landscape Convention and its implications for education and practice. The conference will explore the developing public awareness of landscape, and the landscape planning policies and practices now evolving as a result of the Convention. The Autonomous Region of Valencia, Spain will be a focal case study. Speakers will include:

Maguelonne Dejeant-Pons, Head of the Cultural Heritage, Landscape and Spatial Planning Division of the Council of Europe and manager of the European Landscape Convention,

Enrique Alonso, Permanent Councilor on Environmental Law of the Ministerial Council of Spain,

Arancha Munoz Criado, Director of Territorial Landscape Planning for the Autonomous Region of Valencia, Spain,

Richard Forman, Professor of Landscape Ecology, Harvard Graduate School of Design,

Michael Batty, Bartlett Professor of Planning and Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,

Richard Stiles, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Vienna and leader of the Le Notre program,

Martha Fajardo, Landscape Architect, Colombia, and Immediate Past President, International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA).

The conference will be held on Saturday October 25, 2008 from 9am to 4pm, in Piper Auditorium at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA. Lunch and coffee will be available at the GSD.

Attendance is free and open to all interested persons. All attendees must register by October 15th and by email to shurley@gsd.harvard.edu

For more information visit: The European Landscape Convention

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Kathryn Moore
Professor, School of Architecture, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design,
Birmingham City University, United Kingdom
"Overlooking the Visual"

Kathryn Moore lifts the philosophical veil obscuring critical, artistic discourse. Questioning traditional theories of perception she builds up a sensible, pragmatic approach to design education and practice, demystifying the art of design and demonstrating the real value of design expertise. Crossing boundaries between philosophy, theory and practice it is an interdisciplinary analysis of consciousness and the creative process that is of considerable interest to those concerned with design quality in the built environment and to those striving to meet current global environmental challenges.

For more information visit: Kathryn Moore's faculty profile on the Birmingham City University website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Catherine Ingraham
Professor of Architecture, Pratt Institute, New York City
"Towards a New Theory of Life in Architecture"

When we presuppose the existence of living beings in an architectural project, we do not, typically, apprehend these beings as figural. Figuralization is a highly specific, usually mobile, manifestation of human (and animal) life that gathers its force from both biological and cultural places; in effect, it makes life sharp against its background. In fact, the human life typically presupposed in architectural work (conceptual and actual) is blurry, no matter how refined our photoshop renderings. We are still operating out of a modernist idea of programming -- even as we radically loosen the skin of architectural envelopes around living beings. This is not a trivial matter in any case, but it is now of urgent importance because life itself (animal and human) is undergoing drastic cultural and biological redefinition.

For more information visit: Catherine Ingraham's faculty profile on the Pratt Institute website

For event details contact: Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)