GREEN INFRASTRUCTURES
for Water in the City Symposium

February 19, 2005
10 AM - 6 PM

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Steward Pickett
Plant Ecologist, Ph.D., 1977, University of Illinois, Urbana
Dr. Pickett's projects relate to the role of spatial heterogeneity in community and landscape structure and dynamics. Specific projects include research on urban ecosystems, function of landscape boundaries, and plant community succession. The question motivating all these studies is, "How does the spatial heterogeneity of a system or area control system function and change?"
(website)

Matthew Urbanski
Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., New York
As lead designer on many of the firm’s large public projects, Matthew explores the ways in which urban landscapes, and parks in particular, interact with other urban forces to enhance and expand the experience of city life. His recent work involves large-scale waterfront parks, including Segment 5 of Hudson River Park, in New York City, Pier C, in Hoboken, NJ, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Downtown Riverfront Park, in Columbus, OH. Matthew joined MVVA in 1989, is a principal in the New York office and collaborates regularly with the Cambridge office. Matthew is co-manager of Red Hill Nursery, a specialty plant nursery in New Jersey. Since 1989, he has taught planting design and studio courses at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design
MVV, Inc.

Kristina Hill
Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Washington
Professor Hill’s current work is on developing urban design principles and prototypes that emphasize sustainability and ecological health. Her background includes work on landfills and contaminated sites in Europe and on the East Coast of the United States. In the Pacific Northwest, the pressing issue is whether urban development can coexist with the salmon populations that both pass through and live in urban waterways. Kristina's research, consulting, and teaching are focused on trying to address this problem by altering the "skin" of the city to change the quality, quantity, and timing of water flows through an urban landscape. 
(website)

Project-Based Speakers

Melissa Keeley
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Water Resources Planning and Management, Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Melissa Keeley is a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, doctoral candidate at the Technical University of Berlin (Germany), and special student at Harvard University. Her work spans urban ecology, environmental technology, and public policy with a particular focus on creating, valuing, and promoting green infrastructure in urban areas. Ms. Keeley’s research examines the adaptation process necessary to transfer decentralized, plant-based, stormwater management technologies from Europe to the United States through the comparative analysis of urban case studies. Specifically, she examines the successful and widespread implementation of green roofs, bioswales and pervious pavements in Europe and analyses European incentives for urban green infrastructure and their applications in North America. Ms. Keeley completed her MS in Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington (Seattle) and worked as a stream restoration ecologist in greater Philadelphia.
www.fas.harvard.edu/~mkeeley

Charles Waldheim
Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program and the associate dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design at the University of Toronto
Charles Waldheim is an architect whose practice centers on collaborations with multi-disciplinary teams in the design of urban spaces and landscapes, Waldheim also writes and lectures about topics in urbanism and landscape design.  Recent publications include Constructed Ground: The Millennium Garden Design Competition; and “Motor City,” In Shaping the City: Case Studies in Urban History, Theory and Design.   Waldheim is editor of the forthcoming publications Chicago Architecture and Urbanism: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives as well as Landscape Urbanism: A Reference Manifesto.

Chris Reed
Landscape Architect, Principal and Founder of StoSS Landscape Urbanism
Chris Reed is founding principal of StoSS landscape urbanism, a Boston-based strategic design and planning studio. He is also a Research Fellow in the Center for Technology and Environment at the Harvard Design School and a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to founding StoSS, he worked for six years at Hargreaves Associates on large-scale public and institutional planning and design projects. StoSS is a critical, collaborative design and planning studio that operates at the juncture of landscape architecture, urban design, and planning—in an emerging field known as landscape urbanism. This field addresses sites in relation to the broader ecological, environmental, infrastructural, and social-cultural processes and systems that constitute them; it understands sites as caught up in landscape process and civic life.
Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Inc.

Alex Felson
Founder of EiD
Alex Felson is a New York City landscape architect launching a consulting practice specializing in ecological design and urban sustainability. In 1998, while at the GSD, Felson and fellow student Markley Bavinger founded Ecology in Design. After graduating, he worked with Ken Smith for three years on a variety of ecologically oriented projects, one of which he will talk about today: the East River marsh planter. Felson envisions integrating ecology into the urban fabric.  Utilizing his undergraduate work in botany and graduate work in environmental science, he aims to transform traditional ecological experiments into innovative urban designs and public space.  He has lectured throughout the Northeast—at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and Rhode Island School of Design—on the measurement and analysis of urban ecosystems and the overlap in form and aesthetics of ecological experiments and modernism.

Hillary Brown
Architect, Founding Principal, New Civic Works
New Civic Works is a New York City based firm whose Executive Director, Hillary Brown, AIA is the founder of New York’s Office of Sustainable Design. Hillary’s vision and bringing to fruition NYC’s “High Performance Guidelines” has won her national and international recognitions for its comprehensive approach to green building practices. New Civic Works begins by building political commitment to developing a truly integrated policy, gaining local buy-in across departments with specific environmental, fiscal, administrative and construction responsibilities. New Civic Works gains civic support by including community and environmental organizations in policy development. In June 2000, Ms. Brown was presented with the NY Chapter of the American Institute of Architect’s Public Architect Award for creating an institutional platform for policy development that serves as a national model to encourage environmental stewardship in quality design. In 2001, she was a Bosch fellow at the American Academy in Berlin where she examined advanced green building practices in Germany for incorporation into American green building policy.           
www.newcivicworks.com

Panelists and Moderators

Professor Robert France
Associate Professor, Department of landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Robert France is Associate Professor of Landscape Ecology at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he began teaching in the Fall of 1997. He teaches courses focusing on the influences of landscape processes and development on aquatic systems, and on how the design of these systems can be used to mitigate watershed development pressures. Additionally, he teaches courses investigating the ethical relationships of humans to the environment. France has authored numerous papers on the ecology and conservation biology of organisms from bacteria and algae to birds and whales, on research topics from environmental pollution to theoretical biodiversity, and in locations ranging from the High Arctic to the tropics. France currently studies the effects of riparian clearcutting on aquatic ecology. He received a BSc from the University of Manitoba, the MSc from the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg, and a PhD from the University of Toronto. He has conducted research and taught at McGill University. France is a recently appointed series editor for Lewis/CRC Press on the topic “Integrativs Studies in Water Management and Land Development.”

Professor Richard Forman
Professor, Department of landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Dr. Forman is the PAES Professor of Advanced Environmental Studies in Landscape Ecology at Harvard University. His primary scholarly interests are landscape and regional ecology, road ecology, land-use planning, and linking science with spatial pattern to mesh nature and people. He also studies land transformation, patch-corridor-matrix theory, and the ecology of urban regions. 

Peter del Tredici
Lecturer, Department of landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Del Tredici is a botanist and Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, where he has worked since 1979. While he has been doing research in various areas of the plant sciences, his primary goal has always been to bridge the gap between horticulture and botany. Del Tredici's interests are wide-ranging and cover such topics as plant morphology, conifers, bonsai, urban horticulture, plant/microbial symbioses, and tree architecture. He is a specialist in the evolution, natural history and cultivation of the Ginkgo tree. He has worked as a plant propagator at the Arnold Arboretum for ten years and as the editor of Arnoldia for four years.

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