KINGSTON, R.I. — September 12, 2008 – The University of Rhode Island’s Landscape Architecture Lecture Series will kick off on Sept. 25 with a lecture by Shannon Brawley, a landscape designer at Wakefield-based Tupelo Gardenworks, whose talk will examine East Coast versus West Coast perspectives on environmental restoration and cultural preservation.
Her talk begins at 7 p.m. in White Hall auditorium on the URI Kingston campus. All the lectures in the series, which are free and open to the public, will focus on the theme of “pushing the edges.”
As a landscape architecture student in California, Brawley became interested in land use issues and cultural sustainability, especially as it relates to Native American communities. She collaborated with Native Americans and the Cache Creek Conservancy on a participatory research project called the Tending and Gathering Garden, a wildlife habitat restoration project using Native American techniques.
Later, as director of the California Indian Basketweavers Association, she worked with indigenous communities and the U.S. Forest Service to develop a traditional gathering policy that provided Native Americans with expanded access to government-owned lands. She now works with Native communities in New England on related projects.
The rest of the lecture schedule follows. All begin at 7 p.m. in Weaver Auditorium of the URI Coastal Institute in Kingston.
– Oct. 16, Ron Henderson, principal of L + A Landscape Architecture, Providence, speaking on “On the Edge in the Middle Kingdom: Modern Landscape Architecture in China;”
– Nov. 6, Bill Taylor of Carol R. Johnson & Associates, Boston, on “Landscape on the Edge: Cooling and Greening the Desert Coast;”
– Nov. 20, Lucinda Sanders, chief executive officer of the Olin Partnership, Philadelphia, on “Owning the Edge;”
– Feb. 12, Robert Weygand, URI vice president for administration and a former landscape architect, on “The Leadership Landscape;”
– March 5, Shavaun Towers, principal of Towers/Golde LLC, New Haven, on “At the Edge: The Creative Interface Between Preservation, Sustainability and Institutional Culture on University Campuses;” and
– April 2, Pamela and James Shadley of Shadley Associates, Lexington, title to be determined.
The URI Landscape Architecture series is co-sponsored by the College of the Environment and Life Sciences, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association, and Gates Leighton & Associates. For more information about the series, contact the URI Department of Landscape Architecture at 874-2983 or Professor Will Green at wagre@uri.edu.