His talk takes place in Weaver Auditorium in the Coastal Institute building on the URI Kingston campus. All the lectures in the series are free and open to the public.
As lead designer on many of his firm’s large public projects, Urbanski explores the ways in which urban public landscapes interact with other urban forces to enhance and expand the experience of city life. His recent work involves large-scale urban landscapes, including Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson Park & Boulevard in New York City, and North Grant Park in Chicago.
Since joining Michael VanValkenburgh Associates in 1989, he has worked on a number of significant projects, including Union Square North, Segment 5 of Hudson River Park, and Teardrop Park in New York City, as well as Hoboken Pier C, Allegheny Riverfront Park, the Vera List Courtyard, the General Mills Corporate Headquarters Entry Landscape, and the Pucker Garden.
Co-manager of Red Hill Nursery, a specialty plant nursery in New Jersey, Urbanski teaches planting design and studio courses at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He has won design and planning awards from the American Society for Landscape Architecture for his work on Brooklyn Bridge Park, Teardrop Park, Herman Miller Factory in Georgia, Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh, Spider Island at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and many others.
The rest of the speakers in the lecture series are:
March 10 – Michael Manfredi, principal of Weiss Manfredi in New York City, on “Surface/Subsurface;”
April 7 – Mark Klopfer, principal of Klopfer Martin Design Group in Cambridge, Mass., title to be determined;
April 21 – Mario Schjetnam of Grupo de Diseno Urbano in Mexico City on “Landscape, Sustainability and Public Space.”
All talks begin at 7 p.m. in Weaver Auditorium of the URI Coastal Institute in Kingston.
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.