Soak It Up: Combating Climate Change with Landscape Architecture

The “sponge cities” concept for addressing climate change accelerated urban flooding championed by the Beijing-based landscape architect Kongjian Yu, the most recent winner of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, is the inspiration for Soak It Up, a global summit about combatting climate change with landscape architecture – organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and with generous support from PlayCore. This is part of an on-going, broader program of both in-person and virtual Oberlander Prize Forums to raise the visibility of the honoree’s work and landscape architecture more broadly.

During five pre-recorded presentations  and a live, 90-minute moderated panel discussion with Q&A, Kongjian Yu and landscape architecture leaders from Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, and United States will examine landscape architecture’s leadership role in the planning and design of water infrastructure as an integral part of creating places for people and nature to exist in balance.

The Virtual Event

TCLF has created a suite of five richly produced, skillfully edited videotaped interviews with landscape architects working at the intersection of water management and design, which when taken together provide a global cross-cultural picture of climate adaptive strategies. Their shared ambitions transcend  distant geographies and distinct political, regulatory, and economic circumstances.

The five pre-recorded 40-minute presentations are organized around the following five common topics:

• The origin stories of the speakers, specifically how they found their way to landscape architecture and when they realized this profession would be their life’s work;
• How the practitioner got involved in water management issues, how their work developed over time, current water management challenges in their region, and unique geographic and cultural considerations;
• The general approach to uniting design with water management and the aspects of water management with which they’ve been involved (e.g. rivers, coastal erosion, sea level rise, etc.);
• A description of two to three specific projects that illustrate the speaker’s approach and design philosophy, and reflections on how they measure success in these projects; and,
• Closing thoughts where the practitioner addresses the import of landscape architecture in addressing contemporary environmental and social challenges and why landscape architects should lead this charge.

The five presentations, and the closing panel discussion, will require pre-registration. This is a free event and a total of 4.5-5.0 CEUs (pending) will be offered.

Register now to get access to the first three videos will going live on March 17. The remaining two videos will be released on April 15.

Finally, on May 7, there will be a live capstone event, an online 90-minute panel discussion and Q&A moderated by the Oberlander Prize Curator. The aim is to foster public conversations about this most challenging frontier in the effort to create resilient and equitable landscapes that lead with landscape architecture.