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Fall lecture series focuses on how to adapt cities to too much water — or not enough

Aug 30, 2023
Poster for CED's fall lecture series "Living With — And Without — Water"

The College of Environmental Design’s fall lecture series features national and international scholars and practitioners speaking on a range of topics. Of the dozen presentations, five put a spotlight on resilience in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and drought. All events take place in Bauer Wurster Hall and are free and open to the public; see below for the complete schedule.

Living With — and Without — Water 

Five presentations, collected under the title Living With — and Without — Water,  consider ways to transform our built environment to survive a changing climate. Invited speakers investigate the theme of water and the built environment from multiple perspectives. All lectures take place on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. in 112 Bauer Wurster Hall.

“As our climate changes, our cities and infrastructure are faced with having too much and/or too little water,” says William W. Wurster Dean Renee Y. Chow. “We must find new models to protect our communities by addressing water shortages and drought as well as sea level rise and flooding. This is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our times.”

The series kicks off on September 6 with a lecture by David Sedlak, Plato Malozemoff Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Water Center. He is the author of Water 4.0: The Past, Present and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource. 

On October 4, the college brings together professors from each of its four academic departments for a series of short “CEDTalks,” followed by a discussion moderated by Dean Chow. Speakers include Charisma Acey (City & Regional Planning), Danika Cooper (Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning), Maria Paz Gutierrez (Architecture), and Kristina Hill (Institute of Urban & Regional Development). This event provides an opportunity to hear how researchers from across the college are addressing issues of water shortage or abundance.

Other speakers in Living With — and Without — Water include environmental artist Lauren Bon whose current project, Bending the River, is an adaptive reuse of the infrastructure of the Los Angeles River; architect Matt Noblett, FAIA, partner in the Boston office of Behnisch Architekten, who directed the firm’s work on the LFI-certified and LEED Platinum Harvard University Science & Engineering Complex; and Kessie Alexandre, assistant professor of geography at the University of Washington, Seattle, who is investigating the ethnography of urban water insecurity and Black environmental struggles.

Other Lectures 

The Department of Architecture is sponsoring three lectures this fall. Emanuel Admassu, who is on the faculty of Columbia GSAPP and is a founding partner of New York City–based art and architecture practice AD—WO, presents the talk Black Spatial Intonation on September 13. Two professors from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ramón Gámez and Nicolás Maruri, who are in residence at CED this fall, give a presentation entitled Urban First on October 18. Clark Thenhaus, who has been appointed as this semester’s Esherick Endowed Professor, is principal of the architecture studio Endemic Architecture in Alameda and an associate professor at California College of the Arts. His lecture, Darlings & Other Building Parts, takes place on November 15. 

The Environmental Design Archives sponsors a lecture on November 2 by Cathy Simon, FAIA, a founder of the woman-owned architecture firm SMWM that was established in San Francisco in 1985. Simon’s lecture is in conjunction with an exhibition in the Environmental Design Library on SMWM’s work that celebrates the acquisition of the firm’s archives by the college. 

The Department of City & Regional Planning hosts three speakers this fall in its Thursday afternoon series. On September 14, University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus John D. Landis presents his new book, Megaprojects for Megacities: A Comparative Casebook. On November 9, the department welcomes J. T. Roane, assistant professor of Africana studies and geography and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, where he is the co-coordinator of the Black Ecologies Lab; Roane is also the author of Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place. The final speaker of the semester is Stanford’s Destin Jenkins, a historian of capitalism and democracy in post-Reconstruction America and author of The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City. 

Living With — and Without — Water

Wednesdays at 6:30 PM, 112 Bauer Wurster Hall

Sep 6
David Sedlak | Civil & Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
Premise-Scale Water Systems: A New Tool for Adapting Cities to a Changing Climate
Catherine Bauer Wurster Lecture
 
Sep 20
Lauren Bon | Metabolic Studio, Los Angeles
Un-Development: Unsealing the Earth and Letting Her Breathe

Sep 27
Matt Noblett, FAIA | Behnisch Architekten, Boston
Two by Two: Noah Is the New Vitruvius
Catherine Bauer Wurster Lecture
 
Oct 4
CEDTalks | Constructed Water: Above and Below 
Charisma Acey | City & Regional Planning  
Danika Cooper | Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning  
Maria Paz Gutierrez | Architecture
Kristina Hill | Institute of Urban & Regional Development 
Moderated by Dean Renee Y. Chow

Oct 25
Kessie Alexandre | University of Washington
Diasporic Memory and Black Environmental Belonging 

Other Lectures

Times and locations vary

Wed, Sep 13, 6:30, 112 Bauer Wurster Hall
Emanuel Admassu | AD-WO & Columbia GSAPP
Black Spatial Intonation
Sponsored by the Department of Architecture

Thu, Sep 14, 3:30, 106 Bauer Wurster Hall
John D. Landis | University of Pennsylvania
Why Megaprojects Succeed (and Fail): Lessons from Around the World
Sponsored by the Department of City & Regional Planning

Wed, Oct 18, 6:30, 112 Bauer Wurster Hall
Ramón Gámez + Nicolás Maruri | ETSAM, Madrid 
Urban First
Sponsored by the Department of Architecture

Thu, Nov 2, 6:30, 112 Bauer Wurster Hall
Cathy Simon, FAIA | Founder SMWM
Occupation: Boundary — Art, Architecture, and Culture at the Water
Sponsored by the Environmental Design Archives

Thu, Nov 9, 3:30, 106 Bauer Wurster Hall
J. T. Roane | Rutgers University
The Practical Prophet: On June Jordan’s Intellectual Thought and Political Vision
Sponsored by the Department of City & Regional Planning

Wed, Nov 15, 6:30, 112 Bauer Wurster Hall
Clark Thenhaus, Esherick Visiting Professor | CCA & Endemic Architecture, Alameda
Darlings & Other Building Parts
Sponsored by the Department of Architecture

Thu, Nov 30, 3:30, 106 Bauer Wurster Hall
Destin Jenkins | Stanford University
Sponsored by the Department of City & Regional Planning

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