BRIAN DAVIS: More Massive and More Subtle



Summer Design Institute Lecture Series 2020

In this talk, Brian Davis discussed time and pluralism as fundamental concepts in temperamental landscapes that must solve problems and express cultural values. He presented recent research and practice where technical and theoretical innovations produce simple, sophisticated landscapes that engage the most basic materials and forms, and he situated this work as part of a history of landscape-making in the Americas that stretches back thousands of years. To engage large scale, dynamic landscapes in an authentic way landscape architecture must become both more technically sophisticated and fundamentally grounded in aesthetics original to the medium of landscape and related to the culture. This talk introduced a throughline of practitioners and cultures that have historically worked this way, and will try to point to new models of practice, new concepts, and new tools for how landscape architecture might continue this work in the coming decades.

Brian Davis is an Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. He was a 2019 Rome Prize recipient in Landscape Architecture and prior to joining UVA, an Assistant Professor at Cornell University. He has practiced landscape architecture in Buenos Aires and New York City and is a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative. His work focuses on ports, rivers, and cities, and especially their formal interrelations through time. This interest in landscape form is anchored by the realization that it can be both indicative of past processes and values as well as future performance. In his work landscape is understood as both a foundation for and an active part of democratic society. His work is also driven by the contemporary interest in design itself as a form of inquiry, a way to make desirable futures real, rather than as mere problem-solving or the application of principles or knowledge generated by other means.

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