Cultural landscapes bear the imprint of human interaction with the physical environment, and when interrogated deeply, they reveal our evolving relationships with the natural world. How can cultural landscapes inform and shape our shared public memory?

How do our collective planning, design, education, and public engagement decisions affect how we manage change? Once a project is built, is our work done? How do we ensure faithful and imaginative stewardship during the management of change in built projects?

What about those cultural landscapes that have been forgotten, malnourished, neglected or worse, purposefully erased, whose histories and cultural lifeways are waiting to be made visible? Do we stand by while these resources lie dormant, decline further, and accept that perhaps they were the targets of a palimpsest of abuse and disregard?

Students and practitioners must prepare themselves by developing the ability to assume leadership positions to effectively prescribe change in the public realm, address historical erasure, past memorialization, and rigid/antiquated government standards that are building- and object-oriented; and in authentically engaging, empowering, and amplifying community voices.  These core values are necessary to foster trust with the goal of cultural landscapes helping us to find a communal way forward.

In addressing these challenges, what role can–and should–landscape architecture (and allied disciplines), play as collaborative participants in advocating for this legacy? This seminar will explore the depth, complexity, and entrepreneurship of practices and strategies being deployed to bring greater visibility, depth of understanding, and, ultimately, transformative change to more inclusive public landscapes and the nature of landscape architecture itself.

Speakers including senior teaching associate Angela Kyle, will represent a diversity of disciplines, sectors, and perspectives including: public education and engagement non-profit organizations; cultural resource consultants whose research-driven design positions foster viewpoint diversity; landscape architects, planners, and architects who have built counter practices into their public engagement efforts to inform form giving, design, and placemaking; tenacious community constituents who have affected/driven conversations; and urban strategists whose development approaches embrace authentic community engagement and design when promoting forgotten histories.

In totality, this seminar will examine the planning, design, and stewardship opportunities–and constraints–frequently encountered when valuing cultural landscapes in the public engagement process. This seminar will also tackle how we may develop a personal ethic when bridging the artificial and often segmented divides between design and historic preservation, as well as nature and culture, which can result in an expanded, holistic, and more nuanced site-specific planning and design strategies that can underpin, inform, and advance design engagement. Our shared mission in this work will be to make visible, instill value, and engage multiple audiences in the public arena when fostering viewpoint diversity for managing change.

Given the scale of contemporary challenges, from inclusive community engagement to climate change and biodiversity loss, the need for innovative approaches to inform planning and design decisions is greater than ever. This seminar will showcase those perspectives where counter practices have been essential to guiding change and future stewardship of the often invisible and forgotten cultural landscape legacy.