African Landscape Architectures: Alternative Futures for the Field

Registration is required for this event. Please RSVP here.

Event Description

The African Landscape Architectures conference brings together a wide range of landscape practices from across the continent. This two-day hybrid event highlights the transformative potential of decolonizing design to address social injustices and prepare African cities for the impacts of climate change. Speakers will explore innovative strategies through frameworks such as ecology, adaptation, and materiality that offer alternative futures for African landscapes.

Conference Schedule

Thursday, March 6
Harvard GSD, Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Doors open at 12:15 p.m.

Welcome
12:30 — 1:00 p.m.

Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture

Jacob K. Olupona, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, Professor of African Religious Traditions, Professor of African and African American Studies

Gary Hilderbrand (MLA ’85), Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture

Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10), Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies

Panel 1: Currencies
1:00 p.m. — 2:30 p.m.

Current state of the field, including the environmental, social, and aesthetic issues impacting African landscapes.

Moderated by Thaïsa Way, Director of Garden & Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and Lecturer in Landscape Architecture

• Johan van Papendorp (MLA ’75), OvP, Cape Town, South Africa
• Chelina Odbert (MUP ’07), Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), Nairobi, Kenya
• Arthur Adeya (MLA ’06), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

Panel 2: Materialities
3:00 p.m. — 4:30 pm

The botanical, mineral, and other material compositions and extractions of contemporary landscapes in Africa.

Moderated by Amber M. Henry,Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies

• Mounia Bennani, MB Paysage, Rabat, Morocco and President, Moroccan Landscape Architects Association
• Ann Gollifer, Earth artist, Gaborone, Botswana
• Joe Christa Giraso, MASS Design Group, Boston, USA, and Kigali, Rwanda

 

International Womxn’s Day Keynote Address
6:30 p.m. — 8:00 p.m.

Co-sponsored by the Center for African Studies and organized in coordination with Womxn in Design and Africa GSD.

Moderated by Zoe Marks, Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard Center for African Studies and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

• Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi, High Priestess, Osun Sacred Grove, Osogbo, Nigeria
• Tarna Klitzner, TKLA, Cape Town, South Africa

Reception
8:00 p.m. — 9:30 p.m.

 

Friday, March 7
Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center, Harvard University
Conference Suite, 10th Floor
1350 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

***Please note that registration is required for Day 2 of the conference, as there is a space capacity of up to 100 people. Register here.

Panel 3: Adaptabilities
9:00 a.m. — 10:30 a.m.

Case studies illustrating successful adaptation strategies across scales: the processes by which landscapes and cities adjust to changing conditions over time to maintain their viability.

Moderated by Daniel E. Agbiboa, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies

• Thabo Lenneiye, University of Pennsylvania
• Safouan Azouzi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Olatunji Adejumo, University of Lagos

Panel 4: Pedagogies
11:00 a.m. — 12:30 pm

How landscape architecture is currently taught across the African continent, and what future directions might it take.

Moderated by Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10), Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies

• Finzi Saidi, University of Johannesburg
• Sechaba Maape, University of the Witwatersrand
• Carey Duncan, Past President IFLA Africa, Rabat, Morocco

Lunchtime Painting Workshop with Ann Gollifer and Africa GSD
1:00–2:00 PM | Gund Hall. Limited space available.

Panel 5: Futurities
2:30 p.m. — 4:30 p.m.

The future of landscape architecture in the Global South.

Moderated by Bruno Carvalho (PhD ’09), Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies and co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative

• Jala Makhzoumi, Acting President, IFLA, Beirut, Lebanon
• Graham Young, President IFLA Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
• Tosin Oshinowo, Loeb Fellow 2025 and Oshinowo Studio, Lagos, Nigeria
• Jungyoon Kim (MLA ‘00), Harvard GSD and PARKKIM
• Adewale O. Owoseni, 2024-25 Postdoctoral Fellow, Mahindra Humanities Center

Wrap-up Session
4:30 p.m. — 5:00 p.m.

A reflection on the conference’s proceedings.

Research Guide

Please find a research guide for this conference through this link. A central aim of the African Landscape Architectures conference and its accompanying bibliography is to highlight the plurality of ways people shape landscapes across the African continent and demonstrate how landscape architecture can contribute to mitigating the impacts of climate change and social injustices. Africa is abundant in landscape projects and practices, yet most landscape architecture programs on the continent do not include African landscapes in their curriculums. Similarly, African landscapes are mainly absent from formal landscape architectural education in other parts of the world. This bibliography seeks to help bridge this educational gap by compiling existing literature on African landscapes and making it accessible for use in research and teaching.

Sponsors and Collaborators

The conference is co-hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of African and African American Studies with generous support from:

• The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
• The Provost’s Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration
• Center for African Studies
• Center for Middle Eastern Studies
• Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program
• Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
• The Critical Landscapes Design Lab at the Graduate School of Design
• The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), Africa Region.

 

Speakers

Olatunji “Tunji” Adejumo, Lagos, Nigeria, is a landscape architect, urban theorist, environmentalist, and professor at the University of Lagos. He has shared his forty years of practice across the globe, honoring projects that include nature conservation, ecotourism, and climate adaptation.

 

 

Arthur Adeya (MLA ’06), Nairobi, Kenya, is a landscape architect based in Nairobi, where he teaches landscape engineering at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He graduated from the Harvard GSD in 2006, where he co-founded the Kounkuey Design Initiative.

 

 

Safouan Azouzi, Cambridge, MA, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. From 2023-24, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He earned his PhD in Design from Sapienza University of Rome.

 

 

Mounia Bennani, Rabat, Morocco, is a landscape architect who graduated from the ENSP (National Graduate School of Landscape) in Versailles and holds a PhD in Geography. She founded MB Paysage, a multidisciplinary firm that works on landscape projects at all scales, and currently serves as president of the Moroccan Landscape Architects Association.

 

 

Carey Duncan, Rabat, Morocco, is a South African landscape architect living in Morocco. She owns Carey Duncan Design and has lectured at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Duncan is the immediate past president of IFLA Africa, where she was instrumental in creating the African Landscape Network (ALN) and launching the African Journal of Landscape Architecture (AJLA).

 

 

Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi, Osogbo, Nigeria, is an Orisha high priestess and the daughter of Chief Susanne Wenger. She is a key volunteer of The Adunni Olorisha Trust working to protect the Sacred Groves of Osogbo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

 

Joe Christa Giraso, Boston, MA and Kigali, Rwanda, is a landscape designer at MASS Design Group dedicated to creating thriving ecosystems that inspire and nourish communities. Her work on the Ellen Degeneres Campus of The Dian Fossey Fund and the Rwanda Institute of Conservation Agriculture inspired her to be proactive in the preservation of native green spaces and the design of functional and resilient spaces that serve current and future generations.

 

 

Ann Gollifer, Gaborone, Botswana, is a visual artist who was born in the Barima-Waini region of Guyana
and has lived and worked in Gaborone, Botswana, since 1985. Gollifer’s work is a process-based, material practice. She is represented by the Guns and Rain Gallery in Johannesburg.

 

 

Jungyoon Kim (MLA ’00), Cambridge, MA and Seoul, South Korea, Assistant Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the GSD, is the founding principal of PARKKIM, a Seoul- and Boston-based landscape architectural firm practicing beyond the conventional boundary of the profession.

 

 

Tarna Klitzner, Cape Town, South Africa, established Tarna Klitzner Landscape Architects (TKLA) in 1995 and is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. TKLA’s work includes public and private projects conceptualized with an understanding of their given natural, urban, and social environments.

 

 

Thabo Lenneiye, Philadelphia, PA, is the inaugural managing director of the Carl H. Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund at the University of Pennsylvania, where she leads research at the intersection of sustainable agriculture, climate, and energy policy. Her work focuses on building a comprehensive research agenda that explores how agriculture can address the challenges posed by climate change and the global energy transition. Lenneiye is also a senior fellow with the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School.

 

Sechaba Maape, Johannesburg, South Africa, is an architect and lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the director of the design practice Afreetekture. Dr. Maape was born in Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. He works on research projects; teaches architecture design, history, and theory; supervises master’s thesis projects; and spends a considerable amount of time visiting ritual sites all over the country.

 

Jala Makhzoumi, Beirut, Lebanon, is the acting president for IFLA Middle East. She is an adjunct professor at the American University of Beirut and a co-founder of UNIT44, a consultancy in ecological planning and landscape architecture. Jala is the 2021 laureate of the IFLA Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award for her outstanding contribution to education and practice in landscape architecture.

 

Chelina Odbert (MUP ’07), Los Angeles, CA, believes in the power of community-engaged design to advance racial, environmental, and economic equity in neighborhoods and cities. As founding principal of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), she has built an award-winning practice that brings good design to places where it is not often found, and that connects localized design interventions to large-scale policy change.

 

Tosin Oshinowo (Loeb Fellow ’25), Cambridge, MA and Lagos, Nigeria, is a 2025 Loeb Fellow at the GSD and a Lagos-based Nigerian architect and designer renowned for her expansive residential and commercial spaces and insights into socially responsive approaches to urbanism. Her current practice prioritizes issues concerning African urbanism and climate change, which she will showcase at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2025.

 

 

Adewale O. Owoseni, Cambridge, MA and Ibadan, Nigeria, a scholar in the fields of African philosophy and environmental humanities, is a 2024-25 Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center. Adewale is a faculty member of the University of Ibadan, where he also teaches courses in philosophy.

 

 

Johan van Papendorp (MLA ‘75), Cape Town, South Africa, graduated from Cape Town University and Harvard University. He is a registered architect and landscape architect with fifty years of interdisciplinary consulting experience. He co-authored studies on greening the metropole and pedestrianizing Cape Town’s city center. As co-founder of OvP Associates, he directed the design and implementation of numerous projects countrywide, receiving several industry awards of merit. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Profession in 2013.

 

Finzi Saidi, Johannesburg, South Africa, is a Zambian landscape architect who is currently the head of the department and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. He taught at the Copperbelt University in Zambia and the University of Pretoria before he served as convener of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Cape Town from 2006–08.

 

Graham Young, Pretoria, South Africa, has forty years of experience consulting and teaching landscape architecture in South Africa and across the continent. He has received many industry awards, including the Institute of Landscape Architects of South Africa (ILASA) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. Graham is currently the president of the International Federation of Landscape Architects, Africa Region (IFLA Africa) and is a past vice president of IFLA World.

 

 

Moderators

Daniel E. Agbiboa is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where he also serves as Faculty Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Affiliate Faculty of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, and Co-Chair of the Urban Conversation Series in the Mahindra Humanities Center. He is also an Executive Committee Member of the Harvard Center for African Studies (CAS) and an Advisory Board Member of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative.

 

Bruno Carvalho (PhD ’09) is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies, and co-directs the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. His most recent book, The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World, is forthcoming with Princeton University press.

 

 

Gareth Doherty (DDes ’10) is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD and an affiliate faculty of the Department of African and African American Studies. Doherty takes a human-centered approach to design that aspires to shape environmentally and socially just landscapes.

 

 

Amber M. Henry is an Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard and an Afro-Latin American Research Institute faculty affiliate. She is an anthropologist of Latin America and the Caribbean whose work explores political mobilization and embodied practices in relation to sovereign forms of Black placemaking.

 

 

Zoe Marks is the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard Center for African Studies and a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research and teaching interests focus on the intersections of conflict and political violence; race, gender, and inequality; peacebuilding; and African politics.

 

 

 

Thaïsa Way is a Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD. She is the Director of Garden & Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard University research institution located in Washington, DC. She is a scholar of landscape history, theory, and design.

 

 

Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

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