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Gerdo Aquino
Gerdo Aquino, SWA’s president and an adjunct associate professor of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Southern California, is a leading advocate for efficient and multipurpose infrastructure. As an academic and practitioner, he seeks to promote landscape infrastructure through both research and large-scale commissioned projects. Aquino directs his USC design studios’ focus on the application of landscape infrastructure to resolve pressing urban challenges related to density, environmental degradation, health, and accessibility. He encourages his students to identify existing infrastructure opportunities, consult with civic leaders, and develop rehabilitation plans that seek to achieve more integrated solutions. In his academic mentoring role, Aquino aims to provoke new thinking in the field, and empower the next generation of landscape architects to optimally shape and program future infrastructure investments. His students’ work has received national recognition for their innovative investigations into this field of study. As SWA’s president and co-managing principal of the Los Angeles office, Aquino’s multifunctional design approach to landscape infrastructure has resulted in exemplary ASLA-award-winning projects. He’s also the coauthor of an the book Landscape Infrastructure, forthcoming from Birkhäuser/Actar.
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Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA
SWA's new book, Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA, has been published by Birkhauser Press, Berlin and is in the process of being distributed around the world.
Summary:
INFRASTRUCTURE, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of our rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems. This book examines the potential of landscape as infrastructure via essays by notable authors and supporting case studies by SWA landscape architects and urban designers, among them the technologically innovative roof domes for Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Science in San Francisco, the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and several master plans for ecological corridors in China and Korea. Case studies are described extensively with technical diagrams and plans for repositioning infrastructure as a viable medium for addressing issues of ecology, transit, urbanism, performance and habitat.
About the Authors:
Gerdo Aquino
Gerdo Aquino is the new president of SWA and adjunct associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Southern California. He is a landscape architect and urban designer interested in issues of urbanism, landscape infrastructure, transit, and historic ecologies. Gerdo Aquino received his Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1996 from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida.
Ying-Yu Hung
Ying-Yu Hung is a principal of SWA Los Angeles, co-founder of the Infrastructure Research Initiative, and a Studio Professor at the University of Southern California. Her work focuses on interactions between complex urban systems, which argues that the potential of landscape can be maximized if examined within the context of infrastructure and urbanism. Hung was the recipient of multiple awards including the 2009 ASLA National Honor Award for Zobon City Sculpture Garden, and the 2008 ASLA National Honor Award for Chongming Island North Lake Region—both in Shanghai, China. Ying-Yu Hung received her Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1994 from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Charles Waldheim is the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and principal of Urban Agency, a multidisciplinary consultancy in design and contemporary urbanism. His teaching and research examine the relationships between landscape and contemporary urbanism. Waldheim coined the term “landscape urbanism” to describe the recent emergence of landscape as a medium of urban order for the contemporary city. Waldheim has authored numerous articles and chapters on the topic, and edited The Landscape Urbanism Reader (2006).
Julia Czerniak is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and the inaugural Director of UPSTATE. She is also a registered landscape architect and founder of CLEAR, an interdisciplinary design practice. Czerniak’s design work focuses on urban landscapes in the Rust-Belt cities of the United States, and it has been recognized with numerous awards. Czerniak is editor of Large Parks (2007) and Case: Downsview Park Toronto (2001), that focus on contemporary design approaches to public parks and the relationship between landscape and cities. Other writings include essays in Landscape Alchemy: The Work of Hargreaves Associates (2009); Fertilizers: Olin Eisenman (2006); Landscape Urbanism (2006); and Assemblage 34 (1998).
Adriaan Geuze, landscape architect and urban designer, is founder of West 8 urban design and landscape architecture, a team of architects, urban designers, landscape architects, and industrial designers with offices in Rotterdam, Brussels, Toronto, and New York. After winning the prestigious Prix-de-Rome, Geuze established a leading international reputation with his unique approach to planning and designing the public environment, relating contemporary culture, urban identity, architecture, public space, and environmental engineering. Geuze has authored numerous books and essays, including Mosaics (2007), Polders! (2005), Colonizing the Void (1996), In Holland stat een huis (1995), and Accelerating Darwin (1993).
Matthew Skjonsberg
Matthew Skjonsberg, architect and urban designer, is a practitioner with strong roots in design theory and research, and works closely with Adriaan Geuze. He has obtained degrees from Taliesin and ETH Zurich, and has an active career in research and education, including recent lectures at the Berlage Institute, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored a number of essays in the field of urban planning and his work has been published in various contexts, including Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research (Reto Geiser, ed. 2008), and Cities of Change: Addis Ababa (Marc Angélil, ed. 2009).
Alexander Robinson
Alexander Robinson, a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Design, is an Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Southern California and an independent practitioner. He has worked on many large-scale landscape infrastructure projects, including a two-year master plan for the Los Angeles River. As an associate in the Los Angeles office of SWA, his focus was on advancing landscape practice through expertise and frameworks fostered in his book, Living Systems: Innovative Technologies and Materials in Landscape Architecture (2007)—a hybrid theoretical and practical exploration of the new potentials of landscape architecture materiality. Recent research is devoted to urban heat-island infrastructure and is exhibited at the Shanghai World Expo and Xi’an 2011 Horticultural Exhibit.
The book is now available on Amazon here.