UVA Culture and Technology Symposium Held September 4-6

The Culture and Technology Symposium > Limits of Landscape, hosted by the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, will be held on September 4-6. It is the second in the series of six symposia on the drivers of global landscape change that comprise the Landscape Futures Initiative.

According to Elizabeth Meyer, UVA chair and associate professor of landscape architecture, “The Culture and Technology symposium will explore how the landscape serves as a cultural image that represents the structure and symbolism of its surroundings. It will also address today’s technology, including digital communication and information systems, and its role in creating a post-industrial, network society that has re-defined our culture and our landscape.”

Denis Cosgrove, a geographer and professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, is the featured speaker. Mr. Cosgrove has studied the meanings of landscape in human and cultural geography extensively, especially those that have evolved in Western Europe since the fifteenth century. He is the author of Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape and has edited the journal Ecumene for six years.

Other speakers include David Krakauer, a biologist from the Santa Fe Institute; Mark Nichols, chief operating officer of Caterpiller Trimble Control Technologies; the artist Natalie Jeremijenko; and historian and engineer Antoine Picon.

The design and planning professions will be represented by landscape architects Chris Reed, founding principal of StoSS Landscape Urbanism; Stephen Ervin, Assistant Dean for Information Technology at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Laura Solano, principal with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates; and the architects Charles Renfro and Deane Simpson of Diller + Scofidio.

The symposium faculty includes Elizabeth Meyer, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Julie Bargmann, and Assistant Professors of Landscape Architecture Nicholas De Monchaux and Caroline Westort.

Each of the symposia will result in a publication, and the final product will be a vision and a plan for the landscape architecture and planning professions in the twenty-first century.

The Hideo Sasaki Foundation, EDAW, and Landscape Forms are major sponsors for the symposium series. The symposia are also supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sponsorship opportunities are available for the Culture and Technology Symposium. For more information, contact Melinda Sippel at msippel@lafoundation.org.

Register for the symposium on-line by visiting www.arch.virginia.edu/lafconf