The 2-day summit consists of keynote presentations, lightning talks, workshops, and panel discussions. An optional third day includes field sessions.
The summit brings together established and emerging voices to demonstrate taking innovative ideas to action to shift paradigms and address climate change, biodiversity, and equity through initiatives big and small. A detailed schedule will be posted here once it is available.
All summit sessions take place at the Detroit Masonic Temple. Attendees can earn up to 14.75 PDH (LA CES/HSW).
Thursday, June 4
Summit Day 1: Lightning Talks - Clear Challenges, Real Possibilities
9:00am - 6:20pm
Detroit Masonic Temple
500 Temple St, Detroit, MI 48201
The first day includes keynote presentations and a series of 10-minute lightning talks, curated to energize and inspire. The full day's schedule, including keynote speakers, will be released soon.
8:00am Registration Opens ~Welcome to the work ahead!~
9:00am Welcome and Opening Remarks - Barbara Deutsch
9:10am Keynote: Why Detroit? Why Now? - Alexa Bush
9:33am Lightning Talks: Up Your Game
- Designing Biocultural Futures: Cultivating Youth Storytelling and TEK in Landscape - Jade Rhodes
- Ethically Sourcing: Investigating Landscape Architects’ Responsibility to Specify Forced Labor Free Materials - Jeb Polstein
- Revealing Care and Neglect in Legacy Cities through AI - Jianxing Guan
- Little Things That Run The World: Designing Insect Biodiversity - Gena Wirth
10:24am Lightning Talks: Design with Purpose
- Designing in Kinship - Christina Contreras
- PrideScapes: Documenting, Preserving, and Uplifting Queer Landscapes - Max Dickson
- Including Animals: Co-creating with Our More-Than-Human Neighbors - Roxi Thoren
- Designing a Mega-eco Project: An Example from Dakar, Senegal - Robert Levinthal
11:15am Coffee/Tea Break ~Find and connect with your people~
11:35am Lightning Talks: Prove It
- Equitable Outcomes in Detroit's Underserved Urban Landscapes - Charles Cross
- Why Levees Won’t Keep Rising Seas from Flooding Coastal Cities - Kristina Hill
- Influence, Economics, and the Necessity of Advocacy - Jonathon Geels
12:14pm Lightning Talks: Walk the Talk
- Unlike Any Other Place: A Call for Regionally Specific Practice - Nina Chase
- From Gen X to Gen Z: An Appeal for Public Service - Matt Arnn
- Landscape Architecture in the Rural Industrial Environment - Carl Rogers, Heidi Hohmann, Hans Klein-Hewett
- Reading the Low-Carbon Landscape - Jonah Susskind
1:10pm Lunch ~Collective sense-making, no small talk required~
2:10pm Lightning Talks: Partner, Partner, Partner
- Miyawaki in Detroit: Community Forestry and Climate Resilience - Fai Foen
- Inspiring the Next Generation of Federal Conservation and Recreation Grants - David Goldstein
- Landscape Architects Need to Be Thinking about One Health - Leann Andrews
2:49pm Lightning Talks: Future Proof
- Landscape as Refuge: Care, Comfort, or Exclusion? - Fiwasewa Ogundipe
- Coastal Legacy: The Case for Graceful Retreat - Sarai Carter
- Plants as Inventors - Catherine Seavitt
- From the Mountaintop: Inventing Futures towards Actionable Goals - Marc Miller
3:40pm Lightning Talks: Use Your Voice
- Design Isn't Neutral: AI Infrastructure and the Landscapes We Choose - Kendra Hyson
- Art as Preview: Installations for Hopeful Adaptation - Carolina Aragón
- Cinematic Tools for Climate-Literate Landscapes - Evan Mather
- Civic Empathy and Landscape of Care - Taewook Cha
4:35pm Coffee/Tea Break ~Sparks to build on~
4:55pm Lightning Talks: Imagine
- Sensorium: In Pursuit of Wonder through Embodied Design - Nate Cormier
- Towards a Living Landscape - Aaron Hernandez
- A Call to Reflection: What if We Practice as Relatives? - Aiman Duckworth
5:50pm Keynote: Now What? - Lucinda Sanders
6:20pm Day 1 Closing Remarks ~Where change feels possible~
6:25pm Summit Day 1 Ends ~Reflect and celebrate~
LAF’s 60th Anniversary Party
7:30pm - 10:30pm
The Eastern
3434 Russell St, Suite 501, Detroit, MI 48207
Celebrate with us as we mark 60 years since LAF's founding in 1966. A separate ticket is required, and bundled pricing is available. Learn more
Friday, June 5
Summit Day 2: Workshops and Panels - Tools for Turbulent Times
9:00am - 6:20pm
Detroit Masonic Temple
500 Temple St, Detroit, MI 48201
The second day consists of panels and workshops for attendees to learn skills and models for taking innovative ideas to action. There are two 1.5-hour workshops sessions with 24 workshop offerings to choose from. Attendees must attend both workshop sessions to earn the full 14.75 PDH (LA CES/HSW) for the summit. Note that 5 of the 24 workshops are LA CES approved but do not qualify for health, safety, and welfare (HSW) credit.
8:30am Doors Open ~Continuing the momentum~
9:00am Day 2 Opening Remarks ~Building collective capacity~
9:10am Keynote: Seeding Civic Futures - Cézanne Charles
9:45am Panel: Reimagining Practice - Michael Grove, Jenny Jones, Elizabeth Kennedy, Gloria Lau, Roberto Rovira, Moderator: CL Bohannon
10:40am Coffee/Tea Break ~Regroup and reimagine~
11:00am Workshop Session 1 - Summit registrations can sign up to attend one of the following workshops:
- Bodies in Space (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Co-building a Design Activism Toolkit (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Currents of Change: Imagining Adaptive Climate Futures (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Designing for Healing: Trauma-Informed Community Engagement (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Designing for Time: Bridging Ecological Design and Long-Term Landscape Management (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Emerging Voices: 10-Years Ago, 10-Years Ahead (1.5 LA CES)
- Making Chicano Public Landscapes (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Shade for All: Design for Equity in the Urban Heat Era (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Speak with Presence: Turning Big Ideas into Action (1.5 LA CES)
- The Site Question: Architecture, Landscape, and Partnership (1.5 LA CES)
- Water Signals: Storytelling as a Climate Resilience Tool (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Work in Progress: Design and Labor (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
12:30pm Lunch ~Widen your circle~
1:30pm Workshop Session 2 - Summit registrations can sign up to attend one of the following workshops:
- Actualizing Just Transitions through Transdisciplinary Design and Participatory Scenario Planning (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Adapt to Coastal Groundwater Rise in Cities with Equity (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Coalition Building Through Design (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Landscape Architecture as Climate Translator (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Leveraging the Power of Food Systems, Food Cultures, and Activism (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Life in the Time of ICE: Take Action (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Mountaintops to Mountain Ranges: Creating Futures and Community (1.5 LA CES)
- Rigor, Trust, and Time: 30 Years of Sustained Community Engagement in Detroit (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Soil Literacy in Practice: From Diagnostics to Digital Workflows (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- Time to Act: Draft Your Action Plan Now (1.5 LA CES)
- Transforming Underutilized Parkland into Native Meadow through Cross-sector Partnerships (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
- What is the Landscape Architect's Role in One Health? (1.5 LA CES/HSW)
3:00pm Coffee/Tea Break ~Compare notes and plot next steps~
3:30pm Keynote: A Just Horizon - The Opportunity and Responsibility of Design in This Moment and Beyond - Chelina Odbert
4:10pm Panel: Working Inside and Outside the System - Maci Nelson, Laura Solano, Courtney Spearman, Ernie Wong, Moderator: Diana Fernandez Bibeau
5:05pm Keynote: Are you down? Solidarity in Design - Ujijji Davis Williams and Matt Williams
5:40pm Panel: The Future - Sarah AbuDakar, Issam Assam, Derrick Bradley, Dushawn John, Anne Tong, Moderators: Nina Chase, Azzurra Cox
6:10pm Closing Remarks ~Commitments not conclusions~
6:20pm Summit Ends ~Carrying it forward~
Saturday, June 6
This optional third day includes local field sessions to illustrate the ideas, innovation, and actions presented during the first two days. These optional tours will be announced in April and available for purchase as an add-on to summit registrations.
Continuing Education Credits
The two-day summit is approved for 14.75 Professional Development Hours (PDH) through the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) and meets the health, safety, and welfare requirements (HSW). Attendees can earn 14.75 PDH (LA CES/HSW) by attending the summit and both included workshop sessions (11.75 LA CES/HSW if not participating in either workshop session.)
Learning Objectives
- Identify more than 30 concepts, tactics, and models for landscape architects to take action to address climate change, biodiversity loss, rapid urbanization, and social inequity.
- Name examples of how landscape architects are demonstrating measurable environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts to influence decision-making, policy, and investment.
- Examine leadership, collaboration, and advocacy strategies that expand the role of landscape architects in shaping interdisciplinary projects and initiatives and influencing systems-level change.
- Reflect on the past and future of the landscape architecture discipline including how values-driven practice can increase the broader impact of landscape architecture on health, safety, and welfare.
