Future Now: Webcast/Discussion Series
Missed LAF’s Future Now summit—or want to experience it again? This two-part webinar series gives a sampling of the energy and insights.
Rooted in the summit’s spirit of collective leadership and collaboration, each webinar featured a broadcast of 3-4 compelling lightning talks from the summit, followed by a live interactive discussion and audience Q&A with the presenters. It was a unique opportunity to engage in critical conversations about how to show up in this moment.
Held June 4-6 in Detroit, LAF’s Future Now: Taking Action for People + Planet by Design summit brought together the landscape architecture community to share ideas and tools, scale actions, and deepen our resolve to shape the future we want to see despite the mounting challenges.
You can access each webinar recording and continuing education information below:
- Walk the Talk - 1.0 PDH (LA CES / HSW)
- Use Your Voice - 1.25 PDH (LA CES / HSW)
Webinar Sponsor
Walk the Talk
“It is at the regional scale, rooted in places that we know deeply, the places we call home, that landscape architects, I believe, we can have our most tangible and lasting impact.”
"AI data centers are the newest rural colonizers… Rural residents are organizing against these projects, but they often fight alone because we have trained our profession to follow prestige and wealth rather than address the unglamorous yet desperate hinterlands."
“What comes next will not be dictated by carbon alone, but how the discipline chooses to interpret its implications. The next aesthetic chapter of landscape architecture is already underway, but its shape is still very much up for design.”
Webinar 1: Walk the Talk
Commitments to climate, equity, and biodiversity are becoming embedded in how firms operate, from internal culture to material specifications to long-term maintenance strategies. This work is not theoretical. It’s physical, spatial, and increasingly operational. Hear three presentations that put these ideas into practice and challenge others to do the same:
- Unlike Any Other Place: A Call for Regionally Specific Practice - Nina Chase
- Landscape Architecture in the Rural Industrial Environment - Carl Rogers, Heidi Hohmann, Hans Klein-Hewett
- Reading the Low-Carbon Landscape - Jonah Susskind
Learning Objectives
- Explain the importance of regionally specific landscape architecture that focuses on regional identity, local collaboration, and design solutions rooted in place, culture, and ecology.
- Understand the need for landscape architects to re-engage rural America and apply design strategies that address its environmental, social, and infrastructural challenges.
- Understand how decarbonization is shaping emerging design strategies and aesthetics in landscape architecture, and why public perceptions of sustainable landscapes must evolve.
Continuing Education Credits
This course is approved for 1.0 Professional Development Hour (PDH) through the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) and meets the health, safety and welfare requirements (HSW). To earn 1.0 PDH (LA CES/HSW):
- View the full webinar above.
- Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
- Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.
By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.
Presenters
Nina Chase
Founding Principal, Merritt Chase
Born and raised in West Virginia, Nina is committed to creating public spaces across Middle America. She leads Merritt Chase’s urban work and is dedicated to the design community through teaching, writing, and advocacy. More
Carl Rogers, Heidi Hohmann, Hans Klein-Hewett
Associate Professors, Iowa State University
Representing two generations of practitioners, Carl, Heidi, and Hans live, practice, and teach in the rural Midwestern landscape. More
Jonah Susskind
Director of Climate Strategy, SWA Group
Jonah works to drive innovative climate action across SWA’s global portfolio, ensuring climate-positive strategies are embedded into every facet of the firm’s operations and design processes. More
Use Your Voice
“Every choice about where something goes, who bears the cost, and who receives the benefits is an expression of values disguised as a technical necessity.”
“How do we bring beauty and honesty in the way that we communicate with the public? And public art is a free billboard to do this.”
“So we have to be more than designers. We have to be storytellers, interpreters, and advocates. It's not enough to design climate solutions. We have to make people see them, understand them, and feel them.”
“To me, the future firmly lies in our ability not to forget our focus on empathy and care for people in the landscape we create. And more so than ever right now.”
Webinar 2: Use Your Voice
Good ideas don’t move forward on their own. From storytelling and filmmaking to public speaking and political coalition building, practitioners are expanding their tools to communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively in the rooms where decisions are made. Hear four presentations that demonstrate this work in action and challenge others to do the same:
- 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
Learning Objectives
- Understand how infrastructure decisions, including the siting of data centers, are repeating historical patterns of inequity, and why design must push for more equitable and community-driven outcomes.
- Examine how public art can translate complex climate data into engaging visual and emotional experiences that build public awareness and support for adaptation.
- Explore how applying cinematic principles to landscape architecture can make climate change more visible and experiential through movement, sequence, and time.
- Consider how centering empathy and care can reshape landscape architecture to better support everyday human experiences and community needs.
Continuing Education Credits
This course is approved for 1.25 Professional Development Hour (PDH) through the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) and meets the health, safety and welfare requirements (HSW). To earn 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW):
- View the full webinar above.
- Complete the short quiz by following the link below. (You must score 75% or higher.)
- Wait ~2 weeks to receive your confirmation email once the quizzes are graded and results submitted to LA CES.
By completing this quiz, you are also signing up to receive newsletters and program announcements from LAF. You can edit your subscription preferences or unsubscribe at any time.
Presenters
Kendra Hyson
Associate Urban Planner and Landscape Architect, SmithGroup
Kendra has over a decade of experience working at the intersection of design justice, cultural memory, and ecological infrastructure. More
Carolina Aragón
Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Carolina's creative scholarship blends artistry and transdisciplinary practices that bring together research, craft, and community engagement to improve knowledge and action around climate change and environmental justice. More
Evan Mather
Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture, MIG
Evan's practice merges ecological design with narrative storytelling, using cinema to illuminate temporal processes and cultural memory in landscape projects. More
Taewook Cha
Founder and Principal, Supermass Studio
Taewook's work bridges design intelligence and civic empathy. He has shaped Supermass Studio around three core principles of unorthodox creativity, opportunistic diversity, and socio-ecological responsibility. More
