Meg Calkins, an associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Ball State University, will give a talk titled “Sustainable in a Material World” at 6 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Palmer Lipcon Auditorium in the Penn State Palmer Museum of Art, on the University Park campus. A reception will follow.
Calkins is author of "Materials for Sustainable Sites" (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) and the editor of "The Sustainable Sites Handbook" (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
Her talk will focus on “transformative change, both incremental and radical,” to the landscape construction materials industry, she said.
“Impacts from the harvest, production, use and disposal of site construction materials are the hidden cost of our built environment as many of these impacts occur far from the project site,” Calkins said. “And even sustainably performing landscapes are often constructed from materials that harm other environments. This lecture will address these impacts and highlight possible shifts, both subtle and radical, to transform the site construction materials industry.”
Calkins is a frequent contributing editor to Landscape Architecture magazine. She is a co-founder of The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) and member of the Technical Working Group. She holds master’s degrees in both Landscape Architecture and Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley.
“Sustainable in a Material World” is part of the Penn State Department of Landscape Architecture John R. Bracken Lecture Series. Each year the Department of Landscape Architecture sponsors the lecture series and honors a distinguished individual as the John R. Bracken Fellow. Dr. Bracken was a key part of the department’s rich history -- he was among the first to graduate from Penn State with an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture and he served as department head from 1924 to 1957. Bracken continued to serve the department as an active professor emeritus until his death in 1979. The lecture series, which began in the spring of 1982, was made possible by a generous endowment from Bracken's estate. These lectures, and the association with noted professionals through seminars and intimate discussions, have enriched the lives of our students.
Penn State’s H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture is a leader in professional design education comprised of an interdisciplinary confederation of strong design disciplines: Architecture, Design, and Landscape Architecture.