Stuckeman School to host landscape architecture and urban design firm for series

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Walter Meyer, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based Local Office Landscape and Urban Design (LOLA), will join the Stuckeman School at 6 p.m. on March 17 as part of the school’s Virtual Lecture Series.

In “The Ambient Medium: Landscape Thought for Climate Justice,” Meyer will explore using landscape thinking to identify and address disturbance. Design topics will include atmospheric disturbances such as climate volatility, rain bombs and sea-level rise, as well as ethnospheric disturbances such as recessions, pandemics and injustice.

At a time when climate-resilience projects are being planned and constructed, Meyer’s built works at the scale of the neighborhood, city and bioregion are some examples that have withstood the planet’s most severe forces. The performance metrics from his built projects have shaped local and national policy.

In 2013, Meyer was recognized by the White House as a “Champion of Change” for his work using alternate energy as a means of immediate relief and an engine for long-term economic recovery after Superstorm Sandy. He served as an adviser to then-President Barack Obama’s team until 2016.

As a firm, LOLA has garnered accolades from across the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, public policy, science and art. Its redesign for the Miracle Mile district in Miami to protect small businesses from flooding was documented by The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Meyer’s landscape-led, city-making approach is currently being implemented in state resiliency plans for New Jersey and Mississippi, and he is designing New York City’s first climate-proof, fossil-fuel-free neighborhood, named Arverne East, in Rockaway Beach.

Meyer is also the executive director of Coastal Marine Resource Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the New York — New Jersey Harbor Bight, and he currently teaches at the Parsons School of Design.

Meyer earned his master of landscape architecture in urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of landscape architecture from the University of Florida.

Hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture as a Bracken Lecture, the event is free and open to the public. It is being held in partnership with the Stuckeman School and WPSU. Pre-registration is required via this link.