Anita Berrizbeitia, "On the Limits of Process: The Case for Precision in Landscape"

It has been almost four decades since the idea of process erupted into the field of landscape architecture as a primary driver of design. Initially associated with hermeneutics—a poetics inherent to the medium of landscape and a conceptual framework to bridge the divide between ecology and design—the idea of process today remains largely unquestioned, applied uncritically regardless of social and political conditions. Anita Berrizbeitia MLA '87, professor of landscape architecture and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, will explore the limits of process and will argue for the need to define the term differently today in order to address the conditions of diverse contexts of urbanization. With a response by Michel Desvigne, Peter Louis Hornbeck Design Critic in Landscape Architecture.

Anita Berrizbeitia is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. She was awarded the 2005/2006 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she studied architecture at the Universidad Simon Bolivar before receiving a BA from Wellesley College and an MLA from the GSD.

Berrizbeitia has taught design theory and studio, previously at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Her studios investigate innovative approaches to the conceptualization of public space, especially on sites where urbanism, globalization, and local cultural conditions intersect. She also leads seminars that focus on significant transformations in landscape discourse over the last three decades. From 1987 to 1993, she practiced with Child Associates, Inc., in Boston, where she collaborated on many award-winning projects.

Berrizbeitia is co-author, with Linda Pollak, of Inside/Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape (Rockport, 1999), which won an ASLA Merit Award; author of Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas: Parque del Este, 1956-1961 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), awarded the J.B. Jackson Book Prize in 2007 from the Foundation for Landscape Studies; and editor of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes (Yale University Press, 2009), which received an ASLA Honor Award. Her essays have been published in Daniel Urban Kiley: The Early Gardens (Princeton Architectural Press), Recovering Landscape (Princeton Architectural Press), Roberto Burle Marx: Landscapes Reflected (Princeton Architectural Press), CASE: Downsview Park Toronto (Prestel), Large Parks (Princeton Architectural Press), Retorno al Paisaje (Evren), and Hargreaves Associates: Landscape Alchemy (ORO Publishers), as well as in magazines such as A+U.

Michel Desvigne, Peter Louis Hornbeck Design Critic in Landscape Architecture, is a landscape architect internationally renowned for his rigorous and contemporary designs and for the originality and relevance of his research work. His projects, developed in more than twelve different countries, are regularly published in the international press. He works with leading architects including Herzog and de Meuron, Foster+Partners, Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Christian de Portzamparc, I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers. He was awarded the French national Urbanism Grand Prize in 2011. Desvigne’s most renowned urban public spaces include Draï Eechelen Park (Luxemburg), Sammons Park in Dallas (US), the Saint Louis Art Museum (US), the New Qatar National Museum in Doha, Burgos Boulevard (Spain), Lyon Confluence 2 and Ile Seguin prefiguration garden (France). Recently Michel Desvigne has been awarded the leading role in the planning and implementation of the Paris-Saclay cluster (7700 ha), the landscape and urban plan for the development of Euralens (1200 ha), as well as the redevelopment of the old port of Marseille, awarded “prix de l’aménagement urbain” in 2013.