In years past the climate debate has centered on two basic questions: is the change real, and are human beings partially if not entirely responsible for it? Today these questions have been largely left behind, supplanted by the rhetoric of mitigation and proposals intending to avert catastrophe, such as Drawdown and the Green New Deal. In other words, reality has set in.
And yet it is not at all certain that even immediate action to curtail reduce carbon emissions will pre-vent massive climate-driven disruption, at least in what remains of this century. If so, what then is the adaptive path forward? And what role does the design profession play in shaping cities and landscapes undergoing drastic and inevitable climate-driven transformation? The talk will focus on climate adaptation as a localized design imperative. Case studies in Manhattan, The Meadowlands, Miami Beach, and the San Francisco Bay Area will be shared to illustrate how communities are learning to live with climate change, by design.
Based in Arlington, Virginia, Ignacio Bunster-Ossa leads AECOM’s national practice in landscape architecture. He is recognized professionally for award-winning work spanning regional open space, communities, parks, plazas, waterfronts and streetscapes. Noted projects include the Anacostia Waterfront initiative, Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., and the SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus in Bethlehem PA – which received the Brunner Award and the ULI Global Award of Excellence.
He is co-author of Green Infrastructure: a Landscape Approach, and Reconsidering Ian McHarg: the Future of Urban Ecology, published by Planners Press. Ignacio is a Fellow of American Society of Landscape Architects, and a board member of the Landscape Architecture Foundation, where he chairs the Task Force on Climate Change. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami (FL), a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Loeb Fellowship in Environmental Studies from Harvard University. Prior to joining AECOM in 2015 Ignacio was a Principal at Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC.
ALFIE is an out-of-this-world Sci-fi tale that explores the future of humanity
What if after years of extensive exploration of the Milky Way, we find out that the Earth is the only planet able to support life?
Get immersed into bi-polar worlds: one for people, supported by hyper-advanced technology, and another strictly for wildlife; In ALFIE these worlds collide in the only way they can: over the elemental need to sustain life, drawing out vice and virtue in equal measures.
