Leading with Landscape II: The Houston Transformation – Conference plus Weekend of Free Tours and New Guidebook to Houston’s Designed Landscape Legacy

Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553  | M: 202.225.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org

Early bird registration through February 1, 2016 - 6.5 LA CES® professional development hours available.

Washington, D.C. (January 7, 2016) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today announced that the conference Leading with Landscape II: The Houston Transformation is to be held Friday, March 11, 2016 at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Brown Auditorium. Houston is the center of ambitious, internationally significant landscape architecture-led projects that skillfully interweave design, ecology, environmental concerns, and culture, and the conference will feature leaders in multiple disciplines who will present projects and provide analysis. Following the conference, What’s Out There Weekend Houston, March 12-13, will offer free, expert-led tours of approximately 30 sites, including historic parks and projects currently underway. A What's Out There Houston guidebook to the city’s designed landscape legacy will be published. Houston former Mayor Annise Parker will participate in the conference and Mayor Sylvester Turner has been invited to attend and participate. TCLF is working with, and has received support from, Lead Sponsors Bartlett Tree Experts, Design Workshop, Houston Parks Board, Uptown Houston, SWA, and Victor Stanley; Presenting Sponsors Clark Condon, Houston First, Houston Parks and Recreation Department, Maglin Site Furniture, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, Reed Hilderbrand LLC, and West 8; Supporting Sponsors Asakura Robinson Company, Environmental Design, Inc., Hermann Park Conservancy, Landscape Forms, Memorial Park Conservancy, and Suzanne Turner Associates; and Partner-in-Education, the Rice Design Alliance. 

Early bird registration rates of $225 for the conference and $75 for the reception are now available through February 1, 2016. A select number of student tickets are available for $95; 6.5 LA CES® professional development hours available.

Internationally, landscape architecture has become a leader in defining and redefining urban space—from individual projects like New York City’s High Line to large-scale city planning in places like Toronto’s waterfront. The conference will feature three consecutive moderated panel discussions. The first two panels will examine work done to date and then work in the planning phases and/or under construction, assessing the influences of culture, history, and ecology in the evolving Houston cityscape. The final panel will provide a comprehensive appraisal of the projects and issues presented and assess their implications on city-shaping. 

Confirmed participants include:

• Keiji Asakura, FASLA: Principal & Founder, Asakura Robinson;
• Kinder Baumgardner, ASLA, RLA: Managing Principal, and Scott McCready, RLA: Principal, SWA Houston;
• Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR: President + CEO, The Cultural Landscape Foundation;
• James D. Burnett, FASLA: President, and Ronald “Chip” Trageser, FASLA: Principal, The Office of James Burnett;
• Sheila Condon, PLA, FASLA, Principal/Owner, Clark Condon;
• Jane Anderson Curtis, ASLA: Director of Horticulture for the McGovern Centennial Gardens in Hermann Park;
• Stephen Fox: Architectural Historian;
• Molly Glentzer: Arts, Design, Culture. Houston Chronicle;
• Guy Hagstette, FAIA, Director of Parks and Civic Projects, Kinder Foundation;
• Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA, FAAR: President and Senior Principal, Hargreaves Associates;
• Christopher L. Knapp: CEO, Chilton Capital Management;
• Jamie Maslyn Larson, RLA, ASLA: Partner, West 8;
• Annise Parker: former mayor, City of Houston;
• Douglas Reed, FASLA, RAAR: Partner, Reed Hilderbrand;
• Michael Skelly: President, Clean Line Energy Partners;
• Steven Spears, FASLA, PLA, AICP: Partner and Principal, Design Workshop;
• Frederick Steiner, FASLA: Dean, School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin;
• Matthew Urbanski. ASLA: Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates;
• Thomas Woltz, FASLA, CLARB: Principal, Nelson Byrd Woltz

Houston’s Designed Landscape Legacy in Brief

Houston’s highly urbanized landscape, encircled and traversed by ribbons of highways, is comprised of parks, university campuses, suburbs, and public open spaces spanning the Picturesque, Beaux-Arts, and Modernist styles amidst dense residential, commercial, and industrial enclaves. The city’s first comprehensive plan was developed by Massachusetts-based landscape architect Arthur Comey in 1913. Three years later, the Houston Parks and Recreation Department was created to provide oversight for two parcels—the 20-acre Sam Houston Park, founded in 1889, and the 285-acre Hermann Park, donated to the City in 1914. A century later, the Houston Parks and Recreation Department now manages a network of parks and open spaces comprising more than 23,000 acres, including a portfolio of high-profile, recently completed projects and numerous others underway. The conference will illuminate the historical and ecological foundations of many of Houston’s public open spaces while delving into the role that these new public landscapes could play in shaping Houston’s future.

The Conference in Perspective

Over the past fifteen years, TCLF has organized numerous conferences that examine urban planning and landscape architecture. Two recent conferences, Second Wave of Modernism III: Leading with Landscape (Toronto) and Bridging the Nature-Culture Divide III: Saving Nature in a Humanized World (San Francisco), have taken multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the balance that exists between the stewardship of natural and cultural resources and the evolving identities of urban areas. Conference attendees include landscape architects and allied practitioners, urban planners and related municipal officials, stewardship advocates, educators, and other interested parties.

“Houston's exceptional parks have been made possible by great landscape architects, visionary civic leaders, generous philanthropists and ardent citizen supporters,” said Joe Turner, Director of Houston Parks and Recreation Department. “We look forward to sharing our rich legacy and planning insights with a broad national audience."

About The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), founded in 1998, is a non-profit foundation that provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture, its practitioners, and our shared landscape legacy in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its website, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide. TCLF makes a special effort to heighten the awareness of those who impact cultural landscapes, assist groups and organizations working to increase the appreciation and recognition of cultural landscapes, and develop educational tools for young people to better connect them to their cultural landscape environs. 

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