Lecture: Observation & Landscape Architecture

Alistair McIntosh

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 2013 @ 4:00 p.m.

Cook Douglass Lecture Hall - Rm 110

Observation and Landscape Architecture

Alistair McIntosh, a former design principal at Sasaki Associates, will present personal reflections on the design development of urban landscapes over the last 35 years. “These reflections explain where, in my own experience, design forms come from, how they are developed into built landscapes and why this approach to landscape design (if not necessarily the specific results) may help those starting in the profession to find their own way within the discipline.”

Biography:

Alistair McIntosh has over 35 years of experience in the practice and teaching of landscape architecture. Prior to founding his own consultancy he was a Design Principal in Sasaki Associates. He has also worked with: Burck/McIntosh; Benjamin Thompson and Associates; Hanna /Olin; Joseph Passonneau and David Skinner. His teaching and research at Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania continue to inform and challenge the ideas pursued in his practice.

Practice Philosophy:

The office of Alistair McIntosh is a landscape consultancy that specializes in the planning and design of public open spaces in cities. His planning and design thinking is guided by the idea that urban open spaces are environmentally situated stages for the conduct of contemporary public and private social life. His design practice is an enquiry into how built form can be deployed to first, environmentally situate a landscape design in a particular geographic context; second, physically calibrate the design forms to the aspirations and practices of a specific institution; and finally, address the psychological and dimensional needs of the actions of daily life. This design process makes places where concept and built landscape are inextricably linked because the act of construction turns ideas into tangible, enduring physical realities – environmental stages where life unfolds.