Landscape Architect Adam Greenspan Presents 'Maximum Minimalism' Lecture on March 2

Courtesy of PWP Landscape Architecture

The Newport Beach Civic Center Park in Newport Beach, California

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Adam Greenspan will present a lecture titled “Maximum Minimalism” at 5 p.m. on Monday, March 2, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture lecture series.

Greenspan is a design partner at PWP Landscape Architecture in Berkeley, California, and has been the lead designer on a wide range of projects including public parks, campuses, mixed-use developments, competitions and estates.

Greenspan’s background in art and sociology, combined with years of horticultural practice, supports an integrated approach to design, and allows him to develop projects from many angles. One of his main objectives at PWP has been to integrate regenerative and sustainable principles and to emphasize planting-based design concepts within each project design. He has collaborated extensively with architects, artists, community groups, and public and private owner groups, as well as sub-consultant experts, in the process of realizing exceptional built work.

Recent projects include the Newport Beach Civic Center Park in Newport Beach, California; Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.; The Transbay Transit Center Park in San Francisco; Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort in Singapore; the Jewel Project in Singapore; and Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland.

He has served on public art selection panels for the cities of San Jose and Santa Monica in California, and currently serves on the board of directors for the Landscape Architecture Foundation. He has lectured at various academic and cultural institutions including the University of California at Berkeley, the National Building Museum, and the ASLA National Conventions in 2007, 2010 and 2013. He also has served as a guest critic at University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Davis and the University of Pennsylvania.

In his lecture, Greenspan will address how form in landscape architecture can be deceptive. What seems so simple in form or materiality is often the product of complicated networks of negotiation between different stakeholders, ecological systems, economic drivers, politics, governmental policy and more. Can designed landscapes that have strength and readability address these complex relationships?

PWP Landscape Architecture is known for producing memorable landscapes guided by the concepts of minimalism, often through strong geometric compositions. The complexity, scale and cultural diversity of the firm’s projects have grown immensely over the years, which have created unique challenges and fantastic opportunities. The office is producing work that cannot be summarized by its aesthetic alone.

Greenspan will present the firm’s current projects and discuss how design visions are realized through the complex realities of their contexts. He will focus on the challenges of the work in the office today and the effort to maximize integration of life within designs that are enduring and memorable.

He also will address the firm’s success in maximizing ecological and socio-economic potential, as well as biodiversity, in international and local projects that include the Marina Bay Sands, a one-kilometer waterfront public promenade at Singapore’s first casino. He’ll also discuss the Transbay Transit Center Rooftop Park in San Francisco and Glenstone, a new museum and 250-acre art park in the suburban outskirts of Washington D.C.

The public is invited to attend this lecture. Admission is free, with limited seating. For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or architecture.uark.edu.