Gena Wirth to Present 'Toward an Urban Ecology' Lecture on Feb. 6

Ty Cole

In collaboration with the New York Restoration Project, SCAPE designed the 103rd Street Community Garden to transform open space in a historically underserved neighborhood of East Harlem.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Gena Wirth will present a lecture at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6, 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 and Design lecture series.

Wirth is design principal at SCAPE, in New York, New York. She leads the design on several significant projects in the office.

In her lecture, titled "Toward an Urban Ecology," she will discuss a range of participatory and science-based strategies through the lenses of SCAPE's practice. She will present the practice of urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban and social issues as separate domains. She advocates for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology.

With training in landscape architecture, urban planning and horticulture, Wirth draws from her interdisciplinary foundation to create ecologically rich and culturally relevant landscapes from the infrastructural scale to the site level.

Wirth holds a Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning with Distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture from the University of Delaware.

This is the Sustainability Lecture, sponsored by Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects.

This lecture qualifies for American Institute of Architects Continuing Education System learning units. Similar continuing education credits will be pursued through the American Society of Landscape Architects.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.