Landscape Architecture Student Exhibition, Professor Talk Held Oct. 30 on Downtown Square

Rendering courtesy of Rylee Lorts

A rendering by Rylee Lorts, a landscape architecture student in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

Design work by several landscape architecture students in Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will be displayed in a public exhibition Saturday, Oct. 30, on the Town Center Plaza on the downtown Fayetteville square.

The exhibition, "A Hortus Botanicus for Green Recovery," will be on display from 9 a.m. to noon during the Fayetteville Farmers Market. In case of inclement weather, the entire exhibition will take place in the Pryor Center building atrium at 1 E. Center St.

At 2 p.m. Oct. 30, Carl Smith, professor of landscape architecture, will present the lecture "A Hortus Botanicus for Green Recovery" at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The lecture is part of the Pryor Center Presents 2021-22 lecture series and is co-sponsored by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Following Smith's lecture, students will be available to speak with guests about their design work in the Pryor Center atrium.  

Smith's lecture is free, and seating is limited. Attendees must be fully vaccinated and masked.

The students' work was done during their spring 2021 studio, Green New Deal Superstudio, which Smith led. This studio was the group's contribution to the nationwide Green New Deal Superstudio organized by a consortium of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes (at Columbia University) and the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology (at the University of Pennsylvania).

The Green New Deal Superstudio encourages landscape architecture students both in the United States and overseas, as well as collaborating practitioners and stakeholders, to speculate on the tangible manifestation of the Green New Deal and its formulation of an economic stimulus and mobilization framework for decarbonization and social equity.

In Smith's studio, students re-framed the meaning of a botanical garden for the 21st century. Working with the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, they identified some key design dilemmas and possibilities, specified issues to be resolved for the ongoing success of the garden and speculated on future trajectories.

In short, the project built upon the typological themes of harvest, reflection, education and joy established by the Hortus Botanicus of the 16th century, and it speculated on how this could be reframed for the 21st century. The project's title, "Hortus Botanicus," can refer both to a historic botanical garden in the Netherlands and to a general type of landscape.

Specifically, the studio looked at the place-making potential of ecological rehabilitation, as well as the potential of renewable energy as land art. The studio's collaborators were drawn from the fields of Ozark ecology, civil engineering and stream restoration, architecture and land art, and GIS and spatial data analysis.

"While the United States' post-COVID recovery and build-back-better strategy will largely be concerned with resilient and sustainable urbanism, especially in vulnerable coastal locations, there is another critical dimension to be considered," Smith said. "The future of the American South and Midwest, their cities, towns, cultural places and rural landscapes could all look very different through the lens of equity and decarbonization. Take, for example, botanical gardens and arboreta and the role that might play in inculcating ecological sensibilities and conservation practices in populous locations. What might that look like? How can aesthetic joy and harvesting — long associated with public gardens and botanical centers — be reframed around ideas of habitat and renewable energy?"

The exhibition will feature work by three second-year undergraduate students, Cada Fischer, Hagen Rushing and Jessica Shearman, who completed their work for inclusion for the Green New Deal Superstudio submission at the end of June. For the exhibition, these students will be joined by three additional classmates, Landyn Green, Charles Goodgame and Rylee Lorts, who completed their work later. The students' work will remain on display in the Pryor Center through 5 p.m. Nov. 5.

Smith is a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute in the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has wide, international experience in the practice, teaching and research of landscape and urban design. In addition to his position at the U of A, Smith holds the title of Visiting Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom (2020-2024).