Monday, March 7 at 6pm, Zoom.
Please note: this event is live only and will not be recorded.
Frederick Law Olmsted is best known as America’s most influential public park designer. He and his firm developed parks for countless cities across the continent, from NYC's Central Park to Portland's earliest park system. But to landscape designer Sara Zewde, Olmsted helped shape democracy through his parks, and that began with his travels through, and writing on, the southern Cotton Kingdom. His widely read journalism and books helped galvanize the northern states against slavery before the Civil War.
Historians typically portray Olmsted’s journalism and landscape design as distinct chapters of his career. But to Zewde, landscape architect and professor of landscape design at Harvard University, Olmsted was simply working at “different scales” in a larger project of American social reform. His thinking, she says, encompassed everything from the “national state of democracy to what that means for a path in the park.” In the summer of 2019, Zewde retraced Olmsted’s steps to understand how his travels and observations led to the formation of landscape architecture as we know it today. She will share her research and how she applies Olmsted’s principles in her own award-winning park designs.
During the Q&A Sara Zewde recommended these three books.
The Park and the People: A History of Central Park by Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig
River of Dark Dreams by Walter Johnson
Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy Transforming Nature in Early New England by Strother E. Roberts
And special thanks to our presenting sponsor U.S. Bank, to GreenWorks, and all the attendees who donated at registration!
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