Conscious/Unconscious Landscapes: Lecture by Walter Hood

Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 7 - 9pm

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Hood Design Studio, The New deYoung Museum | courtesy of the firm

Hood Design Studio, The New deYoung Museum | courtesy of the firm

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Hood Design Studio, Splash Pad Park | courtesy of the firm

Hood Design Studio, Splash Pad Park | courtesy of the firm

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Architectural League of New York

Walter Hood’s firm works primarily in the urban public realm, with projects ranging from small, community-based interventions to large-scale landscape commissions. His landscapes address the complexities of urban space by particularizing and layering function, incorporating what he terms “hybrid” spatial strategies, a pragmatic multifocal approach to design that Hood described in a recent article as reflecting “collisions of differing points of view, which ‘fuse the un-fuseable.’”

Hood established his Oakland, California-based Hood Design Studio in 2003. Current and recent projects include the recently commissioned “Witness Walls,” a public art installation at the Metro Nashville Courthouse commemorating the city’s role in the Civil Rights Movement; a 1.1-megawatt photovoltaic array at the University at Buffalo; the Cooper Hewitt Garden, New York City; the Powell Street Promenade, San Francisco; the Sculpture Terrace for the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming; and Baisley Park, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson Garden, Queens. Earlier projects include the gardens and landscape of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed deYoung Museum, San Francisco, as well as Splash Pad Park and Lafayette Square Park, both in Oakland, California.

Moderated by Michael Sorkin, principal of Michael Sorkin Studio, and director of the Graduate Urban Design Studio at the City University of New York

Free to current Cooper Union students/faculty/staff and League members; non-members may purchase tickets here

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