Since taking the helm of Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture, Dean Wiel Arets has managed to deliver many of the world’s top architects and designers to lecture at Crown Hall. Adriaan Geuze, co-founder of Rotterdam-based landscape architecture firm West 8, is the latest speaker in this reemergent lecture series. Geuze has been at the forefront of a burgeoning global conversation about landscape architecture, urban space and the environment. Spurred on by climate change, the densification of cities and the fragmented nature of the urban sphere, landscape architects are finding themselves in increasingly pivotal positions in the development of livable and sustainable cities. Chicago itself remembers one of our most famous architects, Daniel Burnham, not for his cornices and columns, but his plan for the public spaces and parks of the city. Geuze works in a similar vein, and with much of the scope of an old master such as Burnham, synthesizing culture, context, architecture, public space and engineering to create unparalleled urban experiences. There are few lecturers who more completely embody IIT School of Architecture’s focus on the future urban condition or “Nowness” in the context of architectural practice than Adriaan Geuze. (Nick Cecchi)
March 23 at 6:30pm, Center Core at S. R. Crown Hall, 3360 South State. Free.
