March 2011: Excavating Innovation Series Concludes

The Excavating Innovation lecture series, sponsored in part by the Metropolitan Water District’s Community Partners Program, concluded in March. Nan Ellin, Chair of City + Metropolitan Planning at University of Utah, presented her Canalscape scheme, and the methods of civic engagement behind it, for integrating ancient and contemporary infrastructures in dynamic public spaces in Phoenix. Dilip da Cunha and Vinayak Bharne shared an evening of discussions on the logics of indigenous infrastructures in Iran, India, and the American Southwest. All lectures from the series, which also included Katherine Rinne, Morna Livingstone, Aziza Chaouni, and Liat Margolis, are video archived.

In the March issue of Architect, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects, Mark Lamster published a piece called, “The Future Belongs to Woodbury,” recognizing Woodbury School of Architecture’s track record as a Hispanic-serving institution and some of the educational innovations it has put forward, including ALI.

May 2011: Drylands Design Initiative launches

May saw the launch of ALI’s Drylands Design Initiative: Registration opened for the William Turnbull Jr. Drylands Design Competition, in partnership with CAF; Assistant HUD Secretary Raphael Bostic for Policy Development + Research agreed to deliver the keynote at Woodbury’s March 2012 Conference; and ALI partnered with the Architecture + Design Museum of Los Angeles to showcase competition winners in the traveling Drylands Design Exhibit, March 2012.

ALI Advisory Board Chair Bernard Friedman hosted a launch event at the MAK Center’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House on Mulholland. LA Times journalists Christopher Hawthorne (architecture) and Bettina Boxall (climate) came together to discuss design’s role in creating a new landscape of adaptation.

2011 Summer Field Station got underway with a 2,000 mile itinerary of ancient and contemporary infrastructures. ALI was joined by our first research intern from the University of Pennsylvania’s landscape program, master’s student Jessica Rossi-Mastracci. We are grateful to Anu Mathur and Dilip da Cunha for having sent Jessica our way.