Alanna Menoutis

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Date of lecture: November 20th, 2024

Bio

Mark V. Mistretta, RLA, ASLA, has served as the Niagara Region Director of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation since May 2018. The region encompasses all of Erie and Niagara Counties and consists of 18 parks, two historic sites, three marinas and one golf course.

As director, Mistretta provides leadership over park capital improvements, operations, maintenance and rehabilitation, land acquisition, planning, development, human resource management, fiscal administration, environmental management and compliance, historic preservation, programs and community services, grants administration and public relations in the region.

Prior to his appointment, Mistretta briefly served as the Capital Facilities Manager for the Niagara and Allegany Regions of State Parks. In that role he was responsible for overseeing the execution of the NYS Parks 2020 state parks revitalization program.

For 32 years prior to his Parks’ service, Mistretta worked in the private sector at two full-service design firms where he was instrumental in the work of hundreds of public and private sector projects including master planning and phased improvements for large parks to a multitude of recreation facilities to waterfronts, shoreline restorations and sustainable landscapes to impactful regionwide initiatives and historic landscapes.

In addition, Mistretta was responsible for marketing and sales of the company’s services, strategic planning and visioning, development of business plans, various committee assignments and quality control.

Mistretta also brings with him experiences gained from founding roles in real estate and landscape contracting firms. Additionally, he was a founding Board Trustee, past Chairman and Trustee Emeritus of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy and currently serves on the Niagara Falls Illumination Board and as Ex-officio on the Artpark and Darwin Martin House Board of Trustees.

Among various recognitions, Mistretta most recently received the ASLA NY Upstate “Distinguished Practitioner Public Practice” Award.

A graduate of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute in Buffalo, NY and Rutgers University (’79) in New Brunswick, NJ, Mistretta and his wife of 32 years, Barbara Piazza, reside in the Buffalo area.

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Date of lecture: November 13th, 2024

Abstract:

The lecture contains two main parts: 1) Cultural ecosystem services (CES) concept and PPGIS as a tool for landscape assessment and evaluation, 2) Research findings related to perception of CES in Central-Eastern Europe. The first part of the lecture includes a general introduction of ecosystem services, possible categorizations of them, as well as a wide overview of cultural ecosystem services. In addition, PPGIS will be presented as a suitable tool for analyzing CES perception and involvement of local citizens. The lecture reflects not only on the methodological aspects, but also on the possible applications of it.

The second part focuses on some research findings related to CES perception using PPGIS tool. These findings represent many regularities from landscape/regional to local/settlement scale related to CES perception in Central-Eastern European geographical and cultural context using a Hungarian study area from Budapest Metropolitan Region.

Bio:

István Valánszki, PhD, head of department, associate professor, landscape architect, teacher of engineering, landscape protection expert. He is working at the Department of Landscape Protection and Reclamation, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE). He is the program director of BSc in Landscape construction and Garden Design Engineering program of the university, which is among the biggest landscape architecture-related undergraduate programmes in Europe.  He has been involved into several national and international projects (e.g. the ecological network-focused ConnectGREEN Interreg project; international teaching (education) development-focused EUland21 and InnoLAND Erasmus+ projects; Democratic Landscape Transformation: Towards an Open Landscape Academy Erasmus+ project; Hungarian Ecosystem Services Mapping and Assessment project). He is author or co-author of more than 200 publications, mainly related to public participation (ppGIS), cultural ecosystem services and green infrastructure (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Istvan-Valanszki). He is teaching and supervising students in Hungarian and international programs of the University from BSc to PhD level. He has long-term international research experience in many countries (e.g. University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (Germany), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), The James Hutton Institute (UK), University of Massachusetts (USA)). In addition to national awards, in 2017 he received the “Outstanding doctoral student 2017” Award of the ECLAS (European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools).

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Date of lecture: November 11th, 2024

“Labor and Care in the Landscape of the Local: Migrant farm labor and diverse economies in Community Supported Agriculture”

Abstract:

The objective of my dissertation research in human geography has been to engage in spaces of New Jersey’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in order to understand and make visible the lived experience of migrant farmworkers within local agricultural economy. I employ mapping in this project as part of the performative practice that diverse economies research seeks to do in order to, as Gerda Roelvink suggests, “open up a politics of economic possibility, not close it down,” and (hopefully) to bring into being, through making visible, design for generating further care in the space of CSA. I use the term ‘deep mapping’ to describe the concept and practice of exploratory layering of geographic, spatial, temporal, personal, social (and sometimes imaginary) information. The deep map may be read as a sort of palimpsest in which multiple aspects of labor and CSA as phenomena can be deciphered simultaneously. As a mode of critical cartography, deep mapping holds the space for visualization of narratives and livelihood experiences that are on the one hand bound by time and place, and, on the other, refuse to be bounded by either. This particular research method is utilized in order to visually address what migrant labor looks like in a manner that strives to avoid a reductionist representation, and rather seeks to present multiple and authentic engagements with the physical and economic space of CSA.

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Date of lecture: October 30th, 2024

Abstract

Projects that explore the intersection of climate change, infrastructure and urbanism. The work  puts forward innovative concepts at the intersection of large-scale landscape infrastructure and placemaking. Examples include South Battery Park City Resilience’s Wagner Park and Pier A Plaza, Brooklyn Montgomery Coastal Resilience’s Waterfront in Lower Manhattan and Hoboken’ Harborside Waterfront Park.

Short Bio

Gonzalo leads AECOM’s Urbanism + Planning Practice as a Vice President and Principal of Design in the New York Metro area as well as strategic collaborations across the Americas and abroad. His award-winning practice has received numerous awards from ASLA, AIA, NYC by Design, and the Chicago Atheneum Design Excellence Award in Open Space design for the World Trade Center’s Liberty Park. Gonzalo holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the City College of New York and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

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Date of lecture: October 23rd, 2024

Our Rutgers Students will be sharing their summer travel trip to Spain and our Roy DeBoer Prize winners will be speaking as well

Presenters will be:

• Brooke Belmonte

• Su Lin

• Josh Chang

• Maggie Bazurto

• Dean Awari

• Ana Maria Olinyck

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Date of lecture: October 16th, 2024

Abstract

Stephen Whitehouse, a founder of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners in New York City, discusses the interplay between the aspirations of landscape practice and the creative adaptation to challenges and opportunities.

Bio:

Stephen Whitehouse is a co-founder of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners in New York City. A landscape architect and urban planner, Stephen’s diverse pursuits share a concern for the environmental quality and social vitality of places. He formerly served as Chief of Planning for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, where he managed the expansion of the USTA National Tennis Center and launched the City’s Greenway system. Since co-founding Starr Whitehouse, he has worked with public and private clients to create dynamic urban districts and engaging landscapes that connect people to nature. Recent work includes: Southwest Park in Hoboken, New Jersey’s first resiliency park; EDC’s Manhattan Greenway Harlem River project; a streetscape and lighting plan for the Union Square Alliance in Manhattan; and a vision to integrate an upcoming Army Corps of Engineers levee system into shoreline parks and communities on the East Shore of Staten Island.

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Date of lecture: October 2nd, 2024

Abstract

The 15-minute neighborhood concept gained visibility as the global pandemic demonstrated that local access to basic life needs is critically important. In addition to being an important contribution to New Jersey’s efforts to achieve its goals of reducing pollution that causes climate change, 15-minute neighborhoods provide residents with easy access to parks, schools, gathering places, social services, places to buy healthy fresh food, and, in some cases, public transit, within a comfortable walk or bike ride. Near-term, multi-billion-dollar investments in infrastructure, a revolution in transportation technologies not seen in a century, the recalibration of relationships between people and places brought about by the pandemic, and converging policies related to energy, health, climate, transportation, and environmental justice provide New Jersey with an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and adjust how we design and build communities. This talk will highlight the findings for recently completed research and three New Jersey case studies and describe an action agenda that NJ leaders can follow to create healthier, more just, resilient, and sustainable communities in New Jersey. 

Short Bio

Jon Carnegie is executive director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University and an adjunct member of the faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers. He has more than 30 years of experience in the fields of land use and transportation planning and policy at the municipal, county and regional level. His expertise includes: land use and transportation planning and policy, transportation equity, workforce transportation options for low-income individuals and persons with disabilities, mobility for older adults, public engagement, vulnerability and risk assessment, community impact analysis, sustainability, and as well as transport security, emergency management, and evacuation planning. 

Main Content

Date of lecture: September 25th, 2024

Where We Come From

Students from Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Germany

From 9/21 to 10/4, 8 students with their Professor Dr. Henrick Schultz, will visit our department and join an Internation Desing and Planning Workshop with the Senior Studio. On their trip, we show them around in New Jersey and New York. At this lecture, they will introduce themselves by sharing some impressions about their background and where they come from. They will include some of their own student work and examples of landscape architecture projects that have influenced them.

Presenters:

• Selina Fryd
• Dominik Hagemann
• Lasse Höppner
• Christoph Lengert
• Niklas Menke
• Simon Oberbarnscheid
• Lea Rudolph
• Mathis Wittbecker