Michelle Martel

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Abstract

This well-illustrated presentation examines the varied landscapes that comprised colonial New Jersey. Indigenous, cultural, religious, agrarian, industrial, and commemorative landscapes are all explored. Special attention is paid to how landscapes shaped New Jersey’s Revolutionary War experience. 

Bio

Richard Veit, Ph.D., RPA is a North American historical archaeologist whose research focuses on the colonial Middle Atlantic with specializations in vernacular architecture, commemoration, and conflict archaeology. He is the author of ten books on historical and archaeological topics, several of which have run state and national awards. He currently serves as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Monmouth University. 

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ABSTRACT

Nodes, Edges, and Districts: Landscape Infrastructure for the City in Crisis

This lecture revisits Kevin Lynch’s city form-making elements as the primary framework for deploying resilient, multifunctional infrastructure in the face of contemporary urban challenges. Rather than viewing these as mere navigational markers or spatial frameworks, the lecture presents nodes, edges, and districts as elements of a multi-scalar landscape strategy to address the widespread environmental and social instability characterizing cities today.

BIO

Steven T. Lee is a landscape architect, urban designer, and planner based in New York City, with a passion for crafting meaningful and resilient public spaces. As a Design Principal at SWA/Balsley, he directs complex public realm projects domestically and abroad including waterfronts, urban parks, civic plazas, campus landscapes, and urban districts. Steven engages closely with clients, interdisciplinary teams, and designers across experience levels to foster shared creativity and develop innovative solutions. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Claremont McKenna College and dual master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to practice, he has contributed to design education as a lecturer at Cornell University and a guest critic at numerous universities throughout the US.

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Titled People, Place, Play, Travieso’s talk explores his creative practice through three guiding concepts that shape much of his work. People highlights his community-engaged process; Place refers to his approach of building from what already exists in a site—socially, physically, and historically; and Play speaks to his commitment to infusing joy, imagination, and interaction into everyday environments.

Bio

Chat Travieso is the Tepper Chair at Mason Gross School of the Arts. He is an artist and designer, as well as the co-founder of the multidisciplinary collaborative duo Yeju & Chat, with Yeju Choi. His practice encompasses community-centered urban interventions, public art projects, and research initiatives. His past work has been commissioned by or organized in collaboration with the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, NYC Parks, NYC DOT, the Cambridge Arts Council, and the Cleveland Public Library, among others. Honors include the Bronx Recognizes Its Own Award, the United States Artist Fellowship, and the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. His research has been supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence at The New School, and the Columbia GSAPP Anti-Racism Curriculum Development Award. His writing has been featured in Places Journal, AD (Architectural Design), MAS Context, and Urban Omnibus.

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Synopsis

In this talk, Anita Bakshi will discuss how collaborative processes can be more central to design education. In Collaborations in Architecture and Sociology (Routledge 2026), co-authored with sociologist Zaire Dinzey-Flores, the authors address the disconnect between the design of the built environment and social life. They create a new interdisciplinary orientation and methodology, termed SOCIOARC, that recognizes the relationship of the built form and aesthetics to social experience. Anita will talk about the process of writing the book and explain how the graphic design strategy and original illustrations were used to create a book that is accessible to people from many disciplines, as well as its relevance for design education.

Bio

ANITA BAKSHI teaches in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers University. Following several years in architectural practice, she received her PhD in the history and theory of architecture from Cambridge University with the Conflict in Cities research program. Her research focuses on contested landscapes and histories, environmental justice, and the relationship between architecture and sociology. She edited the book Our Land, Our Stories: Excavating Subterranean Histories of Ringwood Mines and the Ramapough Lunaape Nation (2022), in partnership with the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan. She is the author of Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration (2017), and co-author of Collaborations in Architecture and Sociology (2026) with Zaire Dinzey-Flores.

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New Brunswick, New Jersey lies in the heart of the I95 Corridor between Boston and Washington, the most densely populated region of its size in the US. The city has even given itself the nickname “Hub City” in recognition, at least in part, of its location at a convergence of major highways. With all this density and development, it’s no surprise that to many who live in the area the idea of wildlife seems distant and alien. Wildlife belongs to wild places, and New Brunswick is certainly anything but that. But if you look closely, and listen, you’ll find a surprisingly rich diversity of animal life within a short bike or bus ride. In this presentation, I will share some of my experiences observing and photographing wildlife in the area and discuss how those observations connect with specific components of our very familiar local landscapes.