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Anne Whiston Spirn and
Alex S. MacLean

Thursday, November 14, 2002 -- 5:00 p.m.
Kansas City Discovery Center
4750 Troost, Kansas City, Mo.

The Kansas City Design Center is pleased to announce the concluding lecture in our annual series, Sustaining a Sense of Region.

On Thursday evening, November 14, the KCDC welcomes the 2001 International Cosmos Prize Winner, Anne Whiston Spirn, Prof. of Landscape Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Alex S. MacLean, recipient of the KCDC's 2002 Resident Design Fellowship. In a dual presentation, Spirn and MacLean will explain how language and imagery can help Kansas City define a distinctive sense of region, rooted in a new understanding of the relationships between urban and rural, natural and man-made, and landscape and place.

Anne Spirn has an international reputation as the pre-eminent scholar working to apply theories and principles of ecological landscape design to urban areas. Her first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (Basic Books, 1984), won the President's Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1984, has been translated into two other languages, and remains a standard university text. Her second book, The Language of Landscape (Yale University Press, 1998), sets out a theory of landscape and aesthetics that takes account of both human interpretive frameworks and natural process. She is currently working on Telling Landscape, a book and exhibit of her color photographs, which depict landscapes of Japan and Australia, Europe and North America. It presents photography as a way of reading landscape, engaging in dialogues that invoke empathy and reflection on the continuity of human lives with other living things and with the places we inhabit.

Since 1987, Prof. Spirn has directed the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP), which links landscape design, community development, and urban stormwater management through an action-research program integrating research, teaching, and community service. Its goals include development of strategic landscape plans to enhance environmental quality, implementation of landscape improvements to stimulate economic development, and mutual strengthening of public school curricula and professional education. The project was cited as a "Model of Best Practice" at a White House summit in March 1999 for forty leading "Scholars and Artists in Public Life." Prof. Spirn's next major book, Top-Down/Bottom-Up: Rebuilding the Landscape of Community, will describe this research-in-action and set that work in the context of broader issues in urban and environmental policy, drawing lessons for the theory and practice of urban planning and design.

In September 2001, Prof. Spirn became the youngest person, first woman and the first designer/planner to be awarded the International Cosmos Prize, which recognizes individuals who have contributed to the "harmonious co-existence of nature and mankind." Previous recipients include filmmaker Sir Richard Attenborough (2000), Professor Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford (1997), and Sir Ghillian Prince, director of the United Kingdom's Royal Botanic Gardens (1993).

Over the last six months, Alex MacLean has created hundreds of distinctive photographs of the Kansas City region. Based on a combination of traditional landscape photography, the documentary style of aerial photogrammetry, and a compelling artistic point of view, MacLean's photographs constitute the largest single archive documenting the region's built environment and natural landscape. The lecture marks the first public presentation of MacLean's Kansas City work.

Trained as an architect at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, MacLean has nearly 30 years of experience as an aerial photographer for commercial clients including architects, planners, and environmental organizations. His work has been recognized by multiple grants from the Chicago-based Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. His photographs have been published in five major books, including Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (Yale University Press, 1996), Look at the Land: Aerial Reflections on America (Rizzoli, 1993), and, most recently, Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Rural Areas (American Planning Association Press, 2001). MacLean has exhibited his photographs in galleries throughout the United States, as well as Recontres d'Arles 2002 in Arles, France. His urban photography will be featured next Spring in a Paris exhibition sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Please join us at the Kansas City Discovery Center, 4750 Troost, Kansas City, Missouri. A welcome reception will be held at 5:00 p.m., and our lecture will begin promptly at 5:30 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public.