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| Dr. Thaïsa Way, ASLA |
Dr. Thaïsa Way, ASLA,
will give a lecture, "Earth Forms as Landscape Architecture: The Practices
of A.E. Bye and Contemporaries," 6 to 9 p.m., Thursday, September 6, in
the Stuckeman Jury Space, Stuckeman Family Building, on Penn State’s University
Park campus.
Way plans to share her
research findings as inaugural A.E. Bye/Landscape Architecture Archives
Research Fellow for Penn State’s Department of Landscape Architecture,
Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. She will discuss
how land and earth forms, including what has been termed land art, have been a
critical part of landscape architectural practice. “We find it in the work of
A.E. Bye, Richard Haag, Laurie Olin, and as far back as Frederick Law Olmsted,”
Way said. “This lecture suggests it is not Robert Smithson who discovered the
power of artfully forming earth and ecologies to explore aesthetics, but
landscape architects. These designers have shaped earth and land for
ecological, social, cultural, political, and aesthetic purposes, thus providing
an intriguing area of study and inspiration.”
Way, a landscape
historian currently teaching history, theory, and design at the University of
Washington, will complete two weeks of archival research from August 27 to
September 9 in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State’s
University Park campus in State College, Pennsylvania. The drawings, papers,
photographs, and videos of the celebrated twentieth-century American landscape
architect A.E. Bye (as well as those of landscape architects John Bracken and
Stuart Mertz) are held at Penn State.
Way's research focuses
on historic narratives that shape alternative views and perspectives of
landscape architecture and urban design. Her current scholarship investigates
women's role in the emergence of modernism. She is also writing a critical
inquiry into landscape architect Richard Haag's influence on the design of
post-industrial sites. A book, New Eyes for Old: Rich Haag and Post Industrial
Landscapes, is expected to be submitted in the summer of 2013.
“Our imagination of the
future is often limited by what we know, thus history provides an opportunity
to expand our thinking and our creative responses. To build on the knowledge,
ideas, and even the crazy concepts of the past is one of the most exciting
parts of being a historian in a design program,” Way said. “Bye's work offered
an amazing approach to landscape that artfully merges land, art, and ecology in
ways that inspire students and practitioners today. Such practice offers a way to
rethink some of our most derelict urban spaces as potential places for such
artful ecological design.”
The A.E. Bye/Landscape
Architecture Archives Research Fellow, funded through the Landscape
Architecture Chair in Integrative Design at Penn State’s H. Campbell and
Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture,
requires a subsequent dissemination of the research in the form of a public
presentation, essay, or small publication to be delivered within six months
after the archival research period.
Penn State’s H.
Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape
Architecture is a leader in professional design education comprised of an
interdisciplinary confederation of strong design disciplines: Architecture,
Design, and Landscape Architecture.
Editor's contact: Catherine Grigor, manager, Public Relations and
Marketing, Penn State University Libraries. 814-863-4240; cqg3@psu.edu
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