APRIL 13 | 4PM | Architecture Building AB100
As climate change accelerates and the call to decarbonize the built environment grows more urgent, the work of landscape architects, urban planners, and designers is being fundamentally redefined. New forms of applied, practice-based research are playing an increasingly important role in shaping how the profession responds, linking climate adaptation and mitigation to real-world design process and project delivery. Join us on April 13 at 4:00 pm as Jonah Susskind, Director of Climate Strategy at the global design firm SWA, reflects on his work at the intersection of climate research and design practice, and argues for the need to scale up and speed up climate action across the field.
By the end of this lecture, participants will be able to:
- Recognize climate change as a defining context for contemporary design practice
- Define practice-based research and distinguish it from academic research
- Identify multiple distinct models of collaboration between practice and academia
- Understand how climate-focused research initiatives—such as toolkits, playbooks, and applied research pilots—can accelerate both adaptation and mitigation efforts within professional practice
BIO
Jonah Susskind is Director of Climate Strategy at SWA, an international landscape architecture, urban planning, and design firm. In addition to leading decarbonization efforts across the firm’s global portfolio, Jonah directs applied research related to wildfire risk mitigation, urban development, and climate adaptation. He has held research and teaching appointments at MIT and the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has lectured at universities around the world. His essays have appeared in books and journals including Designing With Nature Now (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy), Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial (Actar), Harvard Design Magazine, LA+, and Journal of Landscape Architecture. Before joining SWA, Jonah directed multiscalar urban design research at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT. He holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the GSD and a BFA in critical visual studies from Pratt Institute.
All ECAP lectures are free and open to the public. If you have questions email caplecture@bsu.edu.
This lecture is LA CES approved.
