Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas is an initiative started in 2015 by Charles Waldheim, Luis Callejas, Jeannette Sordi, Felipe Vera, and Pedro Aparicio that has brought together almost one hundred professionals, scholars, and city leaders over the past five years. The project has convened a series of conferences held in Medellín (2016), Santiago de Chile (2016), Brasilia (2016), Mexico City (2017), and Buenos Aires (2018). Supplementing these events is a digital archive that includes a selection of sixty projects in Latin America. This multi-series project has been made possible through the collaboration of no less than thirty-eight institutions. It has proceeded under the leadership of the GSD’s Office for Urbanization and with the constant support of the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and several partners in Latin America including Adolfo Ibañez University and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Chile), Eafit (Colombia), Escola de Cidade (Brazil), the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Universidad Torquato Di Tella and Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Argentina), among others. A truly collective endeavor, Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas has resulted in a multifaceted portrait of current discussions about landscape as urbanism across the Americas, becoming itself a medium to generate new dialogues, partnerships, and fields of inquiry.
The project started with the objective of individuating emerging practices, fields of application, and theories of landscape as urbanism in Latin America. Over the past two decades, landscape has been claimed as a model and medium for the contemporary city. Having first addressed complex natural environments, post- industrial sites, and public infrastructure, especially in the European and North American contexts, landscape urbanism has also been giving interdisciplinary impulses to both practice and theory, suggesting a more flexible and ecologically informed urbanism. In Asia, in Australia, New Zealand, a number of cities and large scale interventions have recently been developed following landscape urbanism practices. In Latin America the discourse on landscape and its potential for urban development had not yet been fully framed. During the last four years, Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas has gathered academics and professionals from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
In 2020 -Lots of Architecture published a monographic issues edited by Florencia Rodriguez, Mercedes Peralta, and Jeannette Sordi, Ness.docs2. Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas. The book includes a preface by Charles Waldheim, essays by Ana Maria Duran, Jeannette Sordi, Manuel Gausa, José Alfredo Ramirez, Luis Callejas, and Mercedes Peralta, and projects by Ana Elvira Vélez Villa, Lorenzo Castro Jaramillo; Beals Lyon Arquitectos; Bulla; Camilo Restrepo; CAPA; Enlace Arquitectura; Fábrica de Paisaje; Francisco Walker Martínez; FUPAM / LUME, H+F Arquitetos, Metrópole Arquitetos, UNA Arquitetos; Gaeta Springall Arquitectos; Groundlab, LyonBosch+Martic, Idom, Sergio Chiquetto; Guillermo Hevia García, Nicolás Urzúa; Husos; Iñaki Echeverría Gutiérrez; Juan David Hoyos, Sebastián Monsalve; LCLA Office; Metro Arquitetos Associados; Opera Publica; Plan Común; Plan:B Arquitectos, JPRCR Arquitectos; RDR Arquitectos; Sérgio Bernardes; Tatiana Bilbao Estudio; Teresa Moller Landscape Studio.
– Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas Projects Archive, 2015-2018.
– Ness.docs2. Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas, edited by Florencia Rodriguez, Mercedes Peralta, Jeannette Sordi, 2020.
JEANNETTE SORDI 