The first lecture of the 2008-2009 academic year sponsored by the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design will be given by one of the nation’s leaders in sustainable land planning and design.  James Patchett will present

Design for Sustainable Urban Systems:
Community Planning/Design as a Vehicle for Integrating
Socio-Economic and Ecological Concerns

at 3:00 p.m. Monday, September 8, 2008, in Room 212 of the K-State Student Union. The lecture is open to the public at no charge.

James Patchett, ASLA, RLA, LEED AP is founder and president of the Conservation Design Forum (CDF), a multi-disciplinary office composed of landscape architects, planners, environmental scientists, and civil/water resource engineers. CDF is dedicated to sustainable design in a collaborative environment where each step of the planning and design process draws upon the collective expertise and creativity of the whole. CDF relies upon an open-minded spirit of collaboration to generate solutions that no one individual or discipline has the skill, life experience, and breath of expertise to do alone.

Patchett will discuss how CDF seeks to address urban ecological systems and the ecology of cities, responding to ideas posited by Pickett, et al. in 2001: “An alternative approach to urban ecology exists in landscape architecture and planning. This professional practice is motivated by a desire to incorporate ecological principles, to make environmental amenities available to metropolitan residents, and to decrease the negative impacts of urban resource demand and waste on environments elsewhere. Although floristic and faunistic descriptions from urban sites are frequently used in design and planning, there are few data available on ecological functions in cities that can inform such practice. Furthermore, the rapidly changing spatial forms of urban growth and change, and the complex of environmental factors that interact in and around cities, make simple environmental extrapolations risky. Although most of the urban ecological research that has been motivated by planning is of the sort that can be labeled ecology in cities, the field often takes a more comprehensive approach that expresses the ideal of ecology of cities.”  Source: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.32.081501.114012

Patchett has professional training and experience in landscape architecture, environmental planning, hydrology and civil engineering, ecological restoration and sustainable design. He is an associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Iowa State University, where he has degrees in civil engineering (M.S. with a focus on water resources) and landscape architecture (B.S.L.A. & M.L.A.). He also studied at the University of Michigan and worked at JJR, a multidisciplinary office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Patchett is visiting K-State as a presenter at the EPA Brownfields Sustainability Conference being held from September 9-11, 2008.

Attendance at the lecture can be submitted as continuing education credit by design professionals by contacting Diane Potts. This lecture is funded by the K-State Student Fine Arts Fee.

For more information, contact:
Lee R. Skabelund, 785.532.5961
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090