Barry Lehrman is a landscape architect (MN license # 47285) dedicated to creating beauty and sustainability in infrastructure and landscape performance.
As the principal investigator of the Aqueduct Futures Project (www.aqueductfutures.com), Lehrman is addressing the century of antagonism and disenfranchisement wrought by the City of Los Angeles upon the Owens Valley through mapping the influence of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and defining future scenarios to empower the local community. His scholarship into the Los Angeles Aqueduct began with his 2005 MLA/MArch thesis (University of Pennsylvania) that proposed an alternative dust control landscape for Owens Lake. The Aqueduct Futures Project was exhibited at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in the After the Aqueduct show (2015) and at Los Angeles City Hall (2013) was created with the assistance of 175 students and counting, who revealed the connections between water, energy, and ecology for the centennial of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’ in The Infrastructural City (ACTAR 2008) explores how the Los Angeles Aqueduct helped generate 21st century Los Angeles and California (this chapter was revised for Water Index: response to a hydrological crisis in 3 acts, edited by Seth McDowell, ACTAR 2015).
Landscape performance metric research includes the Salovich Zero+ Campus Project at the University of Minnesota establishing the methodology for integrating buildings and landscapes and is published in Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Designing, Planning and Development (Taylor and Francis 2012). As a Landscape Architecture Foundation Research Fellow (2012), Lehrman began deploying environmental sensors to gather baseline landscape performance data and developed methodology for calculating the energy savings generated by the irrigated landscape.
He is a founding member of the editorial board for the Journal of Living Architecture, served on the ASLA Policy Committee (2006-2012), and has published book reviews in Landscape Journal. Conference presentations and public appearances include at American Society of Landscape Architects, Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, Inyo-Mono Regional Water Management Group, Los Angeles City Council, Southern California Planning Congress, and the US Green Building Council.
Lehrman’s Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Architecture thesis, Owens Lake Symbiosis, launched his investigation into water infrastructure (University of Pennsylvania 2005). At PennDesign, he was awarded the Van Alen Traveling Fellow, and Dales Traveling Fellowship. He got his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Ohio State University (1994).
Prior to joining Cal Poly Pomona, Lehrman lectured at the University of Minnesota, and practiced (2001 – 2009) as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. He learned the craft of telling stories as a set designer and art director in Hollywood (1995 – 2001).
