10th Biennial 2018

Lecturer 10

Brian Davis is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University where he runs the Borderlands Research Group. He studied landscape architecture at North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia, has practiced in Buenos Aires and New York City, is a registered landscape architect in New York State, and a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative. Current collaborators include the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Mahan Rykiel Associates, and the Port of Baltimore. His research and teaching are focused on public space, flooding infrastructure, and water quality in ports and river cities throughout the Americas. His work positions these projects as acts of desire and landscape-making through a focus on the agency of things and aesthetics. Current research includes the design of public sedimentary infrastructure in Great Lakes ports and Baltimore Harbor as well as river infrastructure in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Lecturer 10

Professor and Founder Dean of Landscape Architecture Department, Tsinghua University. As the head of the Group of Experts, presided over the “The 11th National Five-year Plan for Protecting National Natural and Cultural Heritage”,and more than 10 General Managment Plan for natural and cultural heritage sites in China. His Ph. D. thesis “Improving the National Park and Protected Area System of China: Theories and Practice” won the first prize of Tsinghua University’s excellent doctoral dissertation, which played an important role in the creation of National park system in China.

Lecturer 10

Nina-Marie Lister is Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto where she founded and directs the Ecological Design Lab. From 2009-2014, she was Visiting Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. A Registered Professional Planner (MCIP, RPP) with post-graduate training in landscape ecology and urban planning, she is the founding principal of PLANDFORM, a creative studio practice exploring the relationship between landscape, ecology, and urbanism. Lister’s research, teaching and practice focus on the confluence of culture and nature: her work centres on landscape infrastructure and ecological processes within contemporary metropolitan regions, and engages systems approaches to develop new methods for urban resilience and adaptation in the face of large-scale change.

Lecturer 10

Architect, Founding Partner of Gehl Architects, and Professor emeritus The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. He has published several books, including the most recent “How to Study Public Life”. As part of Gehl Architects, he has collaborated on projects for the cities of Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Sydney, Riga, Amman, New York and Moscow, among others. Honorary fellow of the Architects Institutes in Denmark, England, Scotland, USA and Canada. Awarded with the ”Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize for exemplary contributions to Town Planning” by The International Union of Architects as well as honorary doctor degrees from Universities in Edinburgh, Halifax, Varna and Toronto.

LECTURER 10

Nicolas Bourriaud, born in 1965, is a curator and writer. He is currently the Director of the MoCo- Montpellier Contemporain (gathering the art center La Panacée, the ESBAMA art school and the future MoCo Museum opening in 2019). He will be the curator of the Istanbul Biennial, 2019. He founded and Codirected the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, (99-06), was the founder advisor for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev (03-07), professor at the IUAV in Venice (06-07), Gulbenkian Curator for Contemporary Art at Tate Britain in London (07/10), In 2010, he headed the studies department at the Ministry of culture in France, then became Director of the ENSBA of Paris (11 -15).  As an independent curator, he was part of the curatorial team of Aperto 1993 at the Venice Biennial, and organised many international exhibitions, from «Traffic» (Capc Bordeaux, 96), «Estratos» (Murcia, Spain, 08) or «Altermodern» (Tate Britain, 09), to the recent «Wirikuta/ Mexican time slip» (Aguascalientes, Mexico, 16). He also was curator of several biennials, including Lyon (05), Moscou (05 and 07, with with Rosa Martínez, Daniel Birnbaum, Joseph Backstein, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and  Iara Boubnova), «Monodrome» (Athens, 11), «The Great Acceleration» (Taipei Biennial 14) and «Threads» (Kaunas Biennial, Lituania, 15). He published several theoretical essays, including «Relational Aesthetics», «Postproduction», «Radicant» and «The Exform», which are translated in twenty languages.