"Nature 3.x" Matthew Tucker
MATTHEW Tucker
Professor Tucker is a co-convener of the Nature 3.x: Where is Nature Now? Symposium. He is a designer with a strong background in ecologically and culturally sensitive site design that is informed by the changing patterns and processes of place. With nearly two decades of experience on complex projects, his professional work focuses upon damaged, post-industrial urban sites, manufactured urban ecology and hydrology, and the professional practice and application of sustainable design and construction principles. His work has been noted for its symbiosis between theory and practice. He was the former Director of Design and Principal at Conservation Design Forum and was a Senior Associate at the Cambridge, MA office of Hargreaves Associates. He has taught and lectured at numerous Universities and his work has received several local and national awards with ASLA and AIA. He currently teaches the award-winning EverywhereNowhere graduate studio at the University of Minnesota, which examines speculative futures for urban post-industrial riverfronts.
Professor Tucker’s current research focuses on the emerging issues of the Anthropocene as a driver of paradigm change in 21st century environmental design practice. His work speculates on a new lexicon of nature referred to as Nature 3.x. This work includes investigation of emerging concepts such as the post-natural, genetically modified environments and manufactured ecologies and their relationship to landscape architecture. His work also includes video and photographic documentation of feral and prosthetic landscapes. Matthew received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies from Iowa State University and his Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
"The Un-natural...That Too is Natural" Andrew Blackwell
ANDREW Blackwell
Andrew is a journalist and filmmaker living in New York City. He is the author of Visit Sunny Chernobyl (Rodale 2012), which has been described as “A travel guide for the eco-apocalypse. An exploration of a nature-less world. A memoir of adventure and heartbreak…. a love letter to a polluted planet, and an impassioned argument for the future of environmentalism.” He is also a freelance documentary filmmaker and producer for the television program Dan Rather Reports on HDNet. He has been a featured guest on NPR’s Science Friday, The Huffington Post and CBS News. Blackwell received his Bachelor of Arts in History from Haverford College.
"Novel Ecosystems as Theaters for Adventure" Emma Marris
EMMA Marris
Emma is a writer based in Klamath Falls, Oregon whose work focuses on complex intersections between conservation, ecology, energy, agriculture, food, language, books and film. Her stories help us understand how to increase the flourishing of both humanity and the rest of the planet’s species, and how to move towards a greener, wilder, happier and more equal future. Her work has appeared in Conservation, Slate, Discover, the New York Times and Nature, where she was on the staff for several years. Marris’ first book, Rambunctious Garden (Bloomsbury, 2011) argues that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by humans. Her current work reports on the complexities and contradictions of wolves. Emma completed her Master of Arts in Science Writing at Johns Hopkins University.
KATE Orff
Kate is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University. Her work on urban design for climate dynamics has been shared and developed in collaboration with a wide sector of arts institutions, governmental agencies, scientists and scholars. She is also a registered landscape architect and the founder of SCAPE, an award-winning 20 person design firm based in lower Manhattan. The work of the office has won National and American Society of Landscape Architecture Awards for built projects, planning, and communications work and has been featured on the cover of Landscape Architecture Magazine, LA China, and Topos among other journals. SCAPE’s Living Breakwaters project was awarded a $60 million implementation grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of the Rebuild by Design Initiative. Her recent book and traveling exhibit titled PETROCHEMICAL AMERICA (Aperture Foundation, 2012) draws a cognitive map of the extraction economy of the lower Mississippi region and anticipates future planning challenges for the American landscape more broadly. Featuring photographs by Richard Misrach, the book links the lived experience of local communities, degraded landscapes and public health issues to national patterns of resource consumption and global waste. Kate received a Bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia with Distinction and a Master in Landscape Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. She was named 2012 United States Artist Fellow and was inducted into the National Academy in 2013
BUSTER Simpson
Buster Simpson is an artist. For more than four decades, his work in the public realm has been engaging citizens in aesthetics, politics and the environment. His approach and work is known for specificity to context and a poetic and provocative distillation of contextual meaning. Buster’s projects often highlight environmental issues, engage community and catalyze action. In 1990, Ned Rifkin, then head-curator, wrote, “in virtually every work of art he has made since 1969, Simpson has been primarily motivated by subject matter that sets out to raise viewers’ consciousness about a particular social or ecological problem. In most of his pieces, Simpson hopes to help solve an existing problem by using his artwork as a paradigm for change.”
As an artist, design team member and consultant, Simpson has completed numerous projects throughout the United States and abroad. His work includes such notable art as the performance eco-art of “Hudson River Purge” and the temporal beauty of “Host/Analog”. He has been invited to participate in international design competitions in Vienna, Austria and Liverpool, England. He has exhibited extensively, including the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC; the Queens Museum, the New Museum, the FIT Museum, the Neuberger Museum of Art, Spatiozero in Rome, Italy; Foundation Mona Bismarck in Paris, France; the National Botanic Gardens in Wales; and the Oakland Museum in California. In 2013, Seattle’s Frye Art Museum presented BUSTER SIMPSON // SURVEYOR, the first retrospective survey of his work.
Works Progress
Works Progress Studio is an artist-led LLC based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Led by husband-wife Collaborative Directors Colin Kloecker and Shanai Matteson, Works Progress engages an expansive network of artists, designers, organizers, researchers, advocates and other creative people to realize imaginative public art and design projects rooted in place and purpose.
Shanai Matteson, Collaborative Director at Works Progress, is a writer, artist and arts organizer who leads and supports collaborative public art and design projects. She's interested in work at the margins of established fields and practices, and believes that edges and intersections provide fertile ground for artists and designers to learn and create, with and in community. Shanai is the Artistic Director of Public Art Saint Paul's City Art Collaboratory, a fellowship program for artists and scientists working with and on the Mississippi River and other ecologically-focused public art and engagement projects. Shanai received her Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies & History of Science from the University of Minnesota.
Colin is an artist, designer and filmmaker who works at the intersection of civic engagement and public art-making. He loves projects that invite participation, inspire new connections, encourage self-reflection, and enable collaborative meaning-making. He believes we can create more resilient, playful, and supportive communities by daylighting and nourishing knowledge and creativity where it already exists. Colin was a 2011 Fellow in the Creative Community Leadership Institute at Intermedia Arts, and was awarded a 2014 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step grant to make a short film with employees of the Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant in Saint Paul. Colin received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Minnesota.
KOERT van Mensvoort
Dr. Koert van Mensvoort is an artist and philosopher best known for his work on the concept of Next Nature, which revolves around the idea that our technological environment has become so complex, omnipresent and autonomous that it is best perceived as a nature of its own. His work seeks to understand our co-evolutionary relationship with technology and help set out a track towards a future that is rewarding for both humankind and the planet at large.
Van Mensvoort began his career with the creation of videogames – belonging to the first generation of whizz-kids who are now no longer kids. In the 1990’s he moved on and studied computer science, philosophy and art. He is (co) author of numerous books and publications including NextNature: Nature Changes Along with Us (Actar, 2012) and The InVitro Meat Cookbook (BIS, 2014). Van Mensvoort is director of the Next Nature Network; an Amsterdam based think and design tank on the changing relation between people, nature and technology. Since 2003 he has led the Next Nature Lab at the Industrial Design Department of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Van Mensvoort received a MSc in Computer Sciences from Eindhoven University of Technology (1997) a MFA from the Sandberg Institute, Masters of Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2000) and a PhD in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology (2009).