Bio:
Jessica Henson is a Partner at OLIN where she leads planning and design projects that seek to create socially and environmentally resilient infrastructure including the Los Angeles County LA River Master Plan and the Rio Hondo Confluence Area Project. Her other significant projects include Chicago’s Vista Tower, a new residential precinct at the University of Washington in Seattle, the new U.S. Embassies in London and Brasilia, the O’Hare Global Terminal, the SELA Cultural Center, and the LA River Index. Jessica’s work explores the relationships between hydrological, cultural, and social contexts. Specifically, she explores how landscape architects can create anticipatory design solutions that create more equitable communities. Jessica teaches at the University of Southern California and has taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Sylvia Palms joined OLIN in 2019 after nearly 20 years of professional practice in institutional and public landscape planning and design. Her work revolves around environmental justice, and she has directed each of her projects to advance the health of the urban ecosystem, leveraging human, cultural, and ecological systems to solve problems and create accessible, meaningful, healing landscapes. Her current project focus at OLIN is planning a coastal, multi-use, transit-oriented development, to be resilient and adaptive to sea level rise. Alongside her project work, she leads initiatives toward the advancement of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion both within the office and throughout the profession of landscape architecture.
Eve Yi Ding is a landscape architect at OLIN where she has worked on projects that seek to practice equity and justice including 11th st Bridge Park in Washington D.C. Eve holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Architecture from South China University of Technology.
Presentation:
OLIN creates distinguished landscapes and urban designs worldwide. Our work is predicated upon social engagement, craft, detail, materiality, and timelessness. We recognize that there is an infrastructure of disenfranchisement in our country’s social systems, that sanctions hate in our communities and stifles the opportunities afforded to many people.
There are fundamental questions that we as part of the design community have to address: how has the design of the built environment contributed to the perpetuation of these injustices and how can we contribute to ending these ingrained social and economic harms? Our team is committed to actively serving as an ally to disenfranchised communities as we build toward racial, social, and economic justice. We know that to move forward we must contribute to the development of public policies that empower minority and underrepresented communities and seek knowledge and understanding. We have to cross barriers between each other and across communities to achieve a common goal of justice and the pursuit of happiness and equity for all.
These long-standing societal failures are compounded in particular with the intensification of climate change, because through generations of racist practices we have forced so many minority communities into harm's way. These social, environmental, and economic inequalities in our landscape will only intensify if we do nothing. We must act quickly with compassion and fortitude to support those communities suffering as a result of discriminatory policies. OLIN is committed to design that brings value to all, not just the privileged, and which strengthens economically challenged communities. These are the first steps to grow our commitments to help heal the traumas perpetuated by racism, but we understand the journey has just started.
This presentation will discuss how we are actively seeking to champion equity and justice within our studio and our projects. OLIN designers Jessica Henson, Sylvia Palms, and Eve Ding will discuss several internal initiatives and project work in Washington, D.C., at the 11th Street Bridge and in Los Angeles County at the LA River that seek to foster equitable and just landscapes.
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This lecture was presented at the 50th edition of the LABash Student Conference, curated by students in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University, and Land8 Media, LLC.