The Midday Talks lecture series is coordinated by Assistant Professor Wei-Han Vivian Lee and is part of the Exploring Design Practice undergraduate course. These lectures are open to the public and registration is not required.

In this talk, Gena Wirth will discuss SCAPE’s method for designing and implementing living infrastructure using two case studies: Living Breakwaters and Public Sediment. Planned for the neighborhood of Tottenville, Staten Island, the Living Breakwaters project links in-water infrastructure with on-shore education and outreach, to help increase awareness of risk, enhance ecologies, and bring local school curriculum to the waterfront. Public Sediment is the SCAPE-led team in the Rebuild By Design Bay Area Challenge to develop solutions to subsidence and sea level rise in the region. The proposal aims to design with mud, connecting the uplands and the lowlands into a productive and resilient ecological system.

Gena is the Design Principal at SCAPE. Trained in landscape architecture, urban planning and horticulture, Gena draws from her interdisciplinary training to create ecologically rich and culturally relevant landscapes from the infrastructural scale to the site level. Gena leads the design on several significant projects in the office.
 
Gena was on the original Oyster-tecture team and was the Project Manager for SCAPE’s involvement in SIRR, studying large-scale harbor-wide strategies for coastal protection measures that will be utilized in preparation for the next Superstorm. She was also the Project Manager for SCAPE’s winning Rebuild By Design proposal, Living Breakwaters, a climate change resiliency strategy for the South Shore of Staten Island.
 
Gena holds a Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture from the University of Delaware.

Image: SCAPE