Landscape, City, and Infrastructure

The spring block of the Kra/jiná II lecture series will open with Adriaan Geuze, founder of West 8, a renowned Rotterdam-based studio established in 1987 with offices in Belgium and the USA. In his lecture titled Landscape, City, and Infrastructure, he will present unique approaches to connecting landscape architecture, urbanism, and infrastructure. He will demonstrate how a landscape and narrative approach can be used to create functional urban spaces that not only meet the needs of transportation and technical infrastructure but also restore the connection between the city, landscape, and community. Through specific examples such as the Río Park in Madrid, landscape designs around the train station in Rotterdam, and the project for the Main Train Station in Brno, he will showcase principles that contribute to sustainable development and strengthening the identity of places.

Adriaan Geuze is the founder and design director of the three branches of West 8 in Rotterdam, North America and Brussels and brings more than 35 years of experience in the fields of landscape architecture, urban design, and infrastructure. Geuze is internationally acclaimed for his pioneering work in the Netherlands and abroad. Under his leadership, West 8 has realized more than two hundred projects in three decades. Many of these delivered projects resulted from major international design competitions, including: Governors Island in New York, Madrid RIO, in Spain, the waterfront of Toronto in Canada, and Jubilee Gardens in London.

Geuze received numerous awards for his work, including the Dutch Prix-de-Rome, the Maaskant Prize, the Oeuvre Prize for Architecture of the Mondriaan Fund, the ARC Oeuvre Award, and the ULI Netherlands Leadership Award. International prizes are the Veronica Rudge Green Prize for Urban Design (Harvard Design School) and is a Fellow of the American Society for Landscape Architecture. In 2015, he was appointed a member of the Academy of Arts of the KNAW, an important recognition of his artistic merits. In 2022, Geuze was appointed a Professor of Landscape Architecture at Technical University Delft and the recipient of the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in Landscape Architecture, the preeminent award for landscape architects and the highest honour IFLA can bestow. He frequently gives lectures and teaches at institutions worldwide.

The lecture will be held in English.

After the lecture, at 9:00 PM, there will be a special screening of the film DEPOT – Reflecting Boijmans, a reprise of the screening originally shown at the Film and Architecture Festival.

The lecture is part of the Czech Chamber of Architects’ lifelong learning program.