DesignPhiladelphia: Gardens in the City Keynote: Susannah Drake
October 13, 2022 @ 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Susannah Drake, Principal Sasaki
Gardens in the City: Beauty & Industry – A series of events organized and curated by Marina Della Putta Johnston, Studio DPJ and Barbara Klinkhammer, TJU College of Architecture and the Built Environment
“Found Space: Gardens and Public Space as 21st Century Infrastructure”
Keynote Speaker: Susannah Drake
In-person & Virutal Event
Susannah C. Drake is a principal at Sasaki. Prior to merging her practice with the firm, she founded DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture pllc. Her work has received city, state, and national AIA and ASLA awards. Susannah was awarded the AIA Young Architects Award, Fellowship in the AIA, Fellowship in the ASLA, and was recognized as an Architectural League Emerging Voice. Susannah’s design work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2020 her Gowanus Canal Sponge Park project won the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action. Susannah received a BA from Dartmouth College and MArch and MLA degrees from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
About the Talk:
New York City has been a laboratory of discovery for Susannah Drake FASLA FAIA for over twenty years. Her talk today will discuss the mining of hardened infrastructure systems for new public space and gardens. Transportation infrastructure wounded the city with monofunctional pathways that divided neighborhoods and isolated waterfront zones. Her work seeks to heal these wounds and reconnect communities. New gardens and places can be added to the existing fabric of the city to help dampen the impact of extreme weather and provide a more equitable distribution of recreation and community spaces.