All Climate Events

Wednesday, October 23, 2019. 6:00 - 8:30 PM. Steve Strom Memorial Lecture.

Anuradha Mathur an architect and landscape architect is Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Dilip da Cunha, an architect and planner is co-director of the Risk and Resilience program at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and Adjunct Professor at the GSAPP, Columbia University.

Mathur and da Cunha are authors of Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (2001); Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore's Terrain (2006); Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary (2009) and co-editors of Design in the Terrain of Water (2014).

Da Cunha is also author of a new book, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent, (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019). The book draws attention to rivers as a consequence of one of the most fundamental acts in the design of human habitation, namely, the separation of land from water and asks – ‘Is this separation found in nature or does nature follow from its assertion?’ As a sequel to the Invention of Rivers da Cunha and Mathur are currently working on an exhibition titled ‘The Ocean of Rain’ that embraces ubiquitous wetness as an alternative to river landscapes. A selection from this work-in-progress will be part of an exhibition curated by Bruno Latour titled ‘Critical Zones’ at the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, opening May 2020.