Garvan Chair Randolph Hester to Present Lecture on Oct. 29 in Vol Walker Hall

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Randolph Hester will discuss his plan for Parque Natural, the first-ever ecological park in South Central Los Angeles, at a lecture on Oct. 29 in Vol Walker Hall. He is this year's Garvan Chair and Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture for the Fay Jones School of Architecture. (Image courtesy of Randolph Hester)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Randolph Hester will present a lecture titled, “How Gangs Design and Other Languages of Form: Basic Training in Participatory Design” at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture lecture series.

Hester is this year’s Garvan Chair and Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture. Admission is free, with limited seating. 

Hester is an emeritus professor in the department of landscape architecture and environmental planning at the University of California Berkeley, a co-founder of the Center for Ecological Democracy, and a partner in the firm Community Development by Design. Hester holds degrees in landscape architecture from Harvard University and in landscape architecture and sociology from North Carolina State University.

He engages citizens in the creation of their landscapes and cities. He is an award-winning landscape architect, internationally acclaimed for his designs in complex public environments, from wetlands, river corridors and chaparral canyons to central cities and economically depressed communities.

For his lecture, Hester will use a case from South Central Los Angeles, Parque Natural, to describe in detail the 12 essential steps of designing with and by the people. For the past two decades, Hester has worked with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and citizens to implement a visionary plan, which has created an urban wilderness greenbelt around and into Los Angeles. His plan for Parque Natural provides the first ecological park in South Central Los Angeles.

He introduces the democratic techniques his firm has created to guide and share the process of designing cities transactively. The process demonstrates how often the most marginal community members have brilliant ideas and how the architect and landscape architect do, albeit less often; and how the collaboration is fundamental to splendid design in the public arena.

Hester possesses an unwavering faith in democracy and the role of design in invigorating deeply engaged grassroots action. His work awakens naturally wild urbanity, delineates everyday civic life, attends to the least powerful and evokes cultural nuance within a framework of water-colored ecology. His built work and writing offer a radical yet practical departure from standard professional practice.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, he established a citywide citizen participation program that became the basis for the city’s comprehensive plan. Hester organized a grass roots alternative, low-cost transportation plan for the city and stopped freeways from being built through poorer neighborhoods. He worked for 10 years to realize a rehabilitation plan for the low-income Chavis Heights neighborhood. His plan prevented the scheduled urban renewal clearance and set a precedent by creating a uniquely African-American landscape, which rectified past class and racial discrimination in the provision of public facilities. His work won the All-America City Award for Raleigh and earned him the reputation as one who could turn impossible community dreams into reality.

Hester’s community plan for Manteo, North Carolina, attracted cultural tourism that provided needed jobs while it preserved the community’s sacred structure. The plan features a mile-long civic front porch and open space system utilizing underused waterfront spaces with hands-on exhibits to teach visitors about the everyday environment and the area’s history. This project has received many honors, including the Virginia Dare Award and an ASLA Honor Award.

Hester works with National Taiwan University and SAVE International, an organization he co-founded in 1997 in a rural fishing district of Tainan County to create viable economic alternatives to the building of a proposed petrochemical plant. The construction of this plan threatens both a centuries-old way of life and the habitat of the endangered black-faced spoonbill, one of the rarest birds in the world. A National Scenic designation has derailed the industrial threat, while stepping stone habitat expansion within local villages is now being implemented.

Hester has written many articles and books on community participation and design. His most recent work, Design for Ecological Democracy has won the best book of the year award for planning and architecture, the Paul Davidoff Award, and the Kevin Lynch Award. Neighborhood Space, in which he first articulated the user needs approach to landscape architecture, is a classic work in participatory design, designated a landmark research project.

His Community Design Primer provides practical tools for designers and for citizens themselves. He has received the CELA Outstanding Educator Award, the EDRA Career Award, Alumnus of the Year at North Carolina State University, and an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia for his pioneering work in social design, participatory processes and environmental justice.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or architecture.uark.edu.