LAA: You’re internationally recognised as an innovative designer.  What is it about your approach to your work that sets you apart?

JB: Three decades ago I was one of a handful of landscape architects in the US addressing polluted industrial landscapes, trying to infiltrate a territory predominated by engineers. Still my colleagues were primarily concerned with reclamation policy and technology while I was advocating for the role of design. Infuriated by limitations and inspired by possibilities, I began and continue a campaign for not just remediating contaminated landscapes but also regenerating the social and cultural value of derelict sites in many, many backyards.

LAA: How does the understanding of the history of a site help when designing its future?

JB: Sites contain multiple histories – natural and cultural – which represent deeps wells that can be tapped for design responses.  For me, I cannot begin work without knowing the evolution of a site, looking for as much evidence as possible to use as a starting point for its future.  I call it ‘site forensics’ since the design process becomes essentially an act of finding. Tracing the evolution of the landscape, along with social and ecological factors of its context, I believe is the only way to project forward.  It is not uncommon for our discipline to use site histories to inform design figuratively, but I experiment with how to present evidence literally, not as a didactic tool but as an authentic layer, waiting for the next one.

LAA: What’s the key message you’ll be delivering at the conference?

JB: I will share how I foreground science together with site histories to inform regenerative design projects. Pollution disrupts human and environmental health that continue to be met with simplistic engineered solutions. My plea begs designers to imagine futures with the biologically-based technologies coupled with the social history and values of impacted communities.  I believe in monopolising on the boom and bust of volatile cites, on the cycles of industrial and fallow landscapes. The socioecological health of vulnerable communities depends on a dynamic, dialectic way of thinking that I will argue, benefits from urban succession strategies to continually revitalise a healthy, cyclic nature of cities.