UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School is hosting the first talk in its 2022-23 Lecture and Exhibit Series, with Dan Adams and Marie Law Adams, principals of Landing Studio, at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 5.
Titled “Just Infrastructure,” the lecture will examine the spaces of urban highways, utilities, rail corridors and industrial waterways that support the flow of goods and people, but often at the burden of local places where they bring social and environmental harm.
“This is the context where we have focused our practice,” said Marie Law Adams. “We work across communities, environmental advocates, activists, industrial businesses and public agencies, and use design to transform infrastructure to reflect the priorities of those who are most directly impacted by it, and for the health of the planet.”
Dan and Marie Law Adams founded Landing Studio in 2005 with the Rock Chapel Marine project, a shared-use road salt terminal and public park landscape located in an immigrant community just north of Boston. While working intensively in this community during the first 10 years of practice, they also studied salt production facilities across the globe. Through this parallel global field work and local practice, Landing Studio documented ways that seemingly standardized spaces of production and infrastructure could be shaped by local places and people. This understanding serves as the foundation for Landing Studio's ongoing work, where the firm looks to bring local voices, new dimensions of human delight and comfort, and natural systems to everyday infrastructural spaces.