February 7, 2025 @ 4:00 p.m. MT | Canyon House Visiting Professor Lecture
About the Lecture
Ok designers: How do you CONCEPT? Like us, every project is unique. Every site, situation, and problem-field can bewilder and delight. Yet you need to begin, somehow. The blank page can be scary, while too much data can paralyze. [AHHHH!, it's a Dragon!] ------------- In light of the danger ahead, what then are the first critical steps you should take to bring your new ideas out of obscurity? While you take initial action and gain momentum, how do you communicate a systematic process persuasively enough to get others on board? How do you give a voice to the quiet wisdom of your personal values and professional principles? How do you connect people and add social, cultural, and ecological value? Therein lies the path to potential "success" in my experience. The ability to see and describe key information despite [and through] the inherent complexity of contemporary landscape architectural practice is a learned skill. This talk will explore those early moments of conceptual struggle and move us together toward a set of useful tools and possible approaches required to frame design opportunities. You'll be riding your dragons in no time.
Speaker Bio
Simon Bussiere is an American Landscape Architect and a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where he teaches courses in landscape, architecture, and urban ecological design. Bussiere’s research explores the intersection of design practice, communication, and pedagogy to better describe and understand the fundamental patterns and approaches in the ways design concepts and strategies are framed, formed, and translated into being. He is the editor of Conceptual Landscapes: Fundamentals in the Beginning Design Process, (Routledge, 2023) and author of more than forty peer-reviewed articles, papers, book chapters, and presentations in professional design and education. Trained at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (MLA 2009), and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (BSLA 2005), Bussiere’s professional experience ranges from design-build work in New England; to large-scale landscape architecture and urban design project delivery with EDAW/AECOM Australia; to research, design, and construction in Nicaragua with Estudio Teddy Cruz. Simon opened his studio, LANDMASS, LLC. (2016-current) to engage with local projects in Hawaiʻi in addition to his hybrid teaching-practice as Principal Investigator at the University of Hawai‘i Community Design Center (UHCDC). Bussiere’s honors include the Excellence in Teaching Award from The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA, 2022, granted to one individual per year nationally); a Collaborative Practice Award for the “UHCDC Waipahu TOD Collaboration” (ACSA, 2020); and others dating back to a First Place entry in the international design competition for Seoul Grand Park (AECOM Global Team, 2009). Since 2016 Simon has been the principal or co-principal investigator of projects totaling $320,353 from funders like the Hawai‘i State Office of Planning and the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources. Bussiere has held academic positions at Ball State University, the University of Nagasaki, the University of Utah Asia Campus in Songdo, Korea, and Tongji University in Shanghai through the UH Global Track Program. Simon was elected to two terms as Second Vice-President of The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) from 2020-2024, is currently the Region II Director (2024-2027), and is a Past-President of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Hawai‘i (2020).
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