Speakers, left to right: Gerdo Aquino, Lauren Bon, William Deverell, Adriaan Geuze, Christopher Hawthorne, Charles A. Birnbaum, Jessica M. Henson, Alison B. Hirsh, Kush Parekh, Julia Prince, Alexander Robinson, Chelina Odbert, Maura Rockcastle, Matt Romero, Mario Schjetnan, Patrick Sisson, Kongjian Yu, Evelyn Cortez-Davis

Join The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), the University of Southern California (USC), and SWA Group for a daylong conference on Friday, December 5, 2025, at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. The program will highlight landscape architecture’s role in addressing urban flooding and water management in Los Angeles, Southern California, and globally. The conference will be preceded by a reception on Thursday, December 4, at the SWA Los Angeles studio featuring an opening keynote by Lauren Bon, Metabolic Studio, and followed on Saturday, December 6, by mobile workshops. Each event is separately ticketed.

Speakers include leading practitioners (like Minnesota’s own Maura Rockcastle!), academics, and critics from Los Angeles and a panel of international speakers, including Oberlander Prize laureate Kongjian Yu, the world’s leading proponent of the “sponge cities” concept.