Join Sara Zwede, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, as she discusses Olmsted and the Cotton Kingdom.
For Zewde, a landscape architect, educator, and “Black woman raised in the South,” Olmsted’s most important legacy was shaping the field of landscape architecture, not just with design, but also through writing and advocacy. She is the founder of Studio Zewde, a landscape architecture, urban design, and public art practice based in Harlem, New York City. Named a 2021 Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York for how her work fuses site interpretation, historic narrative, and craft of construction, she is working on a book on Olmsted and the Cotton Kingdom.
Zewde’s talk is part of the Portland Parks Foundation’s ongoing series, “Green Dreams: Conversations About Parks.” Zewde’s talk is the first of several conversations inspired by the national Olmsted 200 celebration of the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth.